The Gouin Parish Priests

THE GOUIN PARISH PRIESTS

Going through a full list of the priests who served as parish priest at Saint-Pierre-les-Becquets, I was struck by two names that recur three quarters of a century apart. They are the GOUIN priests. Both came from Baie-du-Febvre: Philippe-Antonio Gouin and Gratien Gouin. The latter we knew well, for he succeeded Father Paul-Emile Dubois.

Father GRATIEN GOUIN was born at la Baie on 13 February 1923, the son of Rosario Gouin, a farmer, and Berthe Lemire. He did his classical studies at Papineauville (1940-1946) and then at the seminary of Nicolet. Ordained a priest on 8 March 1952 by Bishop Albertus Martin, he was first a curate at Drummondville, then at Gentilly on two occasions (1952-1955), (1965-1966), and arrived here in the autumn of 1975. His stay at Saint-Pierre was a short one, for he died suddenly at the foot of the altar on 30 April of the following year. He was only 53! He left behind him the memory of a good priest, round and jovial, loved by the young and by everyone else. A previous ten-year charge at Sainte-Séraphine (1966-1975) had left him with a deep nostalgia for that Bois-Francs region, which he spoke of at length.

As for the other priest, PHILIPPE-ANTONIO GOUIN, he was born at la Baie on 8 May 1862, the son of Calixte Gouin and Aurélie Crépeau. He studied at Nicolet, where he was ordained by Bishop P. Gravel, the first bishop of Nicolet, on 17 July 1887. The diocese had just been separated from that of Trois-Rivières, led by Bishop Laflèche.

First a curate at Saint-Grégoire-le-Grand, P.A. Gouin also served Sainte-Angèle-de-Laval. As a curate at the cathedral of Nicolet, he served Gentilly at the same time (1890), then returned as priest to the cathedral of Nicolet (1890-1898). He was only 36 when he arrived at Saint-Pierre-les-Becquets in 1898. He began by having the cemetery ground raised by several pieds (feet), and by erecting there a charnel house topped with a calvary whose wooden statues were covered in gold leaf. A way of the cross was installed and given pride of place. Father Gouin ordered a fine cast-iron fence from Sainte-Croix (Lotbinière). He also had the church restored inside and out; the vault was decorated with frescoes.

Seeing the growing number of market gardeners, he joined a movement to give the parish a joint-stock company for canning all sorts of fruit and foodstuffs — hence the birth of a large enterprise for canning TOMATOES!

In 1902 the convent for the education of the young, run by the Sisters of the Assumption, was built. It was later demolished and replaced by the Villa Les Becquets.

Yes, under the reign of Father P.A. Gouin the parish went through an era of great progress. Gouin was made a canon, then left us for the parish of Warwick, then la Baie, from where he retired to the Hôpital du Christ-Roi; he died there on 10 July 1937.

Besides these two GOUIN priests, the parish also took in a notary, J. ANTONIO GOUIN, of whom we spoke in an earlier column. Born around 1886 and unmarried, he was called upon by several Becquettois couples for official deeds, among them marriage contracts…

If we try to go back up the course of time, we find the ancestor of all these Gouin, MATHURIN GOUIN, born around 1638 in Poitou, of the marriage of Vincent Gouin, a ploughman, and Charlotte Gaultier. He crossed to New France with his brother Laurent around 1660, and married at Trois-Rivières on 20 November 1663 Marie-Madeleine Vien, daughter of Etienne Vien, a Trois-Rivières pioneer. Mathurin Gouin was a « tonnelier » [cooper] by trade, but he enjoyed a certain standing among the other censitaires (tenant farmers). He had six children, plus Henry Haines, whom he had adopted as a « domestique à vie » [servant for life]. One may read in « Les premiers seigneurs et colons de Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade (1667-1681) », published by éditions du Bien Public at Trois-Rivières by Raymond Douville in 1946: « Les GOUIN comptent parmi les huit familles souches de Sainte-Anne où il existe encore une maison Gouin, celle-ci désormais habitée par la famille Tremblay. » [the Gouin are among the eight founding families of Sainte-Anne, where a Gouin house still stands, now lived in by the Tremblay family].

One of Mathurin Gouin's sons, JOSEPH, was a famous traveller of the upper country and the direct ancestor of SIR LOMER GOUIN, premier of Québec from 1905 to 1920. Lomer Gouin took as his second wife Eliza Mercier, daughter of that other well-known premier, HONORE MERCIER (1887-1891), a great friend of Father Antoine Labelle, “the King of the North.” Lomer Gouin gave his name to the Gouin dam, on the Saint-Maurice River, considered at the time the largest in the world…

In 1917 the Québec bridge, another wonder of the world, was completed. Two years later came the first congress of the Cercles des Fermières. Nor should we forget the opening of Abitibi to settlement in 1910…

Another Gouin, LOUIS, the fourth of the name, was a merchant, member for the county of Buckingham, and seigneur of the fief of Courval. In 1829 that county was divided into six counties: Yamaska, Drummond, Nicolet, Lotbinière, Sherbrooke and Mégantic…

« Il est très probable que l'image que nous nous faisons de l'avenir appartient au passé. » [It is very likely that the picture we form of the future belongs to the past.] Jean D'Ormesson.

YOLANDE ALLAIRE-ROUX