Lucille (Potvin) Saucier passed away ten years ago on 15 November 2006. [1]
Born Doris Lucille Potvin, she was “Lou” to her family and “Cousin Lou” to my Dad and I. Actually, I was first cousin once removed to her, while she and Dad were first cousins.
Lou was the only daughter of Clement and Cecilia (Vanasse) Potvin. She was four years older than her cousin Maurice, but they were rather close as young children and spent vacations on their grandparents’ farm on Ile des Allumettes in the late 1920s and early 1930s. In later years, Dad always spoke fondly of Lou, probably because he knew her best of his Vanasse cousins.
When I was a student at the University of Ottawa, Lou would invite me to her home for meals (and much appreciated they were) or to just hang out when I got lonely living in my dorm. Lou and I corresponded fairly regularly after my family moved to British Columbia. She was a wonderful source of information about our relatives and ancestors.
Cousin Lou is still missed and remembered to this day.
Source:
1. “Doris “Lou” Saucier”, obituary, undated clipping, 2006, from unidentified newspaper; privately held by Joan (Belair) Laneville, Timmins, Ontario, 2016. Yvonne scanned family memorabilia, including this obituary, when she visited her aunt Joan (Belair) Laneville in May 2014. Joan and Lou were first cousins.
Copyright © 2016, Yvonne Demoskoff.
My Dad’s first cousin Lucille (Lou) Potvin married Joseph (Joe) Saucier on 22 June 1946, sixty-nine years ago next week. Father Fernand Faucher, a Dominican priest, officiated at the ceremony in St-Jean-Baptiste church on Empress Avenue in Ottawa, Ontario.
In the photo, Clem and Celia (Vanasse) Potvin stand next to their daughter, while Madame Victor Saucier is beside her son. Joe, who served in WWII, is wearing his army uniform.
I don’t think that my Dad and his family (his parents and his three siblings) travelled from their home in northern Ontario to attend his cousin’s wedding. (None of them appear in other photos I have seen of the wedding.)
Lou sent this photo to her cousin, my Aunt Joan (Dad’s sister). When I visited my Aunt last year, she gave me the picture; it was the first time I saw it. On the back of the photo, Lou wrote (in English and in French) in her distinctive handwriting:
Mum, Dad, Myself
& Joe & his Mum
Juin [June] 46
I don’t know the story of how Lou and Joe met, but maybe they got to know each other during the War. The Potvin family lived in Ottawa, but Joe and his family were from Cornwall, a little over an hour south of Ottawa.
My family and I visited Lou and Joe a few times where they lived in Ottawa. (Later, I visited them on my own when I was a student at the University of Ottawa.) I remember just a little bit about my first visit to their home in the summer of 1969, when their sons Ron and Dennis took me and my sister Marianne to the annual Ottawa Exhibition at Lansdowne Park.
Joe passed away in 1993 and Lou passed away in 2006. They were such nice people and I have fond memories of them.
Copyright © 2015, Yvonne Demoskoff.
