CANADA’S FINEST MAGICIAN: MAGIC TOM AUBURN $10 Quebec VOL 8, NO. 4 FALL 2014 HeritageNews What Did You Do in the War, Mummy? Mildred Allen of the DIL Restoration: Sir John Johnson A Loyalist Returns to His Vault Long and Winding Trails The Career of Laurentian Topographer Paul d’Allmen QUEBEC HERITAGE NEWS Quebec CONTENTS HeritageNews EDITOR Editor’s Desk 3 RODERICK MACLEOD Pomp and patrimony Rod MacLeod PRODUCTION DAN PINESE; MATTHEW FARFAN Letter 5 Enforced leisure a blessing for heritage John Fry PUBLISHER THE QUEBEC ANGLOPHONE Jim Caputo’s Mystery Objects Challenge #5 6 HERITAGE NETWORK 400-257 QUEEN STREET SHERBROOKE, QUEBEC J1M 1K7 Heritage news from around the province 7 Jim Caputo PHONE 1-877-964-0409 Remains restored 9 (819) 564-9595 Sir John Johnson is returned to the vault Michel Racicot FAX (819) 564-6872 The Wandering Minstrel revisited 10 CORRESPONDENCE Rod MacLeod [email protected] WEBSITES Why Cry When an Old Building Dies? 11 WWW.QAHN.ORG Linda Buzzell WWW.QUEBECHERITAGEWEB.COM The Lost Trails of Paul d’Allmen 12 PRESIDENT Joseph Graham SIMON JACOBS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR & 2014 QAHN Heritage Photo Contest Winners 16 WEBMAGAZINES EDITOR MATTHEW FARFAN 2014 QAHN/QFHSA Island of Stories Contest Winners 19 OFFICE MANAGER 2014 QAHN Heritage Essay Contest Winners 20 KATHY TEASDALE Quebec Heritage News is produced four Gone in a Puff of Smoke 22 times yearly by the Quebec Anglophone Magic Tom Auburn Rohinton Ghandhi Heritage Network (QAHN) with the support of the Department of Canadian Heritage and Quebec’s Ministère de la Culture et The Original “Bomb Girl” 28 des Communications. QAHN is a non-profit Hudson’s Mildred Allen Bill Young and and non-partisan organization whose mis- sion is to help advance knowledge of the Ralph Simpson history and culture of the English- speaking communities of Quebec. Annual Subscription Rates: Individual: $30.00; Organization: $40.00 Canada Post Publication Mail Agreement Number 405610004. ISSN 17707-2670 PRINTED IN CANADA Cover photo: Magic Tom and friends on Surprise Party.” Photo: http://www.messagerverdun.com. 2 FALL 2014 EDITOR’S DESK Pomp and patrimony by Rod MacLeod spent an inordinate amount of time joined, their personalities reflected in the coloured by my attendance a week earli- this past June, on two separate oc- way they interacted with the presenters er at the Villa Maria graduation, where I casions, watching ladies in gowns on stage and their varying levels of suc- knew one girl like the back of my hand, and very high heels parade in front cess navigating in those heels. several more to talk to, and a great many Iof me across a stage. No, I haven’t be- There was one moment of genuine by reputation. gun a career as a fashion designer, and suspense when one slender recipient had During her five years at the school, nor was it high fashion on display. I was to carry down a massive engraved shield my daughter has never stinted in her elo- there for, let’s say, academic reasons. which entirely blocked her view of the quent and often emotional descriptions All these ladies were my daughter’s age. stairs, but thankfully the great weight of everybody’s quirks, to the point One of them was my where I could applaud the daughter. appropriateness of many of Twenty-eight were the the awards, knowing how 2014 graduates of Montre- deserving they were – and al’s Trafalgar School for in one case gasp in horror Girls, that venerable insti- at the inappropriateness, tution on the side of Mount knowing how deeply my Royal whose history the daughter disagreed with QHN outlined on the occa- the recipient on countless sion of its 125th birthday fundamental issues. That (“Spem Successus Alit,” said, Papa Bear spent most Autumn 2012). This time, of his time with bursting QAHN was honouring five buttons, watching his prizewinners of its Her- youngest child collect itage Photo contest (see some well-earned awards – later in this issue). none more so than the I was there to do the Drama prize, which speci- presenting: taking the hand fied achievements in act- of each recipient as she tottered up one countered the natural tendency of young ing, writing and directing. side of the stage, steadying her for a mo- girls in high heels to perpetually lean Compared to the Traf ceremonies, ment (or so I imagined) while handing forward and her gazelle-like feet found however, the Villa event was slow-mov- her a certificate and barking “Congratu- each step. This award had been for the ing and matter-of-fact – though the vale- lations,” and then releasing her to totter house with the highest number of points. dictorian was bubbly and a past grad off the other side. Yes, I thought, in my muggle innocence, from a decade back had some thoughtful Geoff Dowd, Traf’s effervescent they have “houses” at Traf, just like and pertinent advice to pass along. To be headmaster, obligingly read out the win- Hogwarts. And, also like Hogwarts, they fair, a much larger number of gowns had ners’ names, but he had also amiably al- have a dynamic principal; Dowd’s heart- to pass across the Villa stage: 130, no lowed me (as I had put it) 55 seconds to felt opening address and general patter less – and this was just the “English explain the contest and give special while emceeing contributed a great deal side” of this much larger institution. For praise to the teacher, Lori Litvack, to my enjoyment. That, and a valedicto- this reason, the event was held in whose dedication was, as is always the rian who somehow got away with using Thérèse Casgrain Hall, a vast multi-pur- case, the key to motivating students to the word “kegel” in her speech – some- pose room appropriately named after take up the cause of heritage. thing that would not, let’s say, have hap- one of Quebec’s most beloved feminist Somewhat to my surprise, I found pened at my school. icons. the two-hour traffic of Traf’s stage quite Above all, I enjoyed being in an in- “TCH” was built a few years back, entertaining, despite knowing none of stitution with a prestigious history. At part of the school’s spanking new sci- the grads – although by the end of it Traf, heritage is everywhere, but it does- ence-gym-library complex. Having been many of them had become distinct char- n’t overburden the spirits of these mod- involved at the time in an unsuccessful acters, their interests identifiable by the ern and eager young ladies. campaign to convince the Villa ad- prizes they won and the clubs they had All this was understandably ministration to make their proposed Traf students. L-R: Katie Neudorf-Rotchin, Sabrina Diabo, Gabriella Martucci, Andrea Fabris, Shona Abtahi, QAHN rep Rod MacLeod. Photo: Gail Cornell. 3 QUEBEC HERITAGE NEWS daughter eagerly signed up to be a tour guide, so she could take the incoming students (“first years,” as they are known at Hogwarts) through all the creepy corners of the Villa’s over-two- centuries-old “Centre” building and ad- joining wings. She pointed out the ghost’s footprint on one step. She showed them the place on a stairway where numerous teachers and caretakers over the years have heard distant sob- bing when clearly no one was around. She paused in one narrow corridor where there is a glass case containing a small portrait of a student who had died a century earlier, a portrait which, if touched, reputedly brought instant death. auditorium a state-of-the-art theatre (a lacking in having to say goodbye to five In the grounds, she drew their attention story for another day), we felt some re- years at Villa Maria in the school’s to the pond, now covered up, where two gret that our daughter had to graduate in flashy modern wing. History was forgot- little girls had once drowned, and to the this functional space that, though attrac- ten. Entering through glass doors and lonely corner where the writer Hubert tive enough, could have equally accom- descending the stone-and-steel steps and Aquin shot himself. The latter incident modated a trade show. We thought how sitting in pre-fab chairs, we had no sense came not from the school’s official lore nice it would have been for her to have that we were connected to one of Que- but from her mother’s own account of received the Drama prize in the Grand bec’s most distinguished historical prop- the buzz in 1977 when the body was Hall, a former ballroom within the erties. Indeed, while the Villa pays lip found. Less sensationally, she also school’s original building, where she service to this history on its website, it passed onto our daughter the tales of ex- had performed on numerous occasions – makes little of the heritage it bestows on ploring the school after hours and dis- to say nothing of where her mother had its students. There was no sense, for in- covering boxes in the attic (formerly the also appeared, as a student in the 1970s, stance, that the Class of 2014 was part of dormitories) which contained diaries and directed, a decade ago (see QHN, some larger tradition, that the essence of written by nineteenth-century boarders. July 2005). generations of students stood silently be- I’d like to know where that stuff is now. The Grand Hall is a dignified, old- hind them. By contrast, Traf, which has My daughter is also aware of the world space, with huge mullioned win- relatively little surviving architecture Villa’s more public history as the home dows opening to the sprawling grounds, from its early days, lets you know it’s a of James Monk, attorney-general and quirky raised steps on three sides form- place with a pedigree.