Born in 1620, Marguerite Bourgeoys dreams of great and missionary. But, for her, religious life is seen outside the cloisters. She joins the canons of Saint-Augustin, whose director is none other than the sister of Paul de Maisonneuve, who has just founded Ville-Marie, the future Montreal. For this tiny advanced post delivered to Iroquois attacks, he is looking for a teacher. Intrepid, Marguerite Bourgeoys vogue in 1653. After two months of epic travel, the missionary ventures into a fragile colony where everything remains to be built.
And she built, houses and hospitals first, where she treats the wounded, French as Iroquois. In 1658, she founded the first school in Montreal, where she welcomed the children of the settlers and the Aboriginal people. Then it builds Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours, a place of pilgrimage outside the ramparts of the fort.
Finally, to support the installation of women in New France, she crossed the Atlantic six times, a feat. His project is to train women in practical life: read, write, but also weave and cultivate the land. In 1676, she founded the congregation of Notre-Dame, the first uncoritulated religious community in Canada, free to circulate to educate and support families. His audacity earned him the admiration of the settlers and the authorities.
Marguerite Bourgeoys died in 1700, leaving a colony which is now solidly installed. The unique fate of the daring Trojan was not forgotten: canonized in 1982, it remains an important figure for Quebec.
Gaston de Raousset-Boulbon, a republican aristocrat in the assault of Mexico
Gaston de Raousset-Boulbon began his life in 1817 as a character from Balzac, ended her like a Dumas’s hero, and inspires Victor Hugo who sees a romantic figure! Young dilettante from Avignon in Paris, he dilapid his fortune before embarking on the conquest of Algeria. He became a hunter of wild beasts and a help from Camp du Duke d’Aumale, before embarking on politics … and breaking the bank. He then tries everything for everything: California, in the midst of gold. He continues the odd jobs: fisherman, tank top, cowboy … But this new American dreams above all of Empire and fortune.
In 1852, with the support of France, he set up an expedition in Sonora, in the northwest of Mexico, at the head of an ambitious bunch of French like him. The goal: to exploit the mines of Arizona, while claiming to secure Mexican borders. But quickly, tensions grow with local authorities and, while the French consul in San Francisco asks Raousset-Boulbon to make back machine, the latter proclaims the “Sonora Republic” and went to war against the troops of General Blanco. With 250 men and facing 400 Mexican soldiers, he took the city of Hermosillo, before having to retire to California, plagued by dysentery. But the man believes in his high star: he tried a second expedition in 1854. After a new heroic battle, he was again defeated by the Mexican forces: captured, dropped by his lieutenants who testify against him, he is condemned to death and shot.
Betting up daring, disillusionment and madness of quantities, this unknown, however high in color remains one of the most flamboyant characters in French history in America.
Alphonse Pinart, the Alaska adventurer ethnologist
From an early age, Alphonse Pinart, born in 1852, was fascinated by Amerindian languages and civilizations. At 19, he himself finances his first expedition to Alaska (1871-1872) in order to study the languages of the Amerindians and prove their Siberian origin. Aboard a kayak and according to Homeric crossings which offer him respect for the inhabitants, he joins the archipelago where the Yupiks live. Ethnologist before the hour, he collects 70 ritual masks, studies the people Proppiaq and records their songs and rituals. His collection is immediately exhibited at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. Its founding gifts feed the future Trocadéro ethnography museum and enrich the Château-Musée de Boulogne-sur-Mer: more than 300 Kodiaks pieces, including sublime Eskimos masks, are kept there.
In the second part of his life, he heads further south: over his travels, Pinart multiplies the incursions in Mexico, North America, on Easter Island … He brings them objects, rare books and Mayan or pre -Columbian manuscripts. Despite his efforts and adventures, he remains on the sidelines of the academic world, plagued by financial difficulties. He died in 1911 in Boulogne-Billancourt, in a complete anonymity: his widow, just as unheat, must remain in a soap factory. An astonishing destiny for this learned adventurer, whose passion and curiosity will have brought up unrecognized civilizations in the French fields of study.
