Life on a Saskatchewan Farm by Roderic Beaujot
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From Horse and Buggy to GPS: Life on a Saskatchewan Farm By Roderic Beaujot Dorothy and Leon Beaujot, Kipling, Saskatchewan, Canada, 2007 Dated: 19 March 2021 From Horse and Buggy to GPS: Life on a Saskatchewan Farm Roderic Beaujot Abstract: This book tells the story of my parents and grandparents, from horse and buggy days to increasing specialization and mechanization in agriculture. My grandparents, Félicien and Bertheline Beaujot and Paul and Julienne Mullie arrived in Canada from Belgium and France over the period 1892 to 1911. After treating the conditions that allowed for European settlement in Western Canada, I summarize the history of the community of Saint Hubert in Southeastern Saskatchewan, where my grandparents lived their lives and my parents Leon and Dorothy Beaujot were married (1945) and are buried (2014). Originally called “La Rolanderie,” this settlement was established in the mid-1880s by “French counts” who sought to start a new life on the prairies of what was then Canada’s North West. While the aristocrats soon returned to Europe, they and others who came at that time had started a vibrant community that has since essentially disappeared, with only the church and cemeteries remaining. This story of my parents and grandparents shows how life changed on family farms: shelter and food, earning a living, family and community. Copyright © by Roderic P Beaujot, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, University of Western Ontario, London ON N6A 5C2 Canada Genre: Biography, History Period covered: 1885-2014 Key words: change in agriculture, church, community, education, family, farm, farming, French, language, Saskatchewan, settlement Available as paperback (print on demand) at www.Lulu.com Preprint with Open Science Framework (OSF) at SocArXiv: Beaujot, Roderic P. 2021. From Horse and Buggy to GPS: Life on a Saskatchewan Farm. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/nzcwe ISBN: 978-1-7775989-0-7 (paperback) Dated: 19 March 2021 1 Contents Forward by Henry Gobeil 3 Preface 4 Acknowledgements 5 Introduction 6 ONE Historical Context of European Settlement in Western Canada 11 TWO Saint Hubert, Saskatchewan 18 THREE The Four Families of Origin in Belgium and France: Beaujot, Sénéchaud, Mullie, Smets 41 FOUR Leon Beaujot and the family of Félicien and Bertheline (née Sénéchaud) Beaujot 101 FIVE Dorothy Mullie and the family of Paul and Julienne (née Smets) Mullie 121 SIX Leon and Dorothy Beaujot: The family farm, 1945-1985 148 SEVEN Retirement Years: Travel, Family, Reflections, 1986-2014 199 References 250 List of Appendixes 3.1. Beaujot family genealogy 87 3.2. Sénéchaud family genealogy 90 3.3. Mullie family genealogy 93 3.4. Smets family genealogy 97 5.1 Letters written by Marie Louise, Jean, Raymond and Dorothy, 1924-25 145 6.1-6.5. Tables derived from farm account books of Leon and Dorothy Beaujot, 1943-1977 195 7.1. Beaujot-Mullie Reunion at Camp O’Neill, 4-7 August 2000 231 7.2. Old St. Hubert Cemetery 232 7.3. Mike and Jeanne Mullie celebrate the 60th Anniversary of their marriage on 28 December 1944 234 7.4. Stories by the decade: talks given by their children at Leon and Dorothy Beaujot’s 60th Wedding Anniversary, 14 July 2005 237 7.5. Email exchanges in the family at the time of Dorothy’s decease, 4-6 March 2014 246 List of Boxes 3.1. Two early generations of the Beaujot family, Dinant, Belgium 43 3.2. Four families of origin: Three generations 85 5.1. Trophies – Paul Mullie 127 5.2. Michel Mullie: Military Service 136 7.1. Cars, trucks and miles 202 7.2. Dorothy Beaujot: Did I tell you about our grandchildren 208 7.3. Leon Beaujot: On my children and their spouses 214 7.4 Dorothy Beaujot: The olden days in Golden Plain 216 7.5. Dad’s Last Day by Jeanette Beaujot 228 2 Forward The Beaujot family appeared on my radar in 1959. I remember well this little man with dark complexion, and a taller woman who looked like my mother in her younger days, with several children in tow. It was early September; the place was Collège Mathieu in Gravelbourg, Saskatchewan. This family was doing the same thing my parents had done a few hours earlier: enrolling their son at this bilingual boarding school. That boy, Roderic, became, and was my best friend throughout our eight years at college, brothers from different parents, and our friendship endured through the decades that followed. I feel privileged to have been asked to review and comment on this story as it unfolded. An amateur of history and genealogy, this evolving family history fit right into my interests and passion. It’s been years in the making, but Roderic has been meticulous and professional in his research, leaving no stone unturned, and artful in his delivery. The narrative contributions of his parents, siblings, and others, enhance the interest and validity. This book is a historical document, a genealogy, and a narration of a Saskatchewan farm family in the 20th century. The central theme of this book is the family of Leon and Dorothy Beaujot, but like a river that flows in time, it has tributaries nourishing this family unit: the Beaujot, Sénéchaud, Mullie and Smets ancestral origins. Families sourcing from different origins, under different circumstances, lives evolving differently, they are "very different but much the same.” We learn the push and pull of their immigration: the push of the conditions back in Europe, the effects of war, and the pull of owning land in the new country. Down river is the turbulent difficulties of homesteading in a strange country, through to a “century of change in prairie farming". As accurate as GPS, Roderic locates his family in the Saint Hubert community, with a history of fur trade, treaties, French counts, and settlers from Belgium and France. It’s interesting how he compares the geography and climate of his ancestors’ communities, to this prairie land of unknown qualities. It’s a story of survival, and of resilience, doing what one had to do to feed the family, and to try to make life better for their offspring. It’s a story of adaptation, of learning the secrets of the land, learning nature’s ways, and through trial and error, developing the best practices of managing land and beast. It’s a story of the importance of community, the challenges and hardships facing the settlers, and how the institutions of church and school united them in mutual support, in work or in entertainment. We owe so much to our ancestors, who figuratively and literally “paved the way” for us, in clearing the land, in building communities, in reaping the benefits we enjoy today. Descendants of Leon and Dorothy Beaujot will have here the opportunity to meet their ancestors, and to learn what they have done to make life easier for them. They will learn history and hear stories of life a century ago. They will appreciate the courage, the ingenuity, and the persistence of their elders. This is a family to learn from and to emulate: their democratic parenting style, involving everyone in decision-making, the cooperative approach to farming, the family traits of record keeping, documenting, identifying lessons learned, critical analysis, and making improvements. The story-telling and humorous anecdotes in these pages, quotations of Leon, Dorothy, or of their children at family events, attest to this loving couple’s legacy, and the harmonious 3 family relationships they fashioned. I would expect this book to be cherished, and to be passed down from generation to generation, an heirloom like the family bible was in yesteryear. Thanks to Leon’s foresight in encouraging Roderic to document the family history. Thanks to Dorothy for instilling the art of record keeping, Thanks to this couple’s humorous story-telling practice, this family’s story is being preserved. Apart from the historical and familial interests of this document, it has great entertainment value. I remember reading the chronicles of the families of origin with excitement. Bertheline Sénéchaud, Leon’s mother, is my heroine. I admire the courage this young girl had, absconding from home, from family and country, to take on this huge adventure on her own: sailing to Canada, to meet and marry a man she’d love. These humanistic episodes, and the lessons we can learn from this family, would be of interest to any reader, whether or not a family member. Henry Gobeil Weyburn, Saskatchewan 31 January 2021 Preface This book started with stories that our parents told us over the years. These stories tell us much about farming and sustaining life on the Prairies over the years: keeping warm, feeding the family, making a living, raising and educating children, creating community. The memories go back to our four grandparents who were also from farming backgrounds in Belgium and France. Arriving in Saskatchewan in the period 1892 to 1911, both sets of grandparents were married in the same year (1910), and they lived in the same small parish in Saskatchewan (Saint Hubert), where Leon Beaujot and Dorothy Mullie were married (1945) and buried (2014). I distributed an 80-page version of this manuscript at the time of my father’s 90th in 2009, under the title Ninety Years of Memories: Leon and Dorothy Beaujot. As the title was being chosen, Dorothy said that a better title would be “I can’t remember” and Leon added, “Lest we forget.” A reader of this first edition suggested that I include a family tree, placing the members of our extended family in context. I decided to include genealogical information on all my parents’ uncles, aunts and first cousins (see Appendixes 3.1 to 3.4 at the end of Chapter 3).