Complainte Pour Sainte Catherine

Bon, c'est la Sainte-Catherine aujourd'hui, alors, tradition sur ce blogue... Célébrons une Sainte Catherine qui n'est pas la sainte elle-même, ainsi qu'une certaine idée de Montréal.

Complainte Pour Sainte Catherine

Parce que c'est la Sainte-Catherine...

Complainte Pour Sainte Catherine

Nous sommes la Sainte-Catherine, alors je crois que c'est le temps de partager ceci à nouveau:

Quand vous mourrez de nos amours

Je ne voulais pas terminer la St-Jean avec un billet en anglais (je sais, je sais, réflexe de nationaleux, mais j'écris déjà beaucoup en anglais sur des billets plus lus et plus commentés). Alors pour terminer notre Fête Nationale, j'ai décidé d'y aller avec une chanson de Gilles Vigneault, ici interprétée par Rufus Wainwright, accompagné de sa mère et sa tante (les soeurs McGarrigle), juste parce que je veux éviter toute accusation d'anglophobie. Et puis vivant dans la perfide Albion, il faut éviter les susceptibilités anglaises... Il est un peu incontournable un jour de Fête Nationale et je voulais télécharger un air que je n'avais pas encore mis sur Vraie Fiction. Après Gens du Pays, Les gens de mon pays, Si les bateaux, tant d'autres, Je me suis dit que Quand vous mourrez de nos amours ferait l'affaire pour conclure le 24. C'est doux et mélancolique, et lorsque la fête se termine on se sent toujours un peu comme ça.

Why Must We Die?

Today is the eleventh anniversary of 9/11. I commemorate it every year. My two most important blog posts about the subject are from 2008 and 2009. I said all I needed to say about that day in these two posts, please feel free to comment them. This year, I decided again to commemorate it with a song, which is more eloquent than my words could be. It is from the McGarrigle sisters. Why Must We Die? was written a few years before 9/11, it could have been written for it. It is a very sad song, about how absurd is death and uncomplete life often is. Sad, but beautiful. It is fitting to remember those whose lives have been taken by religious fanaticism, also to remember how own mortality.

Sainte-Catherine

English below...

C'est aujourd'hui la Sainte-Catherine, fête qui était célébrée un peu plus au Québec dans mon jeune temps (lire: mon enfance) qu'aujourd'hui. Je ne crois pas que l'on sache ce dont il s'agit en Angleterre. J'ai déjà blogué sur la Sainte-Catherine. je vais souligner la journée modestement, comme l'année dernière, en lisant ce conte que j'aime beaucoup. Je vais aussi écouter la chanson un peu kétaine des soeurs McGarrigle, laquelle ne parle pas de la fête mais de la québécitude version montréalaise, chanson pour laquelle j'éprouve toute l'affection de l'expatrié. Complainte pour Sainte Catherine a été adaptée par une artiste suédoise, alors elle ne doit pas être totalement dépourvue de qualités. Elle semble en tout cas exercer une attraction chez les peuples nordiques.

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Well, it is Saint-Catherine's Day today. I blogged about it before. It used to be fairly celebrated in Québec, we were eating taffy cooled on fresh snow (when there was snow). I will celebrate it modestly, as I cannot find taffy I will just eat some cream fudge, that tastes much better and does not stuck to the teeth. I will also read this Quebec tale set on that day, about a 25 year old maid who does not want to become a spinster and foolishly vows to... well, I will not spoil it for those who can read it. I might translate it one day for those who can't. It's a brilliant cautionary tale.

I will also listen over and over again that song below, from the McGarrigle sisters. I mentioned the song before. As I said a year ago, I love it for unknown reasons, but it probably has something (everything) to do with my status of expat. The song has been freely adapted by a Swedish artist. It seems that Complainte pour Sainte Catherine moves Northern people.

Saint Catherine's Day tomorrow

Well, I am a bit early for this, but I thought I would remind my Anglophone readership that it is St-Catherine's Day tomorrow. I will write a post about it in French tomorrow with the usual nostalgia, children souvenirs nobody wants to hear about but my brothers and I, so I won't bother you too much with childhood memories. That said, Saint Catherine's Day is a fascinating little holiday that is sadly forgotten these days. It is one month before Christmas and for Quebeckers it used to be the last big day until Christmas. It didn't start the Advent, but it was still a way to pass time until then. It was, in effect, our Thanksgiving. It was also the day of unmarried women and spinsters, as Saint Catherine is the holy patron of virgins. As a child, I didn't know much about the saint, but I knew that "coiffer Sainte Catherine" meant, for unmarried women of 25, becoming "vieille fille", i.e. a spinster. As a child, 25 seemed very old to me, and I wouldn't understand why any man in his right mind would want to marry a woman so ancient anyway, so the tradition made sense. Obviously, I didn't know I was going to marry at 30 a woman aged 26 going on 27. In France, they had Saint-Catherine's hats or wigs to celebrate the event. In Québec, we used to make tire, which is taffy,"like Marguerite Bourgeoys" now a saint herself), who introduced taffy in America and evangelised natives by bribing them with the candy (the way we were told her story, that's how I understood it). So that's what I loved about Saint-Catherine's Day: the taffies, which we used to cool on snow, when there was some. Funny that a day so austere was also for us another day of sugar indulgence. But the holiday served also as a warning for the girls who were too eager to get a husband. We were told the cautionary tale of Colette, a maid approaching 25 who did not want to become a spinster, and who tried too hard to get married before Saint Catherine's Day. If you can understand French, you can read her story here. It's a beautiful conte québécois the way I love them: simple, dark, with no happy ending.

I didn't know how to commemorate the day, and then I found recently at total random this song by the McGarrigle sisters, which is called Complainte pour Sainte-Catherine. Granted, it is more about the rue Sainte-Catherine in Montreal, not the day or the saint herself, but the "pour" in the title means that the song is addressed to the saint, so I took it as a sign. Anyway, I don't know if it is the thick Quebec anglophone accent, the use of joual, the way the lyrics picture perfectly a cold winter day in Montreal, but I found the song irresistible.