The translations of Montcalm

The re-burial of the remains of the "Braves" found near the Dumont mill site in Ste-Foy was called a "translation" (the word is the same in French) referring to the ceremony of re-intering the relics of a saint. In looking at the major monuments to Louis-Joseph de Montcalm, I'd like to again emphasize the function of translation.

We've seen how the obelisk in the jardin des gouverneurs, the paired statues above the entrance to the Parliament building, and the pair of markers for their death spots on the Plains of Abraham all grant Montcalm and Wolfe the status of equals, of twins whose shared sacrifice undergirds Canadian nationalism. One might say they were not twins separated at birth, but twins united in death. And the twinning of the two heroes goes along with the continuous acts of French-English translation that are also part of Canadian nationalism.

The monuments to Montcalm alone define a different type of translation; that of re-membering and re-burying a saintly hero, and moving his image back and forth between Quebec and France.

This is Léopold Morice's Monument to Montcalm, cast in 1910 and erected in 1911 facing the Grande Allée a few meters away from the Plains. The plans for the monument began, presumably at the time of the 1908 tri-centennial celebrations and the founding of the National Battlefields Commission. Today it stands in front of the concrete monstrosity of the Loews hotel and back to back with a bronze statue of Charles de Gaulle at the other end of a short median.

I don't think the statue really does the hero justice. The expression on his face and his pose, with both arms stretched out, suggests that the allegorical angel come to crown him with laurels has suddenly bumped into him and may topple him over. He straddles a cannon that lies on the ground in a position where it cannot possible aid him in battle. But let's look at the inscription on his pedestal.

The polished curved surface is hard to read. It says simply
    Montcalm
La France
         Le Canada

Another copy of this statue was unveiled in 1910 at Montcalm's birthplace, the Chateau de Vestric, in Vestric-Candiac, France, just south of Nimes. I've not seen a photo of that one, but its existence, and the inscription here in Quebec, suggests an emphasis on his French identity and the connection he provides between Quebec and France. This even though some of the major histories of the Seven Years War by Quebecois, including Guy Frégault and François-Xavier Garneau, tended to criticize Montcalm's battlefield leadership and favor that of the Canadian-born governor Vaudreuil.

Here is the plaque on the house now standing on the site of the house where Montcalm died, the day after the battle in 1759. This is one of the few inscriptions in the city that is not bi-lingual. It emphasizes his French birth. It was put there only in 1999, on the 240th anniversary of his death. The house faces Rue du Parloir, the short street where the cars of parents of Ecole des Ursulines students line up twice a day. Montcalm's remains were interred in chapel of the Ursulines until 2001, when a translation ceremony was held to move them to the cemetery of the Hôpital général de Québec, in the lower town. A nun at the Ursulines chapel recalled the event and said they had to dig a big hole in the floor, and that only part of his skull remained. However small the remains, they were carried in carriage pulled by four black horses and in a procession to the new site. I need learn the reasons for this move, but at the same time a new monument was built there to the memory of soldiers who died during the Seven Year War and had been buried in an unmarked mass grave in that cemetery.

Montcalm got a new mausoleum as you see here, but the effect was nonetheless to democratize the hero by putting him alongside some of his troops.The plaque in the foreground reads in part: "Il repose desormais auprès de ses soldats tombés avec luis devant Québec pour la défense de la Nouvelle-France." Inside, too dark for photos yesterday, is another inscription explaining that at the ceremony his descendant laid a stone from the ancestral castle at Saint-Véran, France next to his relics. So we see how the fetishism of objects inheres not only in holy relics, but even in buildings, stone, monuments, etc. To translate remains is to transfer the magical power of heroism or ownership, from one place to another. These "restes" carry a magical aura, that apparently can be felt by the remains of the soldiers who must be comforted at the thought that their leader now lies close to them.