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- The Citizen Voices Team
Pointe Maligne : l'infiniment oubliée - Non-fiction
by Nicole V. Champeau
Excellency, Michaëlle Jean, Excellency, Jean-Daniel Lafond,
To you all,
There’s a long history behind Pointe Maligne, l’infiniment oubliée . . . a desire to go back to a river’s source to bring its hidden face out into the open: Ontario’s Upper St. Lawrence, from Lac Saint-François to the Thousand Islands, passing through Pointe Maligne, that is, Cornwall, my hometown. Why have we erased the memory of this wild, uneven, once-rapid-filled route from our collective memory? A quest took shape. In the psyche of this place was etched the presence of First Nations, explorers, missionaries, soldiers and the passionate people who travelled from Montreal to the Great Lakes . . . and everywhere in between.
Another presence, a personal one this time. Imagine a young girl. Her father brings her to see how the work is progressing on the seaway. Imagine what happens when she sees the Long Sault dried out and asks: “When will the water come back?”
The answer is silence . . . and the tears in her father’s beautiful eyes. A moment that lasted an eternity, when she grasped the meaning of a word that children understand right away but parents don’t dare say for fear of shocking them. And here she is, fifty years later, delighted to be with you.
I would like to honour my well-loved, late parents. I sincerely thank my editors. I salute their devotion to literature, a difficult position in a minority situation. For Thomas, my immense gratitude for his passion and great contribution to the project.
