The Story of the Boulaye Family Founding Sudbury & Our Family History
Pioneer Families
Their Odyssey
Their Roots
Historical Society of New Ontario
Sacred Heart College of Sudbury
(an initial translation to English)
1
The First One of the French Canadian Pioneering Families in Sudbury
by Mlle Gilberte Proux
Let us go on to say what were the customs, the works, the virtues of our fathers, before the innovations of modern progress made them completely disappear.
On May, 1884 arrived in Sudbury on a freight train, a Family named Boulay. She came from the east, from the Earl of Rimouski. Joseph Boulay and his wife, nee Beatrice Rouleau, both natives of St anaclet, farmed the land on a farm in St-Donat, the Earl of Rimouski, where all their children born, with the exception of Hermeneglide, loved them.
For many years, the fruits of the earth were barely enough to feed nine mouths. Their resources were getting thinner and the future looked worrying for those parents with a legitimate ambition. They wanted to give an excellent education to their children, gifted for studies. Hermenegilde had not won his baccalaureat at the age of twenty!
Mr. Boulay had finally understood that his land was too stingy to support his family. He had to seek fortune under heaven more clemently. In the meantime, Madame Boulay's brother, Octave Rouleau, came to visit her. He came from fall-river, Mass. His new suit, his beautiful appearance and his satisfied mine of US factory workers decided Joseph Boulay at the start.
In the spring of 1882, Joseph Boulay, his family and six children, Pantaleon, Amanda, Letitia, Claire, Germaine and Adelard left the St-Donat farm forever and made their way to the unknown. They were accompanied by Severine Berube, an eighteen-year-old orphan adopted by Mme Boulay. Only Hermenegilde, then telegraphist for the Canadian Pacific in Sayabec, remained in the area. He had to take care of selling the land. He remained in Sayabec and married in 1883, Marie-Bibiane Gagne di Bellavance. He was the happy father of fifteen children. Later, a member of the Federal from 1911 to 1917, he did genealogical research on his family.
Through him we know that Robert Boulay or Boulle, Ball or Boulet, did in 1630 arrived in Canada, his wife Francoise Garnier in 1662 with their daughter Jacqueline. He was 'laborer of the place of Mortangne au Perche, parish Saint-Germaine de Loise'. A document says it.
This is an obligation that passes in front of Pierre Moreau, notary in La Rochelle, June 6, 1662, Robert Boulay. (1) Some time later he embarked for New France. In the summer of 1662, Robert Boulay went through, and had to make the year gone by, honoring his engagement and regaining possession of his obligation.
It is unclear if this Robert Boulay, founder of the family of that name in Canada, was related to Helene Boulay, wife of Samuel de Champlaine. This family came to Paris.
One of Robert's sons, Martin Boulay (2), married Françoise Nolin in 1698. Another son, Jacques, married firstly Marie Chaisson, and secondly Marie-Madeleine Gagne. From this latter marriage was born François in 1750, who married Marie-Françoise Blanchette.
One of his sons, of the same name as his father, contracted marriage with Marie Therese Morin. Their son, Hilaire, married on January 12, 1836, at Rimouski, Henriette Morin dit Valcour. It is their first child who, on January 3, 1837, received the name Joseph Boulay. It was my grandfather. At twenty-two, he united his destiny with that of Beatrice Rouleau on February 28, 1859.
The new spouses, after a year at the father's house, will settle on a farm in St-Donat. And here, 23 years later, in spite of hard work, they saw themselves obliged, death in the soul, to abandon this earth, witness of their sorrows and sufferings.
The Boulay family crossed Quebec and Montreal and stopped at Cornwall. On all sides cotton mills attracted the workers. Even children could earn a few cents. Father Boulay and his sons found work in the factories. They already thought they would make a fortune with their new wages, but they soon began to fall apart; they understood that life in the cities brought poverty and ruined the health.
After eleven months of working as mercenaries for ten hours a day, they packed up and went to Montreal. Ten hours a day, they folded their bags and went to Montreal. They stayed there for six months. It was here that Mr. Boulay met the Canadian Pacific Company agents in search of workers for the construction of the railroad in New Ontario. And the norman family resumes its peregrinations to the west in the heart of winter. She made her first stop in February 1884, at Stinson Pit about 18 miles east of Sudbury. She remained there until the construction of the Wahnapitae Bridge. On May 5, she reached Sudbury. According to my information, and until further information, the Boulay family and one of the first, if not the first, French-Canadian pioneer family in Sudbury.
This house contained a kitchen, two bedrooms and a large room. And in this room, travelers and workers paid 0.25 cents for a night's sleep on the floor was covered with exhausted men. It was necessary to step over all these boarders to light the fire each morning. Madame Boulay wore a sack of money at her belt, and the 0.25 sous became so numerous that it was necessary constantly to sew the bag which was loosened, because of gravity. This accumulation of coins allowed Madame Boulay to build, seven years later, a large 35-foot house.
Mr. Boulay had bought horses and began to take care of building sites. All the logs cut in Sudbury were cut by Mr. Boulay, according to one of his sons. The various enterprises tried by him, however, were not very successful, for he was not a businessman. The unprofitable contracts and the losses of horses would hardly have justified the departure of the family of St-Donat without the enterprising and energetic nature of Mrs. Boulay. As soon as she arrived in Sudbury she held a boarding house and earned enough for the family's upbringing and education. And, little by little, the accumulated funds allowed him to realize his dream: to send his daughters to the convent of the Sisters of the Assumption in Nicolet. Amanda and Claire went there in September 1884.
This departure was the beginning of the dispersion of this family which, nevertheless, was not Acadian. Here ishermenegilde, married in 1883 to Marie-Bibiane Gagne said Bellavance, Sayabec where he was telegraphist. The new spouses remain in Sayabec for several years. This is where Mr. Boulay became a lumber merchant and owner of sawmills in the area. Several of his mills went on fire, all without insurance. He then settled at Kedgwick, the county of Restigouche, province of New Brunswick, where he continued his trade in wood. That's where he died in 1943 at the age of eighty. His wife and several of his children, including Dr. Romaric Boulay, are currently living there. He was deputy to Matane at the federal level from 1911 to 1917 and came to give a conference on June 24, 1916 in Sudbury.
A large part of Sayabec village is located on the site bought by Mr. Hermenegilde Boulay. Pantaleon did in 1867 in St-Donat. He married Kate Shanahan, an emigre from Ireland whom he met at Schreiber when he was employed for the Canadian Pacific Railway. They had only one child, Catherine, who now lives in Port Arthur under the name of Mrs. Thomas Burke. He died in Winnipeg on April 5, 1929. He worked as a driver on Canadian National, but had previously served twenty years in the Canadian Pacific.
Amanda was born on 29 September 1969, married Alfred Belander of White River of the Earl of Matane, on 22 September 1893. They had ten children, two of whom, Mrs. J.L. Lefebvre and Mrs. Florent Malo, are currently living in Sudbury. The others are Mrs. J. Spence of North Bay, Mrs. Cavanaugh of Montreal, Irene of Ottawa, Adelard Emilien and Alfred of Iroquois Falls, Ontario. Mr. Belanger has lived at Iroquois Falls since 1921, where Mrs. Belanger died on April 19, 1941.
Laetitia, born in 1971, married Elzear Paquette of Point-aux-Peres, Count of Rimouski, in 1898. They had nine children, all of whom are still living. Mr. Paquette still resides on lot twelve of the first land grant in Garson Township, with his three children, Aime, Emma, and Elzear. The others are scattered throughout the area—Mrs. Sulliva of Berlin, New Hampshire; Mrs. Harney of Long Island, New York; René de Mactier; Joseph of Sudbury; Lucien of Montreal; and Mrs. Aubi of Sudbury. Mrs. Paquette died on September 20, 1943.
Claire born on January 4th in 1873, married Ferdinand Proulx, orignaire of St-Anaclet, Earl of Rimouski. The wedding took place on May 7, 1900, in Sudbury. The latter had arrived in the region in 1892 at the age of twenty. He was the son of Hubert Proulx and Adele Blanchette. He began to work as a laborer on the railway for the magnificent remuneration of $ 1.20 per for. He had to lodge, get naked, and wear clothes on the wages; He did not hesitate to look for a job elsewhere. The mines which opened everywhere in the sharp places are well its interest and he engaged as a prospector and operator of a diamond drill in the various companies. Crystal Gold Mine, Comstock, Gold Cliff Mine and Lakes Wahnepitae, Geneva, Meteor and many more are familiar to Mr. Proulx and remind him of memories that are not without their element of adventure and danger very often.
Later, he became a carpenter of this work. From his union with Claire Boulay were born Sep children: Ulric de Rouyn, Joseph, currently of Montreal, Roland died in 1931 at the age of four-year-old, Marie, died at the age of two, and three girls, Gilberte , Yvette and Alma who live in Sudbury. The first two boys were educated at the Sacred Heart College in Sudbury. Ms. Claire Proulx died on February 5, 1943, in Sudbury at the age of seventy.
Germaine nee in 1875 married Felix Servais in 1891 in South Indian Ontario. They had ten children. They lived for twenty-nine years in and around Sudbury, and in 1920 settled in Iriquois Falls where Mrs. Servais died in 1933. Mr. Servais still lives in Timmins with one of his sons.
Adelard married Zelia from Ottawa on July 8, 1906. They had eleven children who are all alive and who, with the exception of Mrs. Maurice Patry of Ottawa, live in Sudbury, named Adelard, Emile, Zelia, Mrs. Fernand Morrisset, Mrs. Cholette, Marie-Berthe, Beatrice and Lucille. Herve and Gerard are in the air force.
Severine Berube accompanied the Boulay family. She spent seven years in Sudbury and then went to visit one of her uncles in North Bay. She found employment in a tailor's shop where she met Mr. Joseph Malo whom she married. They remained for some time in Chapleau, then moved to Sudbury and continued their tailoring. She died at field in 1940. She was the mother of Dr. Florent Malo. Upon arrival, my grandparents met with their predecessors, including Mr. James McCormick and his daughter Roberta Burns, Mr. Smith, Mr. Jules Collin, Dr. Howey, Mr. Serre and Mr. Sam.
May. Later, other families of 'came to settle in the area: the brother of Mr. Boulay, Mr. Hilaire Boulay, Mr. Vital Bouillon, Gravelle, Hormidas Quenneville, Janvier Pilotte, Edouard Gagnon, F. Ricard , Joseph Martel, Jacob Proulx, Canuel Romulus, Noble, Dubreuil Narcisse Ouellette, Samuel Robillard. My grandfather was popular; he had won the esteem of all by his gentleness and conciliatory spirit. Not resentful for a penny, though he was exploited and lost a lot of money. He practiced Christian forgiveness and died as a holy man on September 10, 1916, at the age of eighty-two.
She, on the other hand, was energetic and, by the way, the businessman who was not playing. She ran her business, bought land, had several houses built. She bought five lands in the first concession of Garson Township to settle her children there.
The story of the Boulay family resembles that of many other pioneering families who lived on sunny days and others who were less so. They have known, these families, the pain of abrupt departures, the nostalgia of the abandoned land in the East, the apprehension of the morrow, the hardness of the defrichements and the exhausting fatigue of colonization in new lands.
All these families more or less known, anonymous if you will, among which between that of Boulay, have never intended to change the surface of the earth, but only to build a nest to live happy. They also have a share of merit. Because they have largely contributed to the birth and development of their city. Their story is moving. And it is with emotion that the poet of the humble pioneers, sang of their obscure grandeur:
They were great indeed, these bold peasants,
Who, on these distant shores, once defied,
The child of the woods in his lairs,
And piercing the forest, arquebus in hand,
Opened the way to the progress to come…And these men were our fathers! When France populated these new shores,
What astonishing exploits, what immense works, What Homeric legends,
Have for all heroes only these unknown valiant ones,
Soldiers and plowmen, hearts of bronze, come
From the depths of ancient Armoriques.
Louis Frechette, The Boreal Flowers
A Sudbury history book that tells the story of Joseph and Beatrice Boulay founding the City of Sudbury in the 1880s.
It appears the 1886 print of the Fleurs Boréales book appears to perhaps have the same illustrator as Édouard de LaBoulaye’s Fairy Book.
https://lop.parl.ca/sites/PublicWebsite/default/en_CA/About/Spotlight/RareBooks/Archives/Fleursboreales_e