AS MY FATHER and mother were cousins, they shared many of the same ancestors. They were both very much interested in tradition and the past, so the notion of family was always, to our way of thinking, something real and living. My parents would often talk about people who had been dead for fifty or a hundred years, but they spoke of them somehow as if they were still alive. Thus, my father would remark that Charles had suffered a good deal from the gunshot wound he got when he went hunting or that Rene-Ovide hadn't been particularly happy with his second wife, and I knew he was talking about his great-grandfather and one of his granduncles. These old ancestors kept coming in and out of our lives, and in the end they became quite familiar figures. My father's habit of referring to them by their Christian names never bothered me, because I had learned to find my way about among the Charleses, the Renes, the Michels, and the Louis. Some of them were Roquebrunes and others Hertels or Salaberrys. 

My father and mother actually lived in the past and looked back to it with real nostalgia. This attitude of theirs raised certain barriers around our own lives. For a long time I really thought that the age into which I had been born was quite unworthy of any interest. Only the past possessed colour and beauty. The present seemed to me an age in which no one ever had adventures any more. The past appeared suffused with an strange charm, but the human race today had lost its joy of living and its sense of beauty. Some dreadful spell had deprived mankind of the spirit of daring. I had been born into a world where nothing ever happened and the whole idea appalled me. My imagination was entirely focused on an age when life was keen, prescient, full of strange adventures, of passionate loves, and peopled with men and women who were likable, attractively odd, and utterly charming. All families have a past of their own, but most people know no thing about their ancestors. The lives of these men and women are shrouded in complete forgetfulness. Grandchildren know nothing of their grandparents. They have perhaps inherited the features of one of these forgotten forbears, the character of another. Elements which were present in the dead are reassembled in a boy now living or go to make up the loveliness of a young girl's face and features, but death and neglect have wiped out the intervening links. 

In our family the past had remained a living reality. My father knew a great deal about it and about our family history, and the topic was a favourite one with him. I think my brothers and sisters used to get rather bored, but I loved it. I thrilled to those dramatic tales of adventure. Of course, there are families where nothing ever happens for centuries. These are very dull ones. Ours, on the other hand, was an amusing one, because it had been full of people who lived like heroes straight out of a novel or a play. My father's family name was La Roque de Roquebrune; my mother's Irumberry de Salaberry. The Roquebrunes came from Gascony and were an army family. The Salaberrys were Basques and were a seafaring lot. In Louis XIV's day, there was a regiment called the Regiment de La Roque. The colonel was one of our ancestors , La Roque de SaintChamarand. Under Louis XV, the four admirals who were known as the Admirals of the Eastern and Western Oceans, were respectively La Rochefoucauld d'Amville, Broglie, Court de La Bruere, and Salaberry de Benneville. "It's thanks to his cousin La Roque de SaintChamarand," my father used to say, "that our first Canadian ancestor managed to wriggle out of the scrape he had got into by fighting a duel with Hauterive. And it was his cousin the admiral who gave the first Canadian Salaberry a leg up in his naval career. It was a good thing to have relatives in those days.

 "French aristocrats in the past used to use several family names. Some of them were taken from properties they owned or were surnames that came to them through their wives. They followed the same fashion when they emigrated to Canada. The Joyberts were also called Marsan and Soulanges, the Rigauds Vaudreuil and Cavagnal, while the Bouchers used names like Boucherville, Montizambert, Niverville, La Broquerie, La Perriere, and Grandpre. People nowadays sometimes think that it was for snobbish reasons that the French used so many names, but anybody who thinks that simply doesn't understand how things were done in those days. It was because they were individualists that members of a same family used different names. The family itself could always be distinguished by a surname that didn't vary, but each member added other family names to his own."

 This practice survived into the nineteenth century. My father called himself Hertel, which was his mother's maiden name. The Hertels are of Norman descent and have played a distinguished part in Canadian history through François de Hertel and his son Hertel de Rouville. The former, under Count Frontenac, carried the war into New England in 1690. The latter fought over the same territory in 1708, under the Marquis de Vaudreuil. The American historian Parkman has told the tale of this fierce frontier war and of its battles and calls the Hertels "bloodthirsty ruffians," but the Abbe de Charlevoix in his History says that they were "the heroes of New France."

 For me, the history of Canada was a story told in the evenings, under the lamplight almost a fairy story. And it was my father's words that gave shape and substance to this illustrious past. As I listened to him, the phrases he uttered turned into the men and women of days gone by. Their faces came to life, their deeds, their loves, the dangers they ran, and their tragic deaths. "All families are old families," he used to say. "The Durands and the Martins go back just as far as the Montmorencys or the Rohans. It would be really interesting to know the story of the Durands and be possible to write them up. Michelet wanted to be the historian of the French people, but he never managed it, because historians inevitably concentrate on the history of great men and never on that of the people. What you find in Michelet is Joan of Arc and Robespierre, not the men and women of the Hundred Years' War or the French Revolution."

 My father had very original ideas about history and it was a subject that always brought him out of himself. He had read so many old documents! These family trees and officers' commissions and private letters filled three huge green folders, and, together with his own recollections and the traditional lore that had come down to him from his parents, they comprised the history of the family. "These La Roques and Roquebrunes weren't really particularly important people," he used to say. "They were just good soldiers like all Gascons. They weren't rich either, and the seigneuries of La Roque and of Roquebrune for which Bernard de La Roque paid homage and swore fealty to the Count of Armagnac in 14b9 were really just small farms, which they often tilled with their own hands. Gascons were poverty-stricken but proud. They called themselves counts and barons, bore a whole host of names, and proved their noble descent on parchments registered with the Provincial Intendant, but their clothes were often in rags and they were glad to marry off their daughters to peasant farmers while their sons served the King in regiments that were the private property of illustrious kinsmen of theirs. Under the Old Regime, regiments actually belonged to their colonels. The Regiment de La Roque, which was owned by La Roque de SaintChamarand, had been bought from the King for cash. For the King of France was in trade like any other big business man. Offices that carried the privilege of nobility, regiments, jobs as collectors of taxes, all formed part of the royal stock-in-trade. As the La Roque de SaintChamarands were wealthy, they could afford to buy a regiment for their eldest son. This money came down to them from the Peyronnencs. Philibert de Roquebrune served as a lieu tenant in his cousin's regiment. His mother was a Marcilly and his grandmother a Couillaud-Hauteclair. Being a Marcilly or a Couillaud doesn't count for anything nowadays, but in the seventeenth century they were influential people in the provinces of Orleans and Angouleme. La Roque used Couillaud, his grandmother's family name; as a surname. It gave him a link with the magistracy, for the Couillaud de Hauteclairs had been judges. This young lieutenant was an ambitious fellow and meant to get on in the world by using all these relations. But he went and fought this duel with Hauterive and that changed the whole story."

 My father usually puffed away at a pipe as he talked. In my memory, these old family tales are somehow fragrant with the odour of the Canadian tobacco he smoked in his stubby clay pipe. The past seemed to float for an instant beneath the rafters before evaporating in a bluish haze. I could just make out vague shapes and faces, which appeared only to disappear again. When he was at a loss for a name or a date he would often go and fetch one of the green cardboard folders from the dusk in the drawing room. Then he would open it out on the table and take out letters and commissions and appointments. And he would put his finger under the royal signature, the elegant, ornate "Louis," and say, "You see, you see, it's signed by the King."

 "Nobody has ever found out who this Hauterive was or why Roquebrune fought a duel with him, but the silliest thing a young officer could do in Louis XIV's time was to get mixed up in a duel , for the laws against dueling were severe. If one of the contestants died, the survivor was tried for murder and ran the risk of having his head cut off: Roquebrune was shielded by La Roque de Saint Chamarand.

 "At that time the young man had left the Regiment de La Roque and had joined the Black Musketeers. As the Musketeers formed part of the Household Troops, anyone who wanted to get in to the regiment had to prove his noble birth. Roquebrune passed the test. Because of their democratic notions, many people find these old rules absurd, but they were quite consistent really, and there was a good reason for them. In those days, nobody had to serve in the wars . unless they were of noble birth or liked fighting. Soldiering was a trade like any other. Neither the townspeople nor the merchants nor the peasants were forced by the King to take arms. Soldiers were volunteers. As for the nobles, it was their bounden duty to fight, for if they were exempt from paying their taxes in money, it was only right that they should make up for it by paying them in blood." At this point my father would break off' his story to go and fetch the family tree from the drawer in the desk. It was spread over four pages turned yellow with age and even the ink had rusted. "None of this really amounts to much," he would say. "The Roquebrunes don't really go back very far and they weren't a particularly illustrious family. Before this Bernard de La Roque and his vow of homage and fealty in 1409 there is really nothing. They seem to have been very proud of a marriage contracted in the sixteenth century with a member of the Esparbes family and of another marriage with this Couillaud whose name they persisted in using for two or three generations. There was a Ferrabouc bride too; their arms were `a ram passant on a field argent.' But who were the Ferraboucs ? Coats of arms were really puzzles of a kind and served to designate families just as their surnames did. As for the Roquebrunes, their coat of arms, charged with a cross saltire and a rock mortised sable, quartered with three stars, showed from the quartering that they were a younger branch. All these rules were clearly understood at the time, the heraldic objects, called `charges,' were just a sort of short hand. Three hundred years from now, our great-grandnephews won't understand our own age any better than we understand the periods in which our ancestors lived, and our customs, our peculiarities, our ways of life will seem as odd to them as those of the men and women of the seventeenth century appear to us. "When his career as a Musketeer had been ruined by this silly duel, Roquebrune was presented by La Roque de SaintChamarand to the Marquis de Chastelard-Sallieres and got a commission in the Regiment de Carignan-Sallieres. The Prince de Carignan had been colonel of this regiment and they had retained his name. Philibert de Roquebrune was posted to Contrecoeur's company, fought in the campaign against the Turks, and, in 1665, took ship at La Rochelle and sailed with his regiment for Canada. After fighting the Turks, Carignan-Sallieres was sent to do battle against the Iroquois. The ' Viceroy of New France in those days was the Marquis de Tracy. He was a seasoned campaigner hailing from Picardy. He knew a lot about strategy and fought brilliantly against the Iroquois. When they had been beaten by the men of Carignan-Sallieres, the Indians made peace, and it was then that the King made his bid to induce the t officers and men of the regiment to stay on in the colony.

 "All the younger ones accepted. Roquebrune was thirty. As the younger son of a younger son, the only future he could look forward to in France was being posted from one garrison town to another and ending his days as a captain on half pay. His father Bernard de La Roque was dead. The Chateau de La Roque in Gascony and the ' Roquebrune estates belonged to the elder branch. The only thing he had, to use the expression current in those days, was an honourable name. Most of the officers and men of the Carignan regiment were in the same boat. SaintOurs, Contrecoeur, Sorel, Vercheres, Gautier de Varennes all decided to stay on. SaintOurs had a chateau in Dauphine, but it was in ruins. Varennes had lands in Anjou, but they were mortgaged to the hilt. Contrecoeur had been ruined by a lawsuit. All these soldiers had better prospects in Canada than back home in France; so they stayed. Acting in the King's name, the Governor gave them seigneuries along the St. Lawrence, on the Island of Montreal, or up the Richelieu. Seigneuries! The word sounds impressive, so much more impressive than what it actually stood for. After working for twenty years on his seigneurie, Eschaillon de SaintOurs still had to do his own ploughing with the help of his sons and daughters."

 My father dug down into one of the green cardboard folders and retrieved a sheet of paper. "The seal of Notary Basset! In 1667, Canada was still quite wild and there weren't many more than ten thousand Frenchmen in the whole colony. Montreal was a little wooden town with a palisade around it. The habitants' houses were fortified and when they tilled their fields they kept their muskets fastened to their ploughs. The Massacre of 1690 is a good enough indication of what the colonists were up against, and yet there were notaries in every centre of population. This document, signed by Notary Benigne Basset, and dated from Montreal on September 24, 1667, states that Roquebrune of Contrecoeur's company' owns one acre of land on the Island of Montreal in the Urbain Boudreau con cession. The officers and the men of the Carignan regiment were settlers now. Every French-Canadian family today can trace its descent from at least one of the soldiers of that glorious regiment.

 "They married local girls, the daughters of the men who had accompanied Monsieur de Maisonneuve when he founded Montreal. And, as there weren't enough wives for all these soldiers, the King sent out others by the shipload. They were brought out to Quebec under the supervision of one of the ladies of the colony, Madame Bourdon; others were chaperoned by nuns. They were officers' daughters and the King gave each one a dowry. Bachelor settlers flocked to Quebec and the Governor held informal receptions at the Chateau Saint-Louis to enable the young people to get to know one another. A fortnight after one of these shiploads of brides had arrived, they would all be married off. The young couples were ready to set off from Quebec harbour in their birchbark canoes, bound for a clearing `below Quebec' or in the vicinity of Three Rivers or Montreal. The knots had all been tied by the Bishop himself. These frail canoes, bobbing on the waters of the great river, cradled many a French-Canadian family of the future.

 "Philibert de Roquebrune didn't have to go to Quebec for a wife because he found one ready to hand in Montreal in the home of one of the habitants, Jacques de La Porte de Saint-Georges, who had a grant at St. Marie and was one of the richest settlers on the island. Back in Berry, the Saint-Georges estates had belonged to the La Portes ever since the fifteenth century. Yet Jacques de La Porte had left Berry and its tranquillity to become an habitant on the Island of Montreal. It was a curious business. The big island with its mountain rising out of the expanse of the broad river bore no resemblance to the landscape of Berry. These French founders of the colony were many of them escapists with a gnawing, secret hunger for a change of scene. Canada had a special fascination for men of a certain type. The propaganda put out by the Jesuits, and by the pious Madame de Bullion, found its way into the homes of many devout men and women. Whole families went off to Canada with the sole purpose of living as the early Christians had done before them. It seemed easier to lead a pious life overseas, and Heaven then was not so far away. Chomedey de Maisonneuve, Lambert Closse, Marguerite Bourgeoys, Madame d'Ailleboust, and many of the other first settlers of Montreal were mystics lit by an inner flame. La Porte de Saint-Georges left France for Canada to save his soul.

 "He had had sons and daughters. They all lived in a fortified house at St. Marie, which was out in the country beyond the walls of Montreal. La Roque de Roquebrune lived in a fortified house too, at St. Martin, near the river. The young officer turned settler had for his nearest neighbours two habitants, Elie Baujon and Jacques Brias, nicknamed `Soldier' Brias. They probably gave each other a hand when the Indians were on the warpath, and that happened often enough. A cannon fired from the fort at Montreal was the usual signal that Indians had been sighted on the Island. Everybody rushed home from the fields as fast as possible. Doors were closed and barred and all loopholes manned. But there weren't alarms of this sort all the time. There were only certain critical periods when the Iroquois were particularly threatening. The year 1690 was the worst year of all. In normal times Montreal had a miniature social life all its own. After all, Frenchmen are sociable by nature. Put a group of French people down anywhere and they will set up a human pattern of existence for themselves. These traits are predetermined by race and by a deep-set, civilizing urge. Canada had its own `society' right from the beginnings of things. The Island of Montreal with its little walled in area, its palisaded farmhouses, its fields, its gardens, and its orchards constituted a social world-a social world in microcosm, but possessed of plenty of courage and graciousness, though ruled by a rather formal politeness and by military discipline. The Governor of the Island, whoever he might be Monsieur Boisberthelot de Beaucours, the Chevalier de Callires, or Monsieur Le Moyne de Longueuilgave a round of receptions and dinners. High Mass at the parish church on Sundays was quite an event. The Sulpician Order provided all the parish clergy and these Sulpicians were of gentle birth and knew how to behave in polite society. The Superior of the Order, Monsieur Dollier de Casson, had been an officer in Marshal Turenne's army before taking orders. The Governor General of the colony-Count Frontenac or the Marquis de Denonville used to come up from Quebec once a year to spend a few weeks in Montreal. That was the real social season. Everyone went to the balls the Governor gave, and on Sundays the Sulpician Church was crammed to the doors because everybody wanted to see His Excellency seated before his priedieu in the choir. The Recollet Church was quite fashionable too, mainly because of the magnificent sermons on sin preached by Father Olivier Goyer. As a matter of fact, there were scandals and illicit love affairs then that caused a good deal of gossip. The Chevalier de Callieres and Madame de Ramezay were a favourite topic. Mademoiselle de Belestre took a paternity suit before the Colonial Council against Pierre d'Iberville. French Canadians in those days were as inflammable as they were heroic. Their women knew how to fight but they also knew how to make love. Madeleine de Vercheres defended her family's fort against the Iroquois with the aid of one soldier and her two small brothers. Madame de Drucour fired the cannon of Louisbourg against the English with her own hand, but Angelique Desmeloizes, Marguerite de Martigny, Madame de Beaubassin were the respective mistresses of the Intendant Bigot, of the Chevalier de Levis, and of the Marquis de Montcalm. Canadians were hot-blooded in those days." My father seemed preoccupied by a train of thought and sucked for a while at his pipe. "Roquebrune spent a good deal of his time at the Saint-Georges'. In winter he would put on his snowshoes and race across the snow to St. Marie. Then he would spend the evening by the fireside with his friends. Monsieur de La Porte would talk about France and about Berry. Roquebrune would tell about the campaigns he had fought, about the Battle of Gothard, about his life as a Musketeer or as an officer in the Regiment de La Roque. With his own eyes he had seen the King at Versailles. The girls of the family hung on his lips, for they had been born in Montreal and had never even seen France. This French officer seemed a terribly important person and quite entranced them. They must have lain awake at nights thinking about him. Suzanne-Catherine de Saint-Georges grew particularly fond of him. She used to sit on his knee to hear him tell his stories. There is nothing particularly remarkable about that because she was only thirteen at the time. Madame de La Porte certainly didn't see anything wrong in it. She took it for granted that one day he would ask for the hand of one of her daughters. And that is just what happened; he chose Suzanne.

 "She had violet-coloured eyes, long silky hair, and a rather large mouth. In her long grey homespun dress with its white collar she already looked quite a grownup little person and she was lively and charming. This little Montreal blossom quite bewitched the ex soldier. He had spent all his life in barracks and camps, in the company of rough men, of horses and of weapons, and he fell head over heels in love with her. There wasn't anything unusual about this in Canada, where, by the King's command, girls married at fifteen and young men at eighteen.

 "La Roque de Roquebrune wanted Monseigneur de Montmorency Laval to perform the ceremony. He had a special veneration for the Bishop of the Colony, who was indeed a saintly figure. So they all set off by canoe from the foot of the rapids. Monsieur and Madame de Saint-Georges traveled with their children in one craft and in the other was Roquebrune with Elie Baujon and Jacques `Soldier' Brias. In this way they set out for Quebec. People had to use the river route, as in those days no road had yet been cut through the forest. The great canoes danced up and down over the waves. The trip down to Quebec didn't actually take long: a matter of four or five days. The travelers took their food and muskets along with them. Once in the capital, there was usually a reception at the Chateau Saint-Louis where the Governor kept open house. The marriage of the officer and the young girl was blessed by Monseigneur de Montmorency. The Bishop was an old man, tall and baldheaded, worn to a shadow by his austerities. The sacred ornaments he wore had been given by Anne of Austria or by the Duchess d'Aiguillon the great patron of the missions to Canada. The journey back to Montreal was a slow business, for paddling against the current was hard work. At sunset they went ashore to spend the night in a tent on the beach. One man kept watch, walking up and down with his dog who would growl at the slightest sound, even if it was only the wind blowing through the grass, rustling a leaf, stirring a branch.

 One evening they came in sight of Montreal just at moonrise. In the distance, from the middle of the great island, the outline of the mountain seemed to brood over the quiet waters of the St. Lawrence. Roquebrune had long since dropped his paddle, for his girl bride had crept into his arms, and he held her cradled against his heart. She was asleep, and he couldn't move for fear of waking her. Elie Baujon in the bow, and in the stern Jacques Brias"Soldier" Brias sang softly as they paddled. The other canoe came on behind. The rhythm of the song kept time for the paddles. French Canadians always sang on the water; it made the work easier. When they stepped ashore below the fort at Montreal, the girl was still asleep, and Roquebrune still bore his slender burden. He cut across the fields by paths he knew well as he had followed them so often, and so came home with his wife asleep against his shoulder." I always liked that story. It gave me an odd feeling of delight. What pleased me most about the romance of my ancestor and his young wife was its tenderness. When my father paused at the end, it was as if we had arrived at the threshold of that house in the fields outside Montreal the threshold our first Canadian ancestor crossed on his wedding night with a young girl asleep in his arms. That was really the end of the story. "What more do you want me to tell you? They lived happily ever after. Anybody could be happy in Canada in those days. There was plenty of everything. Nobody had even heard of money; there was scarcely a single coin in circulation in the whole colony. But that didn't last long; Montreal's Golden Age was drawing to a close. The French Canadians started to trade with the Indians for furs. Louis de Roquebrune took a hand in that; he was the son of the officer and of Suzanne de Saint-Georges. He married a Sabourin and with his cousin, the Chevalier de Tonty, who had also married a Sabourin, he set off for the pays d'en haut. Tonty, who was also called Tonty Desliettes, which was his grandmother's surname, was the son of the commander of Fort Pontchartrain, built on one of the Great Lakes. He was also the nephew of the famous Tonty Bras de Fer. They were an adventurous family, comrades-in-arms of Cavalier de La Salle and great builders of forts. Roquebrune set out with Tonty by canoe, went down the Mississippi as far as Louisiana, and it was two years before he came back to his wife who lived on a seigneurie near the Lake of Two Mountains. There stood his manor house and it was there that he died at a great age, leaving a fortune to his son."

 My father put down his pipe and drew an officer's commission out of one of the green folders. "This is a lie tenant's commission in the Regiment de Berry made out to Louis La Roque de Roquebrune. Lots of men were called Louis then because of the King. This was the son of the man who had paddled up and down the rivers of America with Tonty. This document is dated 1759 and is signed by the colonel, Monsieur de Trivio. On September 13,1759, Roquebrune fought on the Plains of Abraham along with his comrades in the Regiments de Berry, de Guyenne, de La Sarre, de Languedoc, and de La Colonie, all under the command of the Marquis de Montcalm. You know the upshot of that battle outside Quebec. Montcalm was killed, the French army was defeated after a heroic struggle and the capital of Canada fell to the British. On the British side, the Highland regiment commanded by Lord Lovat played what was probably a decisive part in the battle. An entire company of McDonalds were in the line opposite Berry. Roquebrune, who was a good shot like most French Canadians, brought down more than one of them, but memories of this occasion didn't prevent his son from marrying, in 1781, the daughter of Captain Daniel McDonald. And I knew the Scots woman's son, for he was my grandfather and lived till 1859.

 "He was christened Charles after Charles Stuart, because his mother, Genevieve McDonald, was a fervent Jacobite. People in that day and age were capable of remaining faithful for years on end to a sovereign or a personal hero. Because of his veneration for Louis XVI, the Martyr King, and for General Sir Isaac Brock, the hero of the War of 1812, my grandfather called his son Louis-Isaac.

 "In any stock, the human type can change all of a sudden, the mother's ancestral characteristics replacing those of the father. Then, with the second generation, atavism comes into play again, and there is a reversion to paternal traits and cast of countenance. That's what happened in the case of our family. Charles de Roquebrune was six feet tall and had fair hair. He was a real Scotsman and looked like the McDonalds, but his son Louis was dark and of medium height. He had blue-black hair-a regular Gascon."

 I heard all this talk in snatches. My father used to come back to the subject every now and then, adding a touch here and there, or filling in with additional detail. It had all been handed on to him by his grandfather, so the chronicle came to me by word of mouth and from a long way off', as if each generation in turn were telling me its own story.

 "Charles and Louis were complete opposites in their ideas too. The father was a Royalist, who thought Louis XVI a saint, liked the British, and admired Sir Isaac Brock, but Louis had revolutionary notions. He was a devotee of the French Revolution and his hero was Napoleon. This was normally a source of dissension, but in 1837, at the time of the Rebellion, their antagonism turned to tragedy, for they found themselves on opposite sides. Because of his Scottish mother, Charles de Roquebrune spoke English well, and this was a help to him in the business world. He also had many English friends, which was another circumstance that helped to enrich him. The French Canadians had been ruined by the Conquest and by the Seven Years' War. There had never been much hard money in circulation in the colony, and the Royal Intendant had introduced a sort of paper currency called `card money.' It consisted of bills pay able by the Crown. After 1765, the British bought up all this paper money for a song and resold it to Louis XV at face value. Both seigneurs and habitants lost millions over this transaction."

 My father sent a puff of bluish smoke up towards the ceiling. After hanging above us for a moment, the smoke thinned out and then vanished. "In the eighteenth century, the French Canadians made money with their beaver pelts and their lumber. All Europe wore beaver hats that had originated in New France. The hulls and the masts of French ships were made of timber from Canada. From 1700 down to the Conquest, we supplied the Paris hatters and all the ship building yards. The three-cornered hat worn by Marshal Saxe at the Battle of Fontenoy and the mainmast of Comte de la Gallissonniere's flagship at Port Mahon may very well have come from one of our seigneuries. After the Peace of Paris, which handed us over to the British, French Canada was bankrupt. Some families still owned land in the form of seigneuries, but these brought in no income, so many sold out to the British. The Roquebrunes were as impoverished as the rest, but they hung on to their lands. As a consequence, by 1800, Charles hadn't a penny to his name but he was the seigneur of a vast extent of uncleared land in Ontario. His business sense he inherited from the McDonalds, because there is nothing Gascon about that. Like most French Canadians of his day, he was practically illiterate, but he knew how to figure. With a Scotsman for a partner, he built a sawmill on his Ontario properties at a place he called Roqueville. After a few years, he had become a large-scale exporter of lumber to the British market. As he was enterprising and imaginative like all business men, he opened up stores in both Quebec and Ontario, and built a village around his manorhouse at Roqueville with a church where the Abbe Saya officiated. He took his first trip to Britain in 1816. In Scotland he went to call on the McDonalds and visited Lord Coldwell, who was a cousin of his. He went to Paris, too, and saw Louis XVIII. For French Canadians, the Bourbons were still `the Royal Family.' Out of family piety he also went to Gascony. The elder branch were still living in the Chateau de La Roque and there he saw `the Family.' It was represented by an old gentleman who received him with great politeness and told him stories about the Army of the Princes. He also served him an excellent armagnac and gave him the bedroom where Philibert de Roquebrune had slept two hundred years before." (...) Out of of the past continues.