After 185 years, Quebec Patriot gets his wish with crosses from New Zealand shipwreck | 24CA News
A pair of picket crosses created from a shipwreck in New Zealand have been despatched to Quebec to honour the 185-year-old want of a francophone man who rebelled in opposition to British rule.
François-Xavier Prieur was considered one of dozens of Patriots who have been exiled to Australia aboard the HMS Buffalo as punishment for his or her half within the 1837-1838 rebellion in Lower Canada, now Quebec. He later wrote in his memoir of his want that items of the ship be despatched to his residence as a reminder of what he had suffered.
Last month, his want was granted, because of a Quebec-Australian movie crew and officers in New Zealand, the place the HMS Buffalo was wrecked in 1840 shortly after Prieur arrived in Australia, which used to function a British penal colony.
Kurt Bennett, who works for Heritage New Zealand and is a member of the HMS Buffalo Re-examination Project, helped set up a ceremony in April to mark the beginning of the crosses’ journey to Canada. He mentioned it was an emotional second, partly due to the attendance of one of many prisoners’ descendants.
“I think it was that sudden realization that we’re now granting someone’s wish 185 years on; also knowing that family connection, I think it was quite a moving day,” he mentioned in a current interview.
A pair of picket crosses created from a shipwreck in New Zealand are seen in St. Jean-Sur-Richelieu, Que., Friday, June 9, 2023.
Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press
On May 22 — National Patriots’ Day in Quebec — the 2 small crosses have been introduced to Prieur’s descendants at a church in Saint-Polycarpe, Que., west of Montreal, in an hour-long ceremony that included speeches, a historic re-enactment and symbolic gunfire.
The plan was put in movement after a 2022 screening of a documentary known as Land of a Thousand Sorrows Revisited, which tells the story of Prieur and the 57 different Patriots who have been exiled to Australia on board the ship.
The documentary by Canadian-Australian filmmaker Deke Richards captured the creativeness of Bill Edwards, the supervisor of the Northland workplace of Heritage New Zealand, who then learn a translation of Prieur’s memoir and was moved by his phrases.
“A wounded man preserves as a memento the bullet or piece of shrapnel that has been extracted from his lacerated flesh,” Prieur wrote. “Well, I too would like to possess a little cross made from wood from which is constructed this frigate, within whose sides my heart and my body were lacerated by unworthy treatments.”
In the journal, Prieur described the gruelling five-month journey on the ship, the place prisoners have been stored in cramped, unventilated quarters under deck and needed to deal with vermin, scurvy and violent seasickness.
Edwards determined to assist put the plan in motion, “to get some crosses made, which should have been made 180 years ago,” he mentioned.
Bennett mentioned three crosses have been created from items of wooden that have been washed ashore from the wreck of the HMS Buffalo, which sits in Mercury Bay, off Whitianga, New Zealand. One was stored in New Zealand, whereas two have been despatched to Quebec.
The May ceremony in Quebec was an emotional second for Gilles Boismenu and Ronald Prieur, who’re descendants of François-Xavier Prieur. Boismenu, 72, mentioned he was proud to study extra about his household historical past, and described the ceremony as “pretty incredible.”
“This is a thing of pride in my family,” he mentioned in a current cellphone interview.
“This is part of my history.”
Sam Pineault, the co-producer of the documentary, which is understood in French as La baie des exilés, says the story highlights the affect the Patriots had on Australia and New Zealand in the course of the years they spent there.
Because literacy ranges have been low in these areas on the time, the exiled mens’ journals are among the few written accounts that exist from the interval, he mentioned. Furthermore, the arrival of well-educated individuals from overseas “brought a little inspiration for the people, including in New Zealand, for them to develop their own democracies,” he mentioned.
Pineault mentioned the documentary took a number of years to make, including that he was ready for funding to get the permissions it must be extensively launched.
After the ceremony, the crosses got to Pineault, who says they are going to finally be provided to museums. Both he and Boismenu say they hope relics can be utilized to lift consciousness of a little-known chapter in Quebec’s historical past.
© 2023 The Canadian Press
