3/16/2023 0 Comments Children one and all mary traversShe cautioned about The Corner Grocery Store: Watch close when they weigh your meat, Sometimes they'll try to cheat, To create a distraction. In the laneways passed The Street Vendor With the arrival of springtime, He began to chime: Come see my shallots, just ten cents fills your boots. Mary's life revolved around her family, but she was an acute observer of the countless little details of daily working-class life, which she would later weave into her songs. Their life began to stabilize in 1924 and the four surviving children (out of 13!) grew up in a typical French Canadian home. The Bolducs tried to stay one step ahead of disaster by moving every two years, and even fled to New England for a year in search of work. They struggled to raise a family in their four-room cold-water flat but fought constantly against poverty and the infections that claimed young lives. Through it all, Mary retained both her strong will to succeed and cheerful disposition, qualities that won the admiration of Edouard Bolduc. Before I met a fine young beau.įor a few years, Mary worked as a housekeeper, then as a labourer in a textile mill, making terrible wages for workdays that lasted as long as 13 hours. The countryside, I left, To Montreal I did go. The shock of leaving home and her initiation to the big city would later translate into song: In Canada's francophone metropolis, the village girl discovered a hectic and raucous 20th century. Without knowing it, young Mary Travers was laying the foundations of the Quebec "chanson."Īt 13 years of age, in 1907, Mary left for Montreal in order to relieve the financial burden on her family. She usually played Irish reels, which she intertwined with "turlutes." Acadian mouth music. Fluently bilingual, she learned how to sing as well as play the accordion, fiddle and harmonica to brighten the evenings spent with neighbours. Irish on her father's side, with a French Canadian mother, Mary was a sturdy, curious and lively child who attended school only briefly. Mary learned the harsh realities of poverty growing up in the Gaspé region, where unemployment was common. MAIN MENU: HISTORY & PEOPLE: CANADIAN PERSONALITIES: MARY TRAVERS-BOLDUC Despite these hard times, Mary Travers-Bolduc made ordinary people like herself laugh with her witty songs of everyday life in the 1930s. Mary Travers-Bolduc The Great Depression tested the endurance of working men and women. CanadaInfo: History & People: Canadian Personalities: Mary Travers-Bolduc
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