1 Alain Dubois and Philip Schneider, Code criminel annoté et lois connexes (Cowansville: Éditions Yvon Blais, 1998), 74. See also Marie-Aimée Cliche, “Certaines coutumes ont la vie dure,” La Presse (hereafter LP) (31 Jan. 2004), A18.
2 Claire Bernard, Le Châtiment corporel comme moyen de corriger les enfants (Quebec City: Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse, 1998); and Sharon D. Greene, “The Unconstitutionality of Section 43 of the Criminal Code: Children’s Right to Be Protected from Physical Assault,” Criminal Law Quarterly 41 (1998), 288–317, and (1999), 462–84.
3 Denise Lemieux, Les Petits Innocents: L’enfance en Nouvelle-France (Quebec City: Institut québécois de recherche sur la culture [IQRC], 1985), 137–38, 152–53.
4 Eirick Prairat, Éduquer et punir: Généalogie du discours psychologique (Nancy: Presses universitaires de Nancy, 1994), 25.
5 This paragraph summarizes the book by Alice Miller, C’est pour ton bien: Racines de la violence dans l’éducation de l’enfant, translated from German by Jeanne Étoré (Paris: Aubier, 1984). [English edition: For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence, translated from German by Hildegard and Hunter Hannum (New York: Farrar, Straus Giroux, 1983).]
6 Ian Gibson, The English Vice: Beating, Sex and Shame in Victorian England and After (London: Duckworth, 1978).
7 Richard J. Gelles and Murray A. Straus, Intimate Violence (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), 40–51; Murray A. Straus and Denise Donnelly, Beating the Devil Out of Them: Corporal Punishment in American Families (New York: Lexington Books, 1994).
8 Philip Greven, Spare the Child: The Religious Roots of Punishment and the Psychological Impact of Physical Abuse (New York: Vintage, 1991).
9 Boris Cyrulnik, Les Vilains Petits Canards (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2001).
10 Alice Miller, Libres de savoir: Ouvrir les yeux sur notre propre histoire (Paris: Flammarion, 2001).
11 Elizabeth Pleck, Domestic Tyranny: The Making of Social Policy against Family Violence from Colonial Times to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); Linda Gordon, Heroes of Their Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence, Boston, 1880–1960 (New York: Viking, 1988), 177.
12 Anne-Marie Sohn, Chrysalides: Femmes dans la vie privée (XIXe–XXe siècles) (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1996), 1: 417.
13 Carolyn Kott Washburne, “A Feminist Analysis of Child Abuse and Neglect,” in David Finkelhor et al. (eds.), The Dark Side of Families: Current Family Violence Research (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1983), 291. Gender is “the concept held by societies of the roles and attributes specific to men and women, of the relationships between them, and of their respective value.” Denyse Baillargeon, Un Québec en mal d’enfants: La médicalisation de la maternité, 1910–1970 (Montreal: Éditions du remue-ménage, 2004), 25.
14 Alexis Mailloux, Le Manuel des parents chrétiens (Quebec City: Action sociale, 1909 [1851]), 2nd ed.
15 Henry Kempe et al., “The Battered-Child Syndrome,” Journal of the American Medical Association 181/1 (July–Sept. 1962), 17–24.
16 Marie-Aimée Cliche, “Qui bene amat bene castigat: Le débat sur les punitions corporelles dans les revues pédagogiques du Québec, 1857–1954,” Revue d’histoire de l’éducation 11/2 (Fall 1999), 147–69, and “‘Est-ce vraiment pour son bien?’ Évolution de la norme de raisonnabilité des punitions corporelles dans la jurisprudence québécoise et canadienne, 1864–1998,” Revue juridique Thémis 34/2 (2000), 481–514.
17 Denise Lemieux and Lucie Mercier, Les Femmes au tournant du siècle, 1880–1940: Âges de la vie, maternité et quotidien (Quebec City: IQRC, 1989), 243.
18 We have borrowed the concept of stereotype in part from Richard Gelles, “The Social Construction of Child Abuse,” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 45/3 (Apr. 1975), 368.
1 Collectif Clio, L’Histoire des femmes au Québec depuis quatre siècles (Montreal: Le Jour, 1992), 181. It should however be pointed out that statistics from before 1920 are not accurate, as Katherine Arnup has shown in Education for Motherhood: Advice for Mothers in Twentieth-Century Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), 15, 166.
2 Baillargeon, Un Québec en mal d’enfants, 38.
3 Annual Report of the Conseil d’hygiène de la province de Québec, 1898, 36–37, quoted by Terry Copp, Classe ouvrière et pauvreté: Les conditions de vie des travailleurs montréalais, 1897–1929, translated by Suzette Thiboutôt-Belleau and Massüe Belleau (Montreal: Boréal, 1978), 24. See also Henriette Dessaules, “Gardons nos anges sur la terre,” in Lettres de Fadette 3 (Montreal) Le Devoir (1916), 152–55.
4 De la Broquerie Fortier, Au Service de l’enfance: L’Association québécoise de la Goutte de lait, 1915–1965 (Quebec City: Garneau, 1966), 9; Copp, Classe ouvrière et pauvreté, 184–90; Baillargeon, Un Québec en mal d’enfants, 138.
5 Paul-André Linteau, René Durocher, and Jean-Claude Robert, Histoire du Québec contemporain, vol. 1, De la Confédération à la crise 1867–1929 (new rev. ed.) (Montreal: Boréal, 1989), 26, 27, 49, 130, 255.
6 Neil Sutherland, Children in English-Canadian Society: Framing the Twentieth-Century Consensus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976), 9.
7 Thérèse Hamel, “Obligation scolaire et travail des enfants au Québec, 1900–1950,” Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française 38/1 (1984), 51.
8 Michel Verrette, L’Alphabétisation au Québec, 1660–1900: En Marche vers la modernité culturelle (Quebec City: Septentrion, 2002), 92, 107.
9 Henry Des Rivières Beaubien, Traité sur les lois civiles du Bas-Canada (Montreal: Duvernay, 1832), 56.
10 Civil Code of Lower Canada: First, Second and Third Reports (Quebec City: Desbarats, 1865), 202.
11 Charles C. de Lorimier and Charles A. Vilbon, La Bibliothèque du Code civil de la province de Québec (ci-devant Bas-Canada) (Montreal: Cadieux and Derome, 1885), Art. 245.
12 Jacques Crémazie, Les lois criminelles anglaises traduites et compilées de Blackstone, Chitty, Russell et autres criminalistes anglais, et telles que suivies en Canada (Quebec City: Fréchette, 1842), 89.
13 Henri Elzéar Taschereau, The Criminal Statute Law of the Dominion of Canada (Toronto: Carswell, 1888), 195.
14 Code Criminel (Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 1892), 47, Art. 55.
15 Raoul Dandurand and Charles Lanctôt, Traité théorique et pratique de droit criminel (Montreal: Périard, 1890), 279.
16 “Acte concernant les écoles d’industrie,” Statuts du Québec, 1869, c. 17, and “Loi amendant les Statuts refondus, 1909, concernant les jeunes délinquants,” Statuts du Québec, 1912, c. 39.
1 Louis Fréchette, Mémoires intimes, text established and annotated by George A. Klinck (Montreal: Fides, 1977), 13–14.
2 Louis Boncompain SJ, Grains de bon sens (Montreal: Imprimerie du Messager, 1918), 13; Mailloux, Le Manuel des parents chrétiens, 50.
3 C.A. Boyer, “De l’éducation du jeune âge: Conseils aux mères de famille,” Journal de l’Instruction publique (hereafter JIP) 17/7–8 (July–Aug. 1873), 104.
4 Mailloux, Le Manuel, 50.
5 Louis Boncompain, Autour du foyer canadien (Montreal: Imprimerie du Messager, 1914), 37–39.
6 Ernest Legouvé, “Amour et autorité des parents envers leurs enfants,” JIP 4/11 (Nov. 1884), 330; “Critique par Dom Bosco de l’éducation défectueuse,” JIP 9/3 (July 1890), 70–71; “Ce qu’on entend par gâter les enfants,” JIP 11/7 (Nov. 1892), 171–72.
7 Boncompain, Grains de bon sens, 11.
8 Père Alexis, Capuchin Friar, “De l’éducation,” La Famille chrétienne (hereafter FC) 2/26 (1898), 6.
9 P.H., “Un père brutal,” La Tempérance 4/2 (June 1909), 34–35.
10 “L’enfant ne peut pas faire autrement: Pilules de Doan pour les rognons,” LP (7 Jan. 7 1899), 10.
11 Ibid. Also “Une correction ne guérit pas,” Le Soleil (29 May 1920), 10; Pascale Quincy-Lefebvre, “Punir, soigner ou gracier: La société française et l’enfant énurétique, XIXe–XXe siècles,” in Jean-Pierre Bardet et al. (eds.), Lorsque l’enfant grandit: Entre dépendance et autonomie (Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 2003), 229–44.
12 Denis Martin and Bernard Huin, Images d’Épinal (Quebec City: Musée du Québec, and Paris: Éditions de la Réunion des musées nationaux, 1995), 141.
13 “Parental Discipline,” Journal of Education 1/4 (May 1857), 72; T. Lepetit, “Les contes à faire peur,” JIP 6/3 (Mar. 1862), 47; Boyer, “De l’éducation du jeune âge,” 105; Dr Hubert La Rue, De la manière d’élever les jeunes enfants au Canada, ou Entretiens de Madame Genest à ses filles (Quebec City: Darveau, 1876), 120; E. Raymond, “Lettres d’une marraine à sa filleule,” Le Coin du feu (hereafter CF) (Nov. 1894), 345; Gertrude, “Ne faites jamais peur aux enfants,” JIP 11/10 (Feb. 1893), 275–76.
14 Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, translated by Charlotte Maurat (Librairie générale française, 1964 [1847]), 24–32, 323; Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (Librairie générale française, 1972 [1862]), 394–99.
15 Gertrude, “Ne faites jamais,” 276.
16 Georgine C. Lemaire, “L’Éducation de nos filles,” La Bonne Parole (July 1913), 3. These stories are not entirely unbelievable. In 1910 a newspaper reported that a teacher had terrorized and beaten a pupil so badly that it resulted in a nervous illness. “Acte de brutalité qu’on attribue à une institutrice,” La Patrie (hereafter LPa) (1 Dec. 1910), 16.
17 N. Tremblay, “Méthodologie: La rédaction à l’école primaire,” L’Enseignement primaire 41/3 (Nov. 1919), 171–75.
18 “Rules for Home Education,” Journal of Education for Lower Canada 1/8 (Oct. 1857), 145–46; “Dix règles d’éducation,” La Tempérance 12/5 (Oct. 1917), 148; “Un cours d’éducation en quatre mots,” JIP 18/2–3 (Feb.–Mar. 1874), 20–21.
19 “Comment on apprend aux enfants à obéir,” JIP 1/5 (May 1857), 94–95. The author of the article speaks of a “doctor,” but Abbott was actually a Minister in the Congregational Church.
20 In the English original the book in question was the Bible, while in the French translation it became simply a “book.”
21 Fernand Nicolaÿ, Les Enfants mal élevés: Étude psychologique, anecdotique et pratique (Paris: Perrin, 1896 [1891]), vi–vii, 48, 72, 138–41, 178, 181. The text of a lecture by Nicolaÿ is also reprinted in JIP 11/7 (Nov. 1892), 185–93, and in CF (1893), 290–92, 345–46.
22 Joséphine Marchand-Dandurand, “Les enfants gâtés,” CF (1893), 295; Père Alexis (Capuchin), “De l’éducation,” FC 2/26 (18 Aug. 1898), 9; Danielle Aubry, “Causerie,” La Femme 2/19 (Oct. 1909), 10.
23 La Rue, De la manière, 80, 86, and 87; Dr Séverin Lachapelle, La Santé pour tous ou Notions élémentaires de physiologie et d’hygiène à l’usage des familles (Montreal: Compagnie d’imprimerie canadienne, 1880), 130, 132, 181. Dr Lachapelle was one of the initiators of the Goutte de lait charity in Montreal. See Copp, Classe ouvrière et pauvreté, 105, 108, 184–90. In the English-speaking Canadian provinces mothers were given exactly the same advice: L.S.M. Hamilton, “Care of Mother and Babe,” Grain Growers’ Guide (12 May 1920), 47, quoted by Veronica Strong-Boag, “Intruders in the Nursery: Childcare Professionals Reshape the Years One to Five, 1920–1940,” in Joy Parr (ed.), Childhood and Family in Canadian History (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1982), 165.
24 René Bethléem, Catéchisme de l’éducation (Paris: La bonne presse, 1919), 342. Denyse Baillargeon (Un Québec en mal d’enfants, 113) considers that “this kind of advice aimed to instill a strict discipline” so that the child would become “adapted to industrial society.” Strong-Boag expresses the same idea (“Intruders in the Nursery,” 164). Among the authors we have read, what stands out most is the concern for a moral education.
25 Boncompain, Grains de bon sens, 26, 31–2; Lemaire, “L’Éducation de nos filles,” 3; Mailloux, Le Manuel, 259–60.
26 Jules Vallès, Jacques Vingtras: L’enfant (Paris: Bookking International, 1996 [1879]), 13.
27 “Une mère qui comprend bien l’éducation,” FC 4/4 (Sept. 1900), 497.
28 Ingmar Bergman, Fanny and Alexandra, 1982, comments by Philip Greven, Spare the Child, 151–4, and Alice Miller, La Connaissance interdite: Affronter les blessures de l’enfance dans la thérapie, translated from German by Jeanne Étoré (Paris: Aubier, 1988), 151–52.
29 Boncompain, Autour du foyer canadien, 34–6.
30 “Une mère qui comprend bien l’éducation,” FC 4/4 (Sept. 1900), 497–98.
31 Joséphine Marchand-Dandurand, “Les enfants gâtés,” CF (1893), 295; Jean-Baptiste Boone SJ, “La Femme chrétienne et ses devoirs,” FC 2/40 (Jan. 1899), 236–37.
32 Bethléem, Catéchisme de l’éducation, 322, 360; Erik Erikson, Luther avant Luther: Psychanalyse et histoire, translated by Nina Godneff (Paris: Flammarion, 1968), 70–89.
33 Alice Miller, C’est pour ton bien, 78.
34 The Bible quotations appear in the following: Father Alexis, Capuchin, “De l’Éducation,” FC 2/26 (Aug. 1898), 5; Jean–Baptiste Boone, “La Femme chrétienne et ses devoirs,” FC 2/36 (Oct. 1898), 169–70; Boncompain, Grains de bon sens, 25, 35; Bethléem, Catéchisme de l’éducation, 361; Nicolaÿ, Les Enfants mal élevés, 182–83.
35 Quoted by J.-G. Petit, “Philanthropes et réformateurs: La première génération,” in Marie-Sylvie Dupont-Bouchat and Éric Pierre (eds.), Enfance et justice au XIXe siècle: Essais d’histoire comparée de la protection de l’enfance, 1820–1914 — France, Belgique, Pays-Bas, Canada (Paris: PUF, 2001), 56.
36 “La peine du fouet,” LP (22 Mar. 1900), 12.
37 “Protection des femmes et des enfants,” LP (11 Jan. 1899), 8. The individual expressing himself this way is Rev. M. McMannon. (The poor quality of the microfilm makes it impossible to decipher the spelling of the name completely.)
38 The very first book on parenting in Canada was written by an unknown author, who was most likely French. It was La Solide Dévotion à la très sainte famille de Jésus, Marie et Joseph avec un catéchisme qui enseigne à pratiquer leurs vertus (Paris: Florentin Lambert, 1675), 192 pp.
39 Mailloux, Le Manuel, 60.
40 Ibid., 51–52.
41 Ibid., 55, 77; and Quintilian, Institution oratoire, text established and translated by Jean Cousin (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1975), vol. 1, Book 1, iii.
42 Mailloux, Le Manuel, 59, 65, 89.
43 “‘Lettre pastorale sur l’éducation’ de nos seigneurs les archevêques et évêques des provinces ecclésiastiques de Québec, de Montréal et d’Ottawa,” JIP 13/2 (June 1894), 38.
44 Gertrude, “Ne faites jamais,” 276.
45 La Rue, De la manière, 123–24.
46 “Breaking the Child’s Will,” Journal of Education for the Province of Quebec 21/5–6 (May–June 1877), 93.
47 “The Moral discipline of Children,” from the British Quarterly Review, reprinted in Journal of Education for Lower Canada 2/9 (Sept. 1858), 132; Mlle Sainte-Marie, headmistress of the École Henri de Tourville, “L’Éducation des tout petits,” La Bonne Parole 5/9 (Nov. 1917), 5.
48 Straus and Donnelly, Beating the Devil Out of Them, 100; and Murray A. Straus, Richard Gelles, and Suzanne K. Steinmetz, Behind Closed Doors: Violence in the American Family (New York: Anchor Books, 1980), 101–4.
49 Carveth Read in Popular Science Monthly, reprinted in the Educational Record 6/12 (Dec. 1886), 299.
50 Bersot, “L’éducation dans la famille,” L’Enseignement primaire 4/11 (June 1884), 123; and Gertrude, “Ne faites jamais,” 276.
51 Mgr Ross, “La Discipline,” L’Enseignement primaire 37/4 (Dec. 1915), 196.
52 Ibid., 37/1 (Sept. 1915), 6.
53 Ibid., 37/10 (June 1916), 581–84.
54 Joséphine Dandurand, Nos travers (Montreal: Beauchemin, 1901), 187, and “À propos d’études,” CF (June 1896), 166; Elizabeth Oakes-Smith, “Whipping Children,” Journal of Education 19/5 (May 1875), 68.
55 “Doit-on infliger des punitions corporelles aux élèves insoumis?” LP (31 May 1913), 11.
56 Roger Cousinet, L’Éducation nouvelle (Geneva: Delachaux and Niestlé, 1950), 62–63.
57 Alfred Binet, Les Idées modernes sur les enfants (Paris: Flammarion, 1911), 327.
58 Sigmund Freud, “La Sexualité infantile,” in Trois essais sur la théorie de la sexualité (Paris: Gallimard, 1962 [1905]), 90.
59 Sigmund Freud, “L’intérêt de la psychoanalyse,” Scientia (1913), 250.
60 Sigmund Freud, “Les transformations de la puberté,” in Trois essais, 130–31.
61 Gelles and Straus, Intimate Violence, 121–30.
62 Sutherland, Children in English-Canadian Society, 18, 101.
63 Pleck, Domestic Tyranny, 76.
64 Boncompain, Autour du foyer canadien, 5; Aurélien Boivin, “Autour du foyer canadien,” in Maurice Lemire (ed.), Dictionnaire des œuvres littéraires du Québec (hereafter DOLQ) (Montreal: Fides, 1980) 2: 105–6.
65 Boncompain, preface to Grains de bon sens. (A copy was found in the library of a teacher who had qualified around 1930.)
1 Fréchette, Mémoires intimes, 141– 2.
2 An analysis of the debate about corporal punishment in Quebec pedagogical journals, both Anglophone and Francophone, shows no noticeable difference between these two linguistic groups as far as their concept of discipline is concerned. See “Qui bene amat bene castigat,” 169.
3 See our three articles “Les procès en séparation de corps dans la région de Montréal, 1795–1879,” Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française 49/1 (1995), 3–33; “Les séparations de corps dans le district judiciaire de Montréal de 1900 à 1930,” Revue canadienne Droit et Société 12/1 (1997), 71–100; “Puissance paternelle et intérêt de l’enfant: La garde des enfants lors des séparations de corps dans le district judiciaire de Montréal, 1795–1930,” Lien social et politiques — RIAC 37 (Spring 1997), 53–63.
4 National Archives of Quebec in Montreal (NAQM), Court of King’s Bench (CKB), 1798/61, Susannah K. v. John K.
5 NAQM, Superior Court (SC), 1880/289, Marie-Zoé Renaud v. François-Xavier-Anselme Trudel.
6 NAQM, SC, 1822/434, Marie B. v. John M.
7 NAQM, SC, 1879/1083, Marianne G. v. George L.; 1892/83, Napoléon L. v. Amanda G.
8 NAQM, SC, 1905/1510, Eléda C. v. Dominique di L.; 1920/4127, Élise C. v. Émile B.
9 Pleck, Domestic Tyranny, 49–66, and esp. the illustration between pages 122 and 123; Gordon, Heroes of Their Own Lives, 141–46; Karen Taylor, “Blessing the House: Moral Motherhood and the Suppression of Physical Punishment,” Journal of Psychohistory 15/1 (1987), 436, 444–46. See also our two articles dealing with the separation cases, cited above (n3), and Judith Fingard, “The Prevention of Cruelty, Marriage Breakdown and the Rights of Wives in Nova Scotia, 1880–1900,” in Janet Guildford and Suzanne Morton (eds.), Separate Spheres: Women’s Worlds in the 19th-Century Maritimes (Fredericton: Acadiensis Press, 1994), 224.
10 Catherine Rollet, Les Enfants au XIXe siècle (Paris: Hachette, 2001), 230. On England, see Margaret May, “Violence in the Family: An Historical Perspective,” in J.P. Martin (ed.), Violence and the Family (New York: Wiley, 1978), 160–61.
11 NAQM, Court of Queen’s Bench (CQB), 1856/569, Catherine B. v. Ambroise R.
12 Rollet, Les Enfants, 230; May, “Violence in the Family,” 153, 160; Comtesse de Ségur, Les Petites Filles modèles (Paris: Casterman, 1979 [1858]). For an abusive stepfather, see Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (Paris: Bookking International, 1996 [1849]).
13 NAQM, CKB, 1822, 434, Marie B. v. John M.
14 Fréchette, Mémoires intimes, 132, 133, 140.
15 Joseph-Edmond McComber, Mémoires d’un bourgeois de Montréal (1874–1949), preface by Jean-Pierre Wallot (Montreal: Hurtubise HMH, 1980), 19–20.
16 NAQM, SC, 1875/758, Hannah R. v. James C.
17 National Archives of Quebec in Quebec City (NAQQC), Court of Sessions, 1823/88643, evidence of Henry T. and Joseph B.
18 Vallès, Jacques Vingtras, 227.
19 NAQM, CQB, 1852/2695, Josephte C. v. Théodore B.
20 NAQM, SC, 1894/2429, James C. v. Marietta W.
21 NAQM, CQB, 1847/1271, Geneviève N. v. René P.
22 Until 1940 more than 90% of the files in our sample included a report by a probation officer. After 1940 these became less frequent and were replaced by reports produced by various social services.
23 This is the opinion of the following American researchers: Straus, Gelles, and Steinmetz, Behind Closed Doors, 144–45; Straus and Donnelly, Beating the Devil Out of Them, 56; R.L. Hampton and E. Newberger, “Child Abuse Incidence and Reporting by Hospitals: Significance of Severity, Class and Race,” American Journal of Public Health 75/1 (1985), 56–68, quoted by Jeff Latimer, Les conséquences de la violence faite aux enfants: Guide de référence à l’intention des professionnels de la santé (Ottawa: Health Canada, 1998), 7. Others pointed out that children in underprivileged environments were more exposed to beatings than those in more privileged environments. See Camil Bouchard et al., “Les mauvais traitement envers les enfants,” in Fernand Dumont, Simon Langlois, and Yves Martin (eds.), Traité des problèmes sociaux (Montreal: IQRC, 1994), 365, and Latimer, Les conséquences de la violence, 11.
24 Claire Martin, Dans un gant de fer: La joue droite (Ottawa: Cercle du livre de France, 1966), 30, 163, 164.
25 Carolyn Strange, Toronto’s Girl Problem: The Perils and Pleasures of the City, 1880–1930 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995); Tamara Myers, “The Voluntary Delinquent: Parents, Daughters, and the Montreal Juvenile Delinquents’ Court in 1918,” Canadian Historical Review 80/2 (1999), 242–68, and “Qui t’a débauchée? Adolescent Sexuality and the Juvenile Delinquents’ Court in Early Twentieth-Century Montreal,” in Lori Chambers and Edgar-André Montigny (eds.) Family Matters: Papers in Post-Confederation Canadian Family History (Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press, 1998), 377–94.
26 In France also girls were “disciplined” mainly for sexual misconduct, which was “considered by fathers to be much more serious than that of boys.” Bernard Schnapper, “La correction paternelle et le mouvement des idées au XIXe siècle,” Revue historique (Apr.–June 1980), quoted by Sohn, Chrysalides, 422.
27 Lionel Groulx, “La famille canadienne-française, ses traditions, son rôle,” Semaines sociales du Canada, 4th session, 1923. (Montreal: Bibliothèque de l’Action française, 1924), 344.
28 Sohn, Chrysalides, 417.
29 Émile Zola, Germinal (Paris: Fasquelle, 1968 [1885]); Yvonne Knibiehler, “L’évolution historique de la conscience parentale,” La Lettre du GRAPE: Les Parents difficiles (hereafter LduGRAPE) 41 (Sept. 2000), 80; John Bullen, “Hidden Workers: Child Labour and the Family Economy in Late Nineteenth-Century Urban Ontario,” in Bettina Bradbury (ed.), Canadian Family History: Selected Readings (Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman, 1992), 199–219; Bettina Bradbury, Familles ouvrières à Montréal: Âge, genre et survie quotidienne pendant la phase d’industrialisation, translated from the English by Christiane Teasdale (Montreal: Boréal, 1995), 151.
30 See Copp, Classe ouvrière et pauvreté, 33–34.
31 JDC, 1916/3047 and 3048. See also “La petite Essie: Vendeuse de journaux envoyée au Bon-Pasteur,” LP (4 Nov. 1890), 4.
32 JDC, 1912/50 and 1915/2590.
33 This was the path described by Georges Heuyer, considered the father of child neuropsychiatry, in a medical thesis defended in 1914, Enfants anormaux et délinquants juvéniles, quoted by Dr Gilbert Robin, L’Enfant sans défauts (Paris: Flammarion, 1930), 145. See also Annick Ohayon, L’Impossible Rencontre: Psychologie et psychanalyse en France, 1919–1969 (Paris: La Découverte, 1999), 174–79.
34 JDC, 1916/3047 and 1925/1734.
35 JDC, 1912/592 and 1916/3385. Bradbury also discovered in the Montreal judicial archives the case of a widow who accused her 11-year-old son of stealing fifty cents from her. Bradbury, Familles ouvrières à Montréal, 274.
36 JDC, 1912/608 and 640, 1914/1558. See also “La peine du fouet: L’opinion de M. Le magistrat Lafontaine; Pour punir les enfants coupables,” LP (22 Mar. 1900), 12; “Parents sévères,” LP (6 Dec. 1900), 12.
37 JDC, 1913/777. To ensure the confidentiality of the files we have given false first and family names to all the young delinquents whose cases we cite.
38 JDC, 1913/1272.
39 JDC, 1912/640.
40 JDC, 1916/3324.
41 JDC, 1916/2398, followed by 1919/3128.
42 JDC, 1917/3772.
43 JDC, 1913/1436.
44 JDC, 1912/592.
45 “The Moral Discipline of Children,” Journal of Education for Lower Canada 2/9 (Sept. 1858), 132 (quoted in Chapter 1); May, “Violence in the Family,” 154; Straus and Donnelly, Beating the Devil Out of Them, 100.
46 Boncompain, Grains de bon sens, 11, 14, 25.
47 Franz Alexander and Sheldon Selesnick, Histoire de la psychiatrie: Pensée et pratique psychiatriques de la préhistoire à nos jours (Paris: Armand Colin, 1972), 179–80; Jacques Postel and Claude Quétel (eds.), Nouvelle Histoire de la psychiatrie (Privat, 1983), 351–56, 672–73, 685–86. According to Bénédict-Augustin Morel (Traité des dégénérescences, 1857) and Valentin Magnan (Magnan and M. Legrain, Les Dégénérés, état mental et syndromes épisodiques, 1895), degeneracy could be hereditary or acquired, and was related to alcoholism and epilepsy.
48 JDC, 1912/608.
49 Isabelle Vissière has discovered the file of a case brought against parents who in 1786 were accused of causing the death of their daughter by brutality and ill-treatment. She uses the expression “child martyr,” though it did not appear in the contemporary documents. “Une enfant martyre,” in Procès de femmes au temps des philosophes ou Violence masculine au XVIIIe siècle, documents assembled and presented by Isabelle Vissière (Paris: Éditions des femmes, 1985), 23–45.
50 Ambroise Tardieu, “Étude médico-légale sur les sévices et mauvais traitements exercés sur les enfants,” Annales d’hygiène publique et de médecine légale, 2nd series, 13 (1860), 362, quoted by Jean-Claude Caron, À l’école de la violence: Châtiments et sévices dans l’institution scolaire au XIXe siècle (Paris: Aubier, 1999), 118–19.
51 Émile Zola, L’Assommoir (Paris: Fasquelle, 1968 [1877]), 372–8; Henri Mitterand, Zola: La vérité en Marche (Paris: Gallimard, 1995), 47; Rollet, Les Enfants, 234.
52 Rollet, Les Enfants, 235; John Demos, The Family and the Life Course in American History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 71; Pleck, Domestic Tyranny, 70–72; Ian Hacking, L’Âme réécrite: Étude sur la personnalité multiple et les sciences de la mémoire (Le Plessis-Robinson: Institut synthélabo pour le progrès de la connaissance, 1998), 93.
53 “Une Petite Martyre,” LPa (19 Jan. 1885), 2. Anne-Marie Sohn (Chrysalides, 413 and 415) found the use of the terms “martyre” and “marâtre” [“bad mother”] in cases dating from 1905 and 1916.
54 The expression “Child Martyrs to Industry” appears in Ray Helfer and Henry Kempe (eds.), The Battered Child (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 11.
55 Zola, L’Assommoir, 374, 454.
56 “L’Enfant martyr,” LP (19 July 1906), 1.
57 “La peine du fouet,” LP (22 Mar. 1900), 12.
58 Vallès, Jacques Vingtras, 229.
59 “Petit martyr,” L’Intransigeant illustré (15 May 1894), reprinted in Alain Monestier, Tragédies à la une: La Belle Époque des assassins (Paris: Albin Michel, 1995), 10.
60 “Le Nid vide,” LP (11 June 1900), 2.
61 The newspapers used are La Presse, La Patrie, and the Montreal Star.
62 In the seven other cases the location is not identified.
63 Margaret B. and Arnold W. were designated at the same time as adopted and as being employed in domestic service. “Les petits immigrants,” LPa (20 June 1890). On this subject, see Neil Sutherland, Children in English-Canadian Society, 3–12, and Theresa Richardson, “Ambiguities in the Lives of Children: Postmodern Views on the History and Historiography of Childhood in English Canada,” Paedagogica Historica 36/1 (2000), 375–76.
64 “Martyre d’un jeune engagé,” LP (7 Feb. 1906), 12.
65 Quoted by Joy Parr, Labouring Children: British Immigrant Apprentices to Canada, 1860–1924 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1980), 106.
66 Occupations given: 4 farmers, 2 labourers, a carpenter, a coachman, a door-to-door salesman, a shopkeeper, a day labourer, a mechanic, and an employee of the Grand Trunk Railway.
67 “Une Brute,” LPa (26 Jan. 1895), 8.
68 “À perpétuité,” LP (15 Apr. 1896), 1, and (5 Mar. 1896), 1.
69 The immigrants accused included an Italian, a “mulatto,” three Poles, a Russian Jew, and an Israelite [sic].
70 Linteau et al., Histoire du Québec contemporain 1: 49. We remind the reader that the number of cases reported in the newspapers is not sufficient to allow very reliable statistics to be derived from them. On the other hand, the attitude of the journalists is very obvious.
71 Maxim Gorki, Enfance, translated from the Russian by G. Davydoff and Pauliat (Paris: Éditeurs français réunis, 1959), “Marabout,” 32–34, 40. Comtesse de Ségur, L’Auberge de l’Ange gardien (Montreal: Apostolat de la presse, n.d. [1863]), 171, and Le Général Dourakine (Paris: Casterman, 1979 [1863]).
72 “C’est dans une infecte poubelle qu’il cherchait à manger,” LPa (20 July 1920), 1; “Aux Assises criminelles,” LP (8 Oct. 1906), 2; “Les mœurs russes,” LPa (26 Aug. 1890), 4. In Boston and Los Angeles the social service agencies also highlighted the cruelty of poor immigrants: Gordon, Heroes of Their Own Lives, 20, 28; Pleck, Domestic Tyranny, 131.
73 “Marâtre,” LP (29 Dec. 1890), 9.
74 “Une brute,” LPa (26 Jan. 1895), 8.
75 “Une mère dénaturée,” LPa (18 Sept. 1880), 3.
76 Gelles and Straus, Intimate Violence, 41–48.
77 “Maîtres sans cœur,” LPa (19 June 1890), 3; “Les petits immigrants,” LPa (20 June 1890), 4; “Deux barbares,” LP (27 June 1890), 4; “Les époux D.,” LPa (30 June 1890), 4.
78 “Cruauté inouïe: Une grand-mère qui se faisait bourreau,” LP (13 Feb. 1896), 8; “L’affaire B.,” LP (5 Mar. 1896), 1; “Les enfants martyrs,” LP (17 Apr. 1896), 1; “À perpétuité,” LP (15 Apr. 1896), 1.
79 “La mort d’un bébé émeut la justice,” LP (18 July 1906), 12.
80 “L’enfant martyr,” LP (19 July 1906), 1.
81 “L’enquête est commencée,” LP (28 July 1906), 28.
82 “Aux assises criminelles,” LP (11 Sept. 1906), 2.
83 Ibid., (17 Sept. 1906), 9; (18 Sept. 1906), 9; (19 Sept. 1906), 2, 9; (20 Sept. 1906), 14; (21 Sept. 1906), 1; (8 Oct. 1906), 2.
84 Gelles, “The Social Construction of Child Abuse.”
85 “La mort d’un bébé émeut la justice,” LP (18 July 1906), 12; “La femme B.,” LP (16 Apr. 1896), 1; “On trouve un pauvre garçonnet vivant dans un misérable hangar,” LPa (28 Dec. 1910), 14; “Il employait ses loisirs à battre les siens,” LP (30 July 1913), 2.
86 Brisson v. Lafontaine, Lower Canada Jurist (1864), 173–75.
87 “Les époux D.,” LPa (30 June 1890), 4.
88 “Martyre d’un jeune émigré,” LP (7 Feb. 1906), 12, and “Assises de Hull,” LP (5 Nov. 1906), 2.
89 “Les époux D.,” LPa (30 June 1890), 4, and “Cruauté envers les enfants,” LPa (1 July 1890), 4.
90 “Le meurtrier de son enfant,” LP (7 Feb. 1906), 12.
91 “Le petit Raymond est mort de débilité,” LP (10 Feb. 1906), 28.
92 “En fuite,” LPa (2 Nov. 1880), 3.
93 “Deux barbares,” LP (27 June 1890), 4.
94 Marie Asselin Proulx, Confidences d’une Abitibienne (Val d’Or: Meera, 1986), 46; Lina Madore, Petit coin perdu (Riviere-du-Loup: Castelriand, 1979), 32.
95 “Le petit S.-J. trouve un refuge à la réforme,” LPa (29 Dec. 1910), 16.
96 “Cruauté inouïe: Navrante histoire des victimes de la femme B.,” LP (13 Feb. 1896), 8.
97 “Père sévère: Un châtiment exagéré,” LP (4 Nov. 1890), 4.
98 “La mort d’un bébé émeut la justice,” LP (18 July 1906), 1, and “L’enfant martyr,” LP (19 July 1906), 1.
99 “Plus cruelle qu’un tigre,” LP (15 Mar. 191), 5.
100 “Enfant ébouillanté: Une atroce vengeance,” LP (15 Aug. 1890), 4.
101 “Une brute,” LPa (26 Jan. 1895), 8.
102 “Une petite martyre,” LPa (19 Jan. 1885), 2.
103 “Père sévère,” LP (4 Nov. 1890), 4.
104 See the list of these myths in Gelles and Straus, Intimate Violence, 41–48.
105 Rollet, Les Enfants, 235.
106 Hacking, L’Âme réécrite, 95.
1 Paul-André Linteau et al., Histoire du Québec contemporain, vol. 2, Le Québec depuis 1930 (Montreal: Boréal, 1989), 55, 59, 93, 212.
2 Copp, Classe ouvrière et pauvreté, 109, 182.
3 Baillargeon, Un Québec en mal d’enfants, 38.
4 Hamel, “Obligation scolaire et travail,” 51.
5 Linteau et al., Histoire 2: 101, 213, 215.
6 Linteau et al., Histoire 1: 575.
7 Marie-Paule Malouin, Le Mouvement familial au Québec: Les débuts, 1937–1965 (Montreal: Boréal, 1998), 9, 30–31.
1 David Noy, “Wicked Stepmothers in Roman Society and Imagination,” Journal of Family History 16/4 (1991), 345–61.
2 Natasha Burchardt, “Stepchildren’s Memories: Myth, Understanding, and Forgiveness,” in Raphael Samuel and Paul Thompson (eds.), The Myths We Live By (New York: Routledge, 1990), 239–51; Glauco Carloni and Daniela Nobili, La Mauvaise Mère: Phénoménologie et anthropologie de l’infanticide, translated from Italian by Robert Maggiori (Paris: Payot, 1977), 124–37.
3 Jean-Louis Flandrin, Famille, parenté, maison, sexualité dans l’ancienne société (Paris: Seuil, 1984), 45–48; Jacques Gélis, Mireille Laget, and Marie-France Morel, Entrer dans la vie: Naissances et enfances dans la France traditionnelle (Paris: Gallimard-Julliard, 1978), 146–47.
4 Alain Rey (ed.), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française (Paris: Le Robert, 1992), 1188.
5 Comtesse de Ségur, Les Petites Filles modèles; M. de Carnac, La Jolie Dame en rose (Paris: Gautier-Languereau, 1928) and published in La Semaine de Suzette, 1928; Henriette Robitaillie, La Maison des sourires (Paris: Gautier-Languereau), 1957.
6 In Les Contes du Saint-Laurent (Montreal: Librairie générale canadienne, 1947), 95–110, Eugène Achard quotes a letter from the Intendant Duchesneau, dated 4 July 1677, which we were unfortunately unable to find in series C11A in Library and Archives Canada.
7 Peter Gossage has already dealt with this question in his excellent article “La marâtre: Marie-Anne Houde and the Myth of the Wicked Stepmother in Quebec,” Canadian Historical Review 76/4 (Dec. 1995), 584. We are grateful to him for making the photocopies of the trial documents available to us.
8 Two authors have written that the two-year-old was found smothered beneath a mattress: André Mathieu, Aurore, la vraie histoire de l’enfant martyre (Lac-Mégantic: L’Éditeur, 2005 [1990]), 315, and “L’Affaire de la petite Aurore,” Les Grands Procès du Québec, vol. 3 (Outremont: Les Éditions de la rue Querbes, 1994), 8. However, the coroner’s report makes no mention of this, reaching a verdict of natural death. (Information communicated by Dr Jean Labbé, Professor of Pediatrics at Laval University.)
9 This family therefore included two young boys with the name Georges Gagnon. One was the biological son of Marie-Anne Houde and Napoléon Gagnon, the other the son of Marie-Anne Caron and Télesphore Gagnon. Their cousin, Marguerite Lebœuf, spoke of “Georges, my aunt’s little boy, and Georges-Étienne, my uncle’s little boy.” LP (15 Apr. 1920), 31.
10 NAQQC, CKB, The Crown v. Marie-Anne Houde, evidence given by Marie-Jeanne Gagnon, 15 Apr. 1920, nos. 49 and 50.
11 NAQQC, CKB, The Crown v. Télesphore Gagnon, appearance of Marguerite Lebœuf, 26 Apr. 1920.
12 This type of whip comprised a handle and a long lash of braided sinews.
13 NAQQC, CKB, The Crown v. Télesphore Gagnon, evidence of Gérard Gagnon, 26 Apr. 1920, 1.
14 Ibid., appearance of Exilda Auger-Lemay, 24 Apr. 1920.
15 NAQQC, CKB, evidence of Oréus Mailhot, Justice of the Peace, 17 Feb. 1920.
16 NAQQC, CKB, The Crown v. Marie-Anne Houde, evidence of Marie-Jeanne Gagnon, 15 Apr. 1920, 7.
17 Ibid., 17–18, and The Crown v. Télesphore Gagnon, evidence of Gérard Gagnon, 26 Apr. 1920, 14.
18 NAQQC, CKB, The Crown v. Marie-Anne Houde, evidence of Marie-Jeanne Gagnon, 15 Apr. 1920, 32.
19 Ibid., evidence of Gérard Gagnon, 16 Apr. 1920, 12. In the rural society of the day, lessi, a mixture of ash and water, was used for cleaning and in medical recipes. It was drunk to “clean you out inside.” (Francine Saillant, “Savoirs et pratiques des femmes dans l’univers ethnomédical québécois,” Canadian Folklore 14/1 (1992), 66.) The industrial product (lye) was much more caustic. The archives of the Coroner for Montreal related cases of children who died from stomach burns after drinking this product. NAQM, Coroner’s archives, 21 Feb. 1898 and 11 Jan. 1899. See also Le Soleil (19 July 1920), 1, and (4 Oct. 1920), 13.
20 Evidence of Gérard Gagnon, reported in LP (27 Apr. 1920), 23.
21 NAQQC, CKB, The Crown v. Marie-Anne Houde, evidence of Marie-Jeanne Gagnon, 5: 15 Apr. 1920, 14.
22 NAQQC, CKB, Coroner’s inquest, 13 Feb. 1920, evidence of Télesphore Gagnon.
23 NAQQC, CKB, preliminary inquiry, evidence of Gérard Gagnon, 24 Feb. 1920, 36. The Crown v. Marie-Anne Houde, evidence of Marie-Jeanne Gagnon, 15 Apr. 1920, 20.
24 Since Marie-Anne Houde would give birth on 8 July 1920 her pregnancy must have begun around 8 Oct. 1919.
25 Quoted by Gossage, “La marâtre,” 570.
26 Archives des sœurs du Bon-Pasteur de Québec, Résidence Mgr Lemay, Annales de la Crèche Saint-Vincent-de-Paul 2 (1916–23), 274, 277.
27 “Visite à la maison des Gagnon où se consomma le long et révoltant martyre de la petite Aurore,” LP (19 Apr. 1920), 13. The child in question was Pauline Gagnon, born in April 1919.
28 Le Soleil (14 Aug. 1920), 24, and (19 Aug. 1920), 12.
29 We found a column in L’Événement, a column and five such letters in Le Soleil, and ten in The Gazette. Three other letters commented on the case without the writers adopting a clear position for or against execution.
30 “A Plea for Mercy,” Gazette (17 Sept. 1920), 12.
31 Ginevra (Georgina Lefaivre), “Meurtrière ou victime,” Le Soleil (21 Aug. 1920), 11.
32 “The Gagnon Case,” Gazette (20 Aug. 1920), 12, and (17 Sept. 1920), 12.
33 Michaulde, “Bravo Ginevra!” Le Soleil (13 Sept. 1920), 9.
34 Robert Bickerdike, “Capital Punishment,” Gazette (1 Sept. 1920), 10.
35 L’Événement (30 Sept. 1920) and Gazette (30 Sept. 1920), 1.
36 NAQQC, CKB, The Crown v. Télesphore Gagnon, evidence of Rose-Anna Gagnon-Hamel.
37 NAQQC, CKB, The Crown v. Marie-Anne Houde, evidence of Mme Lemay, 14 Apr. 1920.
38 Ibid., evidence of Marie-Jeanne Gagnon, 15 Apr. 1920, 4.
39 NAQQC, CKB, Coroner’s inquest, evidence of Exilda Lemay, 13 Feb. 1920.
40 Alice Miller, C’est pour ton bien, 260.
41 NAQQC, CKB, The Crown v. Marie-Anne Houde, evidence of Mme Lemay, 14 Apr. 1920.
42 NAQQC, CKB, preliminary inquiry, evidence of Marguerite Lebœuf, 11 Mar. 1920.
43 NAQQC, CKB, account of Marie-Jeanne Gagnon, undated.
44 Informant No. 2, born in 1945.
45 Jos-Phydime Michaud, Kamouraska, de mémoire: Souvenirs de la vie d’un village québécois, recueillis par Fernand Archambault (Montreal: Boréal, 1981), 80.
46 Testimony of Arthur Lebœuf, reported in L’Événement (26 Apr. 1920), extra.
47 Claire Martin, Dans un gant de fer: La joue gauche (Ottawa: Cercle du livre de France, 1965), 11 and 12.
48 Martin, Dans un gant de fer: La joue droite, 163.
49 Informant No. 3, born in 1946.
50 NAQQC, CKB, The Crown v. Télesphore Gagnon, evidence of Gérard Gagnon, 26 Apr. 1920, 19.
51 Testimony of Mme Hamel, quoted in LP (15 Apr. 1920), 31.
52 Jean Gaudreau, “Aurore, l’enfant martyre: Essai sur la violence faite aux enfants,” Santé mentale au Québec 17/1 (1992), 62.
53 NAQQC, CKB, The Crown v. Marie-Anne Houde, evidence of Gérard Gagnon, 16, 17, 18, 22; The Crown v. Télesphore Gagnon, evidence of Gérard Gagnon, 26 Apr. 1920, 15; The Crown v. Marie-Anne Houde, evidence of Marguerite Lebœuf, reported in LP (15 Apr. 1920), 31. Similar situations have been observed in the United States at different periods. Gordon, Heroes of Their Own Lives, 197, and Leontine Young, “Parents Who Hate,” in Wednesday’s Children: A Study of Child Neglect and Abuse (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971 [1964]), 51.
54 Alice Miller, C’est pour ton bien, 153.
55 NAQQC, CKB, case file of the Gagnons, written statement by Marguerite Lebœuf, undated.
56 Informant No. 1, born in 1910.
57 NAQQC, CKB, The Crown v. Marie-Anne Houde, evidence of Marguerite Lebœuf, 14 Apr. 1920, 6.
58 Written statement by Marguerite Lebœuf, undated. The same fact was reported in LP (26 Apr. 1920), 1.
59 NAQQC, CKB, preliminary inquiry, evidence of Émilien Hamel, 24 Feb. 1920.
60 Ibid., evidence of Mme Octave Hamel, 26 Mar. 1920.
61 Ibid., evidence of Arthur Lebœuf, 26 Mar. 1920.
62 NAQQC, CKB, The Crown v. Marie-Anne Houde, evidence of Exilda Auger-Lemay, 14 Apr. 1920.
63 Evidence of Mme Badeau during the trial of Télesphore Gagnon, reported in LP (27 Apr. 1920), 23.
64 NAQQC, Peace Office of la Beauce, no. 26, 7–8 Feb. 1911.
65 Testimony of Abbé Massé, reported in L’Événement (27 Apr. 1920), extra.
66 “Après la marâtre, le mari,” LP (23 Apr. 1920), 1.
67 LP (19 Apr. 1920), 13.
68 Testimony of Mme Badeau, reported in LP (27 Apr. 1920), 23. Germaine Guèvremont wrote in a novel of farmers being “dead tired” after a day’s hard physical labour. Le Survenant (Montreal: Fides, 1967 [1945]), 44.
69 Martin, Dans un gant de fer: La joue gauche, 35.
70 La Guerre des boutons, comedy by Yves Robert, 1961, adapted from the novel by Louis Pergaud.
71 Comtesse de Ségur, Le Mauvais Génie (Paris: Casterman, 1979 [1867]), 35–36.
72 NAQQC, CKB, The Crown v. Télesphore Gagnon, evidence of Émilien Hamel, 26 Apr. 1920.
73 NAQQC, CKB, The Crown v. Marie-Anne Houde, evidence of Exilda Auger-Lemay, 14 Apr. 1920, 47.
74 Ibid., 25.
75 NAQQC, CKB, preliminary inquiry, evidence of Odilon Auger, farmer, aged 26, 26 Mar. 1920.
76 NAQQC, CKB, The Crown v. Télesphore Gagnon, evidence of Odilon Auger, 26 Apr. 1920.
77 Fréchette, Mémoires intimes, 141.
78 NAQQC, CKB, The Crown v. Télesphore Gagnon, evidence of Odilon Auger, 26 Apr. 1920.
79 Quoted in LP (28 Apr. 1920), 27.
80 Testimony reported in L’Événement (27 Apr. 1920), 3.
81 Boncompain, Grains de bon sens, 25.
82 NAQQC, CKB, The Crown v. Télesphore Gagnon, evidence of Odilon Auger, 26 Apr. 1920.
83 “Le Courrier de Colette,” LP (20 July 1935), 24.
84 Jean Gaudreau spoke of a complete lack of rapport between father and daughter. “Aurore,” 60–61.
85 NAQQC, CKB, The Crown v. Marie-Anne Houde, evidence of Exilda Auger-Lemay, 14 Apr. 1920, 12.
86 Words of the witness quoted by the judge and reported in L’Événement (22 Apr. 1920), 3.
87 NAQQC, CKB, The Crown v. Marie-Anne Houde, evidence of Marie-Jeanne Gagnon, 15 Apr. 1920, 15.
88 Ibid., evidence of Exilda Auger-Lemay, 14 Apr. 1920.
89 Ibid., evidence of Dr Albert Prévost, 20 Apr. 1920, 9.
90 Boncompain, Grains de bon sens, 31–32.
91 Émilie Carles, Une soupe aux herbes sauvages, words collected by Robert Destangue (Éditions Jean-Claude Simoën, 1977), 46. The author lived in the Haute Durance region, in the Dauphiné Alps.
92 The overview that follows is based on Alice Miller’s C’est pour ton bien.
93 NAQQC, CKB, The Crown v. Marie-Anne Houde, evidence of Anna Roux-Demers, 19 Apr. 1920.
94 Testimony of Mme Hamel, Télesphore Gagnon’s half-sister, reported in LP (15 Apr. 1920), 31.
95 Testimony of Dr Albert Prévost, quoted in Les Grands Procès du Québec: L’Affaire de la petite Aurore, 25.
96 NAQQC, CKB, The Crown v. Marie-Anne Houde, evidence of Willie Houde, 19 Apr. 1920.
97 Quoted in Les Grands Procès du Québec: L’affaire de la petite Aurore, 16.
98 Ibid., 20.
99 The explanations given here are taken in part from the article by Peter Gossage, “La marâtre,” 584–97.
100 Léon Petitjean and Henri Rollin, Aurore, l’enfant martyre, text reconstituted and presented by Alonzo Le Blanc (Bibliothèque québécoise, 2004), 18.
101 Robert de Beaujolais, “La Petite Martyre de la Marâtre, Roman sensationnel (Canada, 1927); Hubert Pascal, Le Roman d’Aurore la petite persécutée (Montreal: Publications du lapin, 1950); Benoît Tessier (pen name of Yves Thériault), Le Drame d’Aurore l’enfant martyre (Quebec City: Diffusion du livre, 1952); Émile Asselin, La Petite Aurore (Montreal: Alliance cinématographique canadienne, 1952).
102 Le Blanc, Aurore, 29.
103 Burchardt, “Stepchildren’s Memories,” 241.
104 Petitjean and Rollin, Aurore, 168.
105 Contes d’Andersen, translated by A. Canaux (Tours: Mame, 1930), 79.
106 “Un petit ami, ‘Aurore, l’enfant martyre!’ drame vécu, représenté dans la salle de l’école Meilleur, en janvier 1949,” L’Éclair et Hérauts 2/18 (15 May 1949), 4. This magazine was edited by the brothers of the Sacred Heart, Montreal.
107 Ibid.
108 The same comment was made by Le Blanc, Aurore, 25.
109 L’Éclair et Hérauts 2/18 (15 May 1949), 4.
110 Rollet, Les Enfants, 235.
111 Petitjean and Rollin, Aurore, 21 and 30.
112 Le Canada (28 Apr. 1952), quoted by Gossage, “La marâtre,” 583, and L’Éclair et Hérauts 2/18 (15 May 1949), 4.
113 Petitjean and Rollin, Aurore, 24.
114 This explanation is provided in the article by Peter Gossage, “La marâtre,” 596.
115 Jacques Ferron, “Un miroir de nos misères: Notre théâtre,” La Revue socialiste (Spring 1961), 28.
116 Le Blanc, “Aurore, l’enfant martyre, mélodrame de Léon Petitjean et Henri Rollin,” DOLQ 2, 97–100.
117 Heinz Weinmann, Cinéma de l’imaginaire québécois: De La petite Aurore à Jésus de Montréal (Montreal: L’Hexagone, 1990), 27–50.
118 Petitjean and Rollin, Aurore, 41.
119 Bruno Bettelheim, Psychanalyse des contes de fées, translated from English by Théo Carlier (Paris: Hachette, 1976), 107–17.
120 Gossage, “La marâtre,” 585, 594, 595.
121 Ian Hacking has pointed out that cruelty toward children was originally presented as a vice restricted to the lower classes. See L’Âme réécrite, 95. We are grateful for the rigour of the evaluator of our manuscript who drew our attention to this aspect of the Gagnon case.
122 Gelles and Straus, Intimate Violence, 41–42. The English terms were “aliens” and “people other than us.”
123 Loi amendant les Statuts refondus, 1909, concernant les jeunes délinquants, 1912.
124 However, in order to avoid destroying families, the Society for the Protection of Women and Children was trying to protect children without bringing parents before the courts. Letter signed by Rachel K. Ross, Hon. Secretary, in The Gazette, 28 Aug. 1920, 12.
125 Marie-André, Et le ciel compta un ange de plus: Le beau Noël de Monique, illustrations by Odette Vincent (Quebec City: Éditions de l’A.B., 1944), n.p.
126 “Judge Désy holds strongly that the verdict pronounced on the sorry father that Gagnon is will give food for thought to parents inclined to brutality,” LP (29 Apr. 1920), 1, 23.
127 Here we are quoting from memory this document which was noticed several years ago by a research assistant working in the archives of the Quebec judicial district.
128 JDC, 1925/1183.
129 Ginevra, “Meurtrière ou victime?” Le Soleil (21 Aug. 1920), 11.
1 “Fermeté dans l’éducation,” La Tempérance 16/6 (Nov. 1921), 171.
2 Louis Boncompain, “Lettre de bébé à papa et à maman” (extract from Grains de bon sens), La Famille (hereafter LF) 2/10 (June 1939), 229.
3 “Les commandements de l’éducatrice,” Familia 3/1 (Oct. 1935), 24.
4 From 1920 and possibly sooner, newspapers advertised medications targeting women and stressed, tired mothers. These included LP (29 Mar. 1920), 20, and (21 Apr. 1920), 10.
5 Françoise Gaudet-Smet, “Douceur et tendresse,” Paysana 5 (July 1938), 5.
6 Abbé Victorin Germain, À propos d’autorité: Réflexions et fantaisies (Quebec City: published privately, 1925), 17, 39, 247–51.
7 Baruch Silverman, MD, Assistant Director, Mental Hygiene Committee, Montreal, “Some Aspects of the Mental Hygiene of Childhood,” Teachers’ Magazine 12/50 (Feb. 1930), 22; Theresa Richardson, The Century of the Child: The Mental Hygiene Movement and Social Policy in the United States and Canada (New York: State University of New York Press, 1989), 64; Jennifer Stephen, “The ‘Incorrigible,’ the ‘Bad,’ and the ‘Immoral’: Toronto’s ‘Factory Girls’ and the Work of the Toronto Psychiatric Clinic,” in Louis Knafla and Susan Binnie (eds.), Law, Society and the State: Essays in Modern Legal History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), 405–39; Alexander and Selesnick, Histoire de la psychiatrie, 401.
8 Lucie Quevillon, Parcours d’une collaboration: Les intervenants psychiatriques et psychologiques de la Cour des jeunes délinquants de Montréal, 1912–1950, master’s thesis in History, UQAM, 2001, 82; Richardson, Century of the Child, 1, 67.
9 Silverman, “Some Aspects,” 23; Clarence Hincks, General Director of the Canadian National Committee for Mental Hygiene, quoted by Theresa Richardson, “Ambiguities in the Lives of Children, 387; Richardson, Century of the Child, 24–26, 112–15.
10 Katherine Arnup, “Raising the Dionne Quintuplets: Lessons for Modern Mothers,” Journal of Canadian Studies 29/4 (Winter 1994–95), 76; Mariana Valverde, “Representing Childhood: The Multiple Fathers of the Dionne Quintuplets,” in Carol Smart (ed.), Regulating Womanhood: Historical Essays on Marriage, Motherhood and Sexuality (New York: Routledge, 1992), 133; Strong-Boag, “Intruders in the Nursery,” 164–66; “We Were Five”: The Dionne Quintuplets’ Story from Birth through Womanhood, by James Brough with Annette, Cécile, Marie, and Yvonne Dionne (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963), 66–68.
11 Françoise Boudreau, De l’asile à la santé mentale: Les soins psychiatriques — Histoire et Institutions (Montreal: Éditions Saint-Martin, 1984), 60; Quevillon, Parcours d’une collaboration, 82; Richardson, Century, 69, 117.
12 Quevillon, Parcours, 35; Marie-Paule Vinay, Hygiène mentale (Quebec City: Pélican, 1958), 3. The author presented her work as “a kind of general journal of Mental Hygiene in the light of what religion might contribute to it,” 3/1.
13 Baillargeon, Un Québec en mal d’enfants, 130.
14 Silverman, “Some Aspects,” 24, and Mrs W.T.B. Mitchell, BA, RN, Director of Parents’ Education, Mental Hygiene Institute, Montreal, “Education for a Changing Civilization,” Teachers’ Magazine 14/62 (June 1932), 11.
15 J.-E.-A. Marcotte, Psychiatrist, Health Service, “Hygiène mentale scolaire: La Désobéissance,” L’École canadienne 14 (2 Oct. 1938), 61–62 (Summary of lessons 8 and 9 of a course on mental hygiene, 1937–38, Institut pédagogique Notre-Dame).
16 Mitchell, “Education for a Changing Civilization,” 12, 14; Straus and Donnelly, Beating the Devil Out of Them, 108–10.
17 Mgr Ross, “La Discipline,” L’Enseignement primaire 37/1 (Sept. 1915), 6; Dr J.-E.-A. Marcotte, “Hygiène mentale: La Peur,” L’École canadienne 13/10 (June 1938). The psychiatrist speaks of the “daily observation, for more than seven years, of the behavioural reactions of children in school, in the classroom.”
18 Réginald Hamel, Gaëtane de Montreuil, journaliste québécoise, 1867–1951 (Montreal: L’Aurore, 1976).
19 “Le Refuge sentimental,” Le Petit Journal (hereafter PJ) (18 Dec. 1955), 5; “Le Courrier de Colette,” LP (6 June 1932), 4. When two texts were absolutely identical we included only the first in our statistics. When letters were merely similar we treated them as different cases.
20 The following works were useful to us as methodological guides: René Pascal, “Le confessionnal radiophonique,” Esprit 35/361 (June 1967), 1065–66; Ménie Grégoire, “La presse féminine, la femme et l’amour,” Esprit 27/275 (July–Aug. 1959), 17–34; Maurice Crubelier, “Presse féminine — Presse du cœur,” in Histoire culturelle de la France, XIXe–XXe siècles (Paris: Armand Colin, 1974), 256–58; Évelyne Sullerot, “Le courrier du cœur,” in La Presse féminine (Paris: Armand Colin, 1966), 161–97; Jules Gritti, “Deux arts du vraisemblable: Lacasuistique et le courrier du cœur,” Communications, no. 11 (1968), 99–121; Marie-Josée Des Rivières, “Le courrier de Jovette (1960–1973): Une invitation à la soumission,” in Châtelaine et la littérature (1960–1975) (Montreal: L’Hexagone, 1992), 133–48; Serge Gagnon, “Confession, courrier du cœur et révolution sexuelle,” in Manon Brunet and Serge Gagnon (eds.), Discours et pratique de l’intime (Quebec City: Institut québécois de recherche sur la culture, 1993), 71–93.
21 All the information about Colette is taken from an article by Jeanne Barabé–Langlois that was published in a book by the Cercle des femmes journalistes, Vingt-cinq à la une: Biographies (Montreal: La Presse, 1976), 47–51.
22 “Le Courrier de Colette,” LP (23 Sept. 1931), 4; (28 Sept. 1934), 4; (10 Mar. 1932), 4.
23 Quintilian, Institution oratoire, vol. 1, Book 1, iii; “Le Courrier de Colette,” LP (27 June 1932), 4; (22 May 1931), 4; (11 May 1937), 4; (29 Dec. 1932), 4.
24 “Le Courrier de Colette,” LP (7 Dec. 1931), 4; (6 Aug. 1932), 34; (12 Sept. 1939), 8; (14 Feb. 1930), 4; (17 Feb. 1936), 4.
25 Ibid., (27 June 1932), 4; (15 Apr. 1933), 26; (13 Dec. 1939), 14.
26 Bethléem, Catéchisme de l’éducation, 322; Germain, À propos d’autorité, 248–50.
27 “Le Courrier de Colette,” LP (22 May 1931), 4.
28 Ibid., (31 Oct. 1936), 26, and (19 Apr. 1940), 24.
29 Alice Miller, Notre corps ne ment jamais (Paris: Flammarion, 2004), 13.
30 “Le Courrier de Colette,” LP (8 May 1932), 2; (31 July 1937), 24; (19 Feb. 1935), 4; (15 Apr. 1933), 26; (11 Jan. 1930), 55.
31 Ibid., (3 Jan. 1931), 33.
32 Ibid., (20 Nov. 1930), 4.
33 Ibid., (18 Feb. 1935), 4.
34 Robin, L’Enfant sans défauts, 14; Annick Ohayon, “L’éducation des parents: Histoire d’une illusion,” LduGRAPE, no. 41 (Sept. 2000), 89.
35 “Le Courrier de Colette,” LP (15 Apr. 1933), 26; Mitchell, “Education for a Changing Civilization,” 11, and Dr Marcotte, ““Hygiène mentale: La Peur,” 345–48.
36 “Le Courrier de Colette,” LP (27 June 1932), 4; (22 May 1931), 4.
37 Ibid., (15 Apr. 1933), 26.
38 NAQM, SC, 1925/4707.
39 NAQM, SC, 1930/58981.
40 Sohn, Chrysalides, 412–13.
1 “Le Courrier de Colette,” LP (29 Dec. 1932), 4; (20 Nov. 1930), 4; (26 May 1931), 4; “Des parents qui devraient être passibles de prison,” LP (12 May 1930), 21.
2 The Big Sisters Association also existed in New York in the 1920s. Pleck, Domestic Tyranny, 140.
3 JDC, 1921/8279–82.
4 JDC, 1931/411.
5 JDC, 1925/1291.
6 Ghislaine Martin, Étude des caractéristiques des enfants maltraités et des personnes abusives au Québec (Comité de la protection de la jeunesse, Études et recherches, May 1977), 3; Tom Hay and David Allen, La Violence et la négligence à l’égard des enfants (Ottawa: Health Canada, 1997), 5.
7 JDC, 1925/1829.
8 JDC, 1935/48.
9 JDC, 1920/7796, 1925/1734, 1930/739, 1920/7112.
10 JDC, 1920/7112.
11 JDC, 1925/1868 and 1402; 1935/48.
12 JDC, 1938/1688.
13 JDC, 1920/7466.
14 JDC, 1935/1603, father’s letter to the judge.
15 JDC, 1935/1603, father’s letter to the judge, 28 Jan. 1936.
16 Ibid., and letter dated 7 Feb. 1936.
17 Straus and Donnelly, Beating the Devil Out of Them, 4.
18 JDC, 1935/1603, father’s letters to the judge dated 28 Jan. and 7 Feb. 1936.
19 Ibid., probation officer’s report, the child’s version, 8 Sept. 1937.
20 Ibid., father’s letter to the judge, 7 Feb. 1936.
21 Ibid., investigation report, 10 Sept. 1937, and father’s letter to the judge, 19 Dec. 1935; Straus and Donnelly, Beating the Devil Out of Them, 102–3; Marcotte, “Hygiène mentale: La Peur,” 346.
22 JDC, 1935/1603, the father to the investigating officer, 30 Sept. 1937.
23 Baruch Silverman and Mrs W.T.B. Mitchell, articles cited in Chapter 4.
24 JDC, 1935/27.
25 The expression is borrowed from Sohn, Chrysalides, 424.
26 JDC, 1935/507.
27 Martin, Dans un gant de fer: La joue droite, 47, 126; Dans un gant de fer: La joue gauche, 38.
28 Ibid., Dans un gant de fer fer: La joue droite, 111; Dans un gant de fer: La joue gauche, 152–53.
29 JDC, 1925/1928, and 1931/166.
30 JDC, 1925/1401.
31 JDC, 1925/1401 and 1935/27 (file mentioned above). We remind the reader that it was in the 1930s that the concept of nervosity appeared in the family magazines. See Chapter 4.
32 NAQQC, Court of Sessions, La Beauce/2874, 10 June and 9 Sept. 1936.
33 Martin, Ghislaine, Étude des caractéristiques des enfants maltraités et des personnes abusives au Québec, 4; Richard Gelles, “Child Abuse as Psychopathology: A Sociological Critique and Reformulation,” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 43/4 (July 1973), 617.
34 JDC, 1925/2125.
35 JDC, 1925/1183.
36 JDC, 1925/2174.
37 Marcotte, “Hygiène mentale: La Peur,” 345–47; JDC, 1938/1688 (quoted above) and 1925/1964.
38 “Le Courrier de Colette,” LP (15 Apr. 1933), 26; Marcelle Royer Saint-Léon, “Deux formes du mensonge chez l’enfant,” Familia 5/1 (Oct. 1937), 25–28; Geneviève Duhamelet, “La franchise dans l’éducation,” Familia 5/3 (Mar. 1938), 20–23; Jacques Herbé, Leçons élémentaires de psychologie éducative, quoted in “Comment rendre les enfants sincères,” La Bonne Parole 22/10 (Oct. 1934), 5–6; Marcotte, “Hygiène mentale: La Peur”; Mitchell, “Education for a Changing Civilization,” 11.
39 JDC, 1925/1301; 1930/1121 and 805.
40 JDC, 1935/507 (quoted above); Straus and Donnelly, Beating the Devil Out of Them, 144.
41 “Le Courrier de Colette,” LP (27 June 1932), 4.
42 Martin, Dans un gant de fer: La joue droite, La joue droite, 103.
43 JDC, 1938/121.
44 Silverman, “Some Aspects,” 23–24; Mitchell, “Education,” 11; Straus and Donnelly, Beating the Devil Out of Them, 99–100.
45 We remind the reader that all the data for this chapter are taken from our sample, not from all the files.
46 JDC, 1920/7466 (quoted above), 1925/1868 (quoted above), and 1925/1301.
47 JDC, 1925/1247.
48 JDC, 1920/7112 (quoted above) and 1930/632.
49 Cynthia Comacchio has also stressed that fathers were concerned about their daughters’ conduct because the reputation and honour of the family depended on their morals. “‘A Postscript for Father’: Defining a New Fatherhood in Interwar Canada,” Canadian Historical Review 78/3 (Sept. 1997), 405. See also for the city of Halifax, Suzanna Morton, Ideal Surroundings: Domestic Life in a Working-Class Suburb in the 1920s (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), 141.
50 JDC, 1931/1058.
51 We have chosen not to deal with incest in this book, which focuses on the relationship between violence in child-rearing and ill-treatment. Readers interested in this problem can consult the following articles: Marie-Aimée Cliche, “Survivre à l’inceste dans les maisons du Bon-Pasteur de Québec, 1930–1973,” Nouvelles pratiques sociales 14/2 (Dec. 2001), 122–43; “Du péché au trauma: L’inceste vu de la Cour des jeunes délinquants et de la Cour du bien-être social, 1912–1965,” Canadian Historial Review 87/2 (June 2006), 199–222; Tamara Myers, “Qui t’a débauchée?”
52 JDC, 1920/7466.
53 JDC, 1935/455.
54 Neil Sutherland, Growing Up: Childhood in English Canada from the Great War to the Age of Television (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 131; Morton, Ideal Surroundings, 89, 97, 115, 140; Janette Bertrand, Ma vie en trois actes: Autobiographie (Montreal: Libre Expression, 2004), 21, 32; Denyse Baillargeon, Ménagères au temps de la crise (Montreal: Éditions du remue-ménage, 1991), 63.
55 JDC, 1935/455, letter from the mother to the probation officer, 4 May 1935.
56 Ibid., letter from the mother to Judge Robillard, 9 May 1935.
57 Ibid., undated letter from the mother to her daughter.
58 “Le Courrier de Colette,” LP (12 Jan. 1944), 8.
59 “Des parents qui devraient être passibles de prison,” LP (12 Mar. 1930), 21.
60 Mgr. Olivier Maurault, “Impressions de semaine sociale,” in LF, Semaine sociale du Canada, session no. 4 (Montreal: 1923), 5; quoted by Malouin, in Le Mouvement familial au Québec, 14. Colette expressed the same opinion, in “Le Courrier de Colette,” LP (3 Sept. 1936), 4.
61 Sutherland, Growing Up, 83.
62 Comacchio, “A Postscript for ‘Father,’ ” 401, 404.
63 Sutherland, Growing Up, 84.
1 Linteau et al., Histoire, 2: 212–13.
2 Baillargeon, Un Québec en mal d’enfants, 38.
3 Linteau et al., Histoire, 2: 217.
4 Ibid., 219, 277, 331, 336, 584.
5 Ibid., 173, 390, 396.
6 This information is all taken from Malouin, Le Mouvement familial au Québec.
7 Renée Joyal, Les Enfants, la société et l’État au Québec, 1608–1989 (Montreal: Hurtubise, 1999), 165–72.
8 Loi instituant une clinique d’aide à l’enfance, Statuts révisés du Québec, 1945, c. 25, 317–18.
9 Mona Gleason, “Psychology and the Construction of the ‘Normal’ Family in Postwar Canada, 1945–1960,” Canadian Historical Review 78/3 (Sept. 1997), 449.
10 The expression comes from Annalee Gölz, “Family Matters: The Canadian Family and the State in the Postwar Period,” Left History 1/2 (1993), 27.
11 Gleason, “Psychology,” 446. See also, by the same author, “Disciplining Children, Disciplining Parents: The Nature and Meaning of Advice to Canadian Parents, 1945–1955,” Histoire sociale/Social History 39/57 (May 1996), 187–209, also her book Normalizing the Ideal: Psychology, Schooling, and the Family in Postwar Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999).
12 “Droits de l’enfant dans la province de Québec, proposés par l’Institut familial,” LF 6/1 (Aug.–Sept. 1942), 395.
13 Dominique Marshall, “The Language of Children’s Rights, the Formation of the Welfare State and the Democratic Experience of Poor Families in Quebec, 1940–1955,” Canadian Historical Review 78/3 (Sept. 1997), 409.
1 During the 1930s specialists in Mental Hygiene published articles in pedagogical journals in which they discussed the problem of corporal punishment. After 1940, they also contributed similar articles to periodicals for parents. J.-E.-A. Marcotte, a psychiatrist and mental hygienist, “La Petite Clinique d’Hygiène Mentale,” Nos enfants, monthly suppl. to LF 1/4 (Mar. 1941), 95–96; Jules Gilbert, Director of the Teaching of Hygiene, Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, and “Hygiène mentale préscolaire: L’âge négligé,” LF 9/5 (Aug.–Sept. 1945), 189–92.
2 “La Clinique de l’École des parents,” published in Le Devoir, invited readers to write in about parenting problems. “Radio-Parents” (a radio broadcast from which some letters and their answers appeared in the magazine L’École des parents) also presented itself as a write-in program, but we have found that at least two texts were taken from the book by Susan Isaacs, Parents et enfants: Leurs difficultés quotidiennes, translated from English by Mme Fortier (Paris: PUF, 1952), 43–46, 154–56. This author replied personally to readers’ letters.
3 “Le Courrier de Colette,” LP (10 May 1951), 26.
4 Dr Étienne De Greeff, Nos enfants et nous, 3rd ed. (Paris: Casterman, 1951 [1945]). Dr De Greeff was a psychiatrist and criminologist. His book was recommended in LF 19/8 (Oct. 1955), 50–52. See also Fernand Porter OFM, Guides en éducation: Anthologie bio-bibliographique — France, Belgique, Suisse (Montreal: Éditions franciscaines, 1954), 261–63.
5 Dr Arnold Gesell and Dr Frances L. Ilg, Le Jeune Enfant dans la civilisation moderne: L’orientation du développement de l’enfant à l’école des tout-petits et à la maison, translated from the 20th American edition by Irène Lézine (Paris: PUF, 1964 [1949]). The thesis by this author was quoted by J.-E.-A. Marcotte in “La Petite Clinique d’Hygiène mentale,” Nos enfants, suppl. to LF 1/4 (Mar. 1941), 95. The book was recommended by Thérèse Gouin-Décarie in “Que lirons-nous?” L’École des parents (hereafter EP) 5/6 (June 1954).
6 Marie-France, Mamans, avec le sourire (Montreal: Le Centre familial, n.d.); Mamans, avec énergie (Montreal: Le Centre familial, 1946); Mamans, avec tendresse (Montreal: Le Centre familial, 1947). Valère Massicotte, “Petite chronique de psychologie,” LF 12/1 (Jan. 1948), 16. See also Fernand Porter, Guides en éducation, 143–44. Marie-France was the author of several books.
7 Porter, Guides en éducation, 13–14; “Clinique de l’École des parents du Québec,” Le Devoir (15 Dec. 1948), 5. This collection was also recommended in Paysana 9/1 (Mar. 1946), 7.
8 Benjamin Spock, Comment soigner et éduquer son enfant (Éditions Marabout, 1952), recommended by Thérèse Gouin-Décarie in “Que lirons-nous?” EP 5/5 (May 1954), 18–19.
9 Maria Montessori, L’Enfant, translated from the Italian by Georgette Bernard, 13th ed. (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1936).
10 André Berge, Pour l’éducation nouvelle (Nancy: Berger-Levrault, 1968), 25. Another book by Berge, Le Métier de parent, was recommended by Jacqueline Paquette, “J’ai lu pour vous,” in EP 6/2 (Feb. 1955), 28–29. André Berge came from the wealthy Catholic middle class and was the father of five children. From 1924 to 1936 he wrote children’s books. He then undertook studies in medicine. Annick Ohayon, “L’éducation des parents: Histoire d’une illusion,” LduGRAPE, no. 41 (Sept. 2000), 89.
11 Cousinet, L’Éducation nouvelle, 62–3, and Édouard Claparède, “J.-J. Rousseau et la conception fonctionnelle de l’enfance,” Revue de métaphysique et de morale (May 1912), reprinted in L’Éducation nouvelle (Groupe Éditions de l’ANEN, Delachaux et Niestlé, 1997), 21–58.
12 Pie XI [Pope Pius XI], Lettre encyclique sur l’éducation chrétienne de la jeunesse, 31 Dec. 1929 (Paris: La bonne presse, 1957), 25–27. Quotations are taken from the English version of the text, which can be consulted online at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_31121929_divini-illius-magistri_en.html]
13 Vérine, L’Art d’aimer ses enfants (Montreal: Éditions Variétés, 1939), 34, and Les 10 Commandements des parents (Bloud and Gay, 1946), 123–24.
14 Stéphane Valiquette, “Deux livres sur l’éducation: L’Art d’aimer ses enfants — Délivrez-les du mal,” Collège et famille (hereafter CF) 1/2 (Mar. 1944), 31–32.
15 Malouin, Le Mouvement familial, 31; Porter, Guides en éducation, 212–14; Ohayon, “L’éducation des parents,” 87.
16 The information about the founding of L’École des parents is from the book by Malouin, Le Mouvement familial, 31–2. See also EP 6/12 (Dec. 1955), 8–10, and “Maman Fonfon nous quitte,” Le Devoir (19 Sept. 2001). See also the important article by Denyse Baillargeon, “‘We Admire Modern Parents’: L’École des parents du Québec and the Post-war Quebec Family, 1940–1959,” in Nancy Christie and Michael Gauvreau (eds.), Cultures of Citizenship in Post-war Canada, 1940–1955 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003), 239–76.
17 Abbé Albert Tessier, “Propos sur l’éducation,” Paysana 3/1 (Apr. 1940), 10, and 3/2 (May 1940), 13. Mgr Albert Tessier (1895–1976) was a teacher of Canadian literature and history, filmmaker, and advocate for the teaching of home economics. Maurice Lemire (ed.), Dictionnaire des œuvres littéraires du Québec (DOLQ) (Montreal: Fides, 1980) 2: 1099–1100.
18 Mitchell, “Education for a Changing Civilization.” We remind the reader that this advice was initially given to teachers and later to parents.
19 Sigmund Freud, Nouvelles conférences sur la psychanalyse (Paris: Gallimard, 1936), 194, quoted by Annick Ohayon, “L’éducation des parents,” 87; Valiquette, “Deux livres sur l’éducation,” 32; Marcel Marcotte, “Autorité et liberté,” CF 1/5 (Nov. 1944), 191–200; Jean Huberdeau, “Le respect de l’enfant,” LF 9/1 (Mar. 1945), 29; Georges Dufresne, “Qui c’est qui est le Boss?” Paysana 9/9 (Nov. 1946), 9, 12; “Clinique de l’École des parents du Québec,” Le Devoir (17 May 1949), 5.
20 Jeanne L’Archevêque-Duguay, “Ce mystère de lumière,” CF 3/1 (Jan. 1946), 36, and “Quand petit Jean entre à l’école,” CF 3/2 (Mar. 1946); DOLQ 2, 395–96; Marie-Paule Vinay, “Pour les enfants, la vérité!” Paysana 10/11 (Jan. 1948), 16. Several books by this author were intended for students in the Family Institutes. “Le Courrier de Rosemarie,” LF 10/9 (Nov. 1946), 381. Odette Vincent, “Comment combattre la peur chez les petits,” Nos enfants, suppl. to LF 1/8 (Aug. 1941), 339, and Edmour Lemay, “Petite chronique de psychologie,” LF 9/5 (Aug.–Sept. 1945), 186.
21 The notion of “nervosity,” replacing that of anger, appeared in a file of the JDC, in 1925, in an educational journal in 1935, and in an advice column in 1936.
22 Baillargeon, “‘We Admire Modern Parents,’” 260.
23 Marie-France, “Histoire d’une maman qui avait ses nerfs,” an extract from Mamans, avec le sourire (reprinted in Le Foyer rural 6/10–11 (Aug. 1947), 22. Vincent Duhaime discovered two published drawings from the same period (1947) that, in an eloquent contrast, showed a mother spanking her son and a father exercising a mild authority. Le Mouvement ouvrier, 35, 37, quoted by Vincent Duhaime in “‘Les pères ont ici leur devoir’: Le discours du mouvement familial québécois et la construction de la paternité dans l’après-guerre, 1945–1960,” Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française 57/4 (Spring 2004), 556.
24 Françoise Gaudet-Smet, “Douceur et tendresse,” Paysana 5 (July 1938), 5; Gonzalve Poulin, “Les sanctions dans la famille,” Nos enfants, suppl. to LF 1/1 (Dec. 1940), 103–5; and Massicotte, “Petite chronique de psychologie,” 18–19; Ministry of National Health and Social Welfare, “La peur, cette ennemie de nos enfants,” EP 1/3 (Feb. 1950), 29–30; Gleason, “Disciplining Children, Disciplining Parents,” 196.
25 Françoise Gaudet-Smet, “Questions et réponses au royaume des petits,” Paysana 5/7 (Sept. 1942), 5; L’Archevêque-Duguay, “Ce mystère de lumière,” 36, and “Des nouvelles de Jean,” CF 2/5 (Nov. 1945), 226; Marcel Marcotte SJ, “L’Autorité dans l’éducation,” LF 8/8 (Oct. 1944), 388.
26 “À propos de sanctions,” Nos enfants, suppl. to LF 1/3 (Feb. 1941), 185; “Clinique de l’École des parents du Québec: L’éducation de l’obéissance,” Le Devoir (29 Nov. 1949), 5; Marie-Paule Vinay, “De mère en fils,” Paysana 10/10 (Dec. 1947), 7, and Nos bébés de 0 à 5 ans (Quebec City: Pélican, 1959), 85.
27 Gonzalve Poulin, “Les sanctions dans la famille,” Nos enfants, suppl. to LF 4/4 (Dec. 1940), 104; “Clinique de l’École des parents du Québec: C’est un menteur,” Le Devoir (28 Mar. 1949), 4; “Le Courrier de Colette,” LP (20 Nov. 1930), 4; Georges Dufresne, “Parents: Petit travers deviendra grand si vous le laissez vivre,” Paysana 9/1 (Mar. 1946), 7.
28 Poulin, “Les sanctions dans la famille,” 105, and “Les droits de l’enfant: L’enfant protégé et non exploité,” LF 7/1 (Jan. 1943), 29.
29 Ernest Couture, La Mère canadienne et son enfant (Ottawa: Ministry of Pensions and National Health, 1941), 191.
30 Jeanne Grisé-Allard, “Punitions?” LF 9/8 (Dec. 1945), 291–93. This author, a journalist and writer, was born in 1904 and married in 1938. DOLQ 2: 536.
31 Vérine, Les 10 Commandements, 61–62; Odette Vincent, “Les défauts de nos enfants: Chaque chose en son temps,” L’Éducateur, suppl. to LF 4/3 (Nov. 1942), 95; “La Clinique de l’École des parents,” Le Devoir (25 May 1949), 5; Vinay, “Quand faut-il taper bébé?” Paysana 10/9 (Nov. 1947), 5, 22.
32 Louis Boncompain, “Lettre de bébé à papa et à maman,” extract from Grains de bon sens, reprinted in LF 2/10 (June 1939), 229; “Les parents à l’école,” Paysana 7/11 (Jan. 1945), 11. Claude Mailhiot held a doctorate in psychology, Manon Deland-Mailhiot had a degree in social science; they had two children. EP 7/1 (Jan. 1956), 14–15.
33 “La Clinique de l’École des parents du Québec,” Le Devoir (29 Nov. 1949), 5; Mlle Sainte-Marie (a head teacher), “L’éducation des tout petits,” La Bonne Parole 5/9 (Nov. 1917), 5.
34 Zulma Ledoux, “Petites expériences d’une jeune maman,” LF 8/10 (Dec. 1944), 497.
35 “Le Courrier de Rosemarie,” LF 10/7 (Aug.–Sept. 1946), 293.
36 Maryse Choisy, Savoir être maman, preface by Father Poucel, new edition, revised and augmented (Paris: Aubier, 1947 [1941]), 97. Maryse Choisy (1903–1979) was a journalist and writer. In 1939 she was responsible for a column called “Courrier des mères de famille” in the Catholic weekly Ève. She then founded the magazine Psyché which appeared from 1946 to 1959. She introduced a new way of spreading and popularizing knowledge about psychoanalysis using the media. See Annick Ohayon, “Maryse Choisy et Psyché: Psychanalyse et mondanités,” Topique, no. 71 (2000), 87–107; Straus and Donnelly, Beating the Devil Out of Them, 99–120.
37 Jeanne l’Archevêque-Duguay, “Expériences de jeunes parents,” CF 2/4 (July 1945), 157.
38 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Les Confessions (Pocket, 1996 [1781]), 45; Freud, Trois essais, 90; Robin, L’Enfant sans défauts, 19.
39 “Clinique de l’École des parents,” Le Devoir (7 June 1949), 6.
40 Gibson, The English Vice, 314; Straus and Donnelly, Beating the Devil Out of Them, 121–46.
41 Couture, La Mère canadienne et son enfant, 182.
42 Mme Francisque Gay and Louis Cousin, Comment j’élève mon enfant, 21st ed. (Paris: Bloud and Gay, 1960 [1927]), 30, 58. Advertised in EP 1/12 (Nov. 1950), 30. Blanche Fromillon, born in 1890, was a graduate in Nursing, married to Francisque Gay, the French ambassador to Canada, and the mother of six children. Her book, written in collaboration with a Marianist priest and a physician, was very successful. See Porter, Guides en éducation, 98–99. Choisy, Savoir être maman, 25; Vérine, L’Art d’aimer ses enfants, 20.
43 Madeleine Rajotte, “Votre bébé à votre école,” Le Foyer rural 7/7 (Apr. 1948), 15; François Charmot, quoted by Dr A.-C. Boussat, “Pour faire un homme,” LF 12/2 (Feb. 1948), 44–45. The title of the book is not given. Born in 1881, François Charmot, a Jesuit, was the author of about a dozen books, including Esquisse d’une pédagogie familiale (Paris: SPES, 1946 [1933]), which is mentioned in Collège et famille and L’École des parents. His pedagogical method always had a theological inspiration. See Porter, Guides en éducation, 33–35.
44 Dr A.-C. Boussat, “Colères et caprices chez l’enfant,” LF 12/3 (Mar. 1948), 81–82.
45 Jeanne Métivier-Desbiens, “Deux petites filles et leur mère,” Paysana 3/2 (May 1940), 6.
46 Dr Boussat, “Pour faire un homme,” 45; Freud, Trois essais, 130; Marie-France, Mamans, avec tendresse, 13.
47 Vérine, L’Art d’aimer ses enfants, 2, and Les 10 Commandements, 27–28.
48 Marcel-Marie OFM, “Le sujet de l’éducation,” LF 4/3 (Nov. 1940), 80–81; Marcel-M. Dugal OFM, “Douceur et fermeté,” Nos enfants, suppl. to LF 1/7 (June 1941), 307–8; Guillaume Lavallée OFM, “L’enfant et sa mère,” L’Éducateur: Revue des parents et des maîtres, suppl. to LF 1/3 (Apr. 1942), 45–46.
49 Antonio Dragon SJ, “Ce que le collège attend de la famille,” CF 1/1 (Jan. 1944), 4–7; Marcotte SJ, “Autorité et liberté”; Léon Massé SJ, “Une école du caractère, CF 2/3 (May 1945), 105–11; Oscar Bélanger SJ, “Renoncement chrétien et éducation,” CF 6/2 (Mar. 1949), 50–54, and “Femmes fortes, nos mères,” CF 6/3 (May 1949), 12; Gaudet-Smet, “Douceur et tendresse,” 5; Bernard Gingras, “Le verdict de la raison et de la foi: Pédagogie ascétique ou pédagogie technique,” CF 1/3 (Mar. 1944), 95.
50 Théo Chentrier, “Réflexion sur le père,” CF 1/3 (May 1949), 175, 180; Bélanger SJ, “Renoncement chrétien,” 111–12.
51 Claudine S. Vallerand, “Pour une pédagogie à la page,” CF 1/3 (Mar. 1944), 81–86, and “Pour une pédagogie dynamique,” CF 1/4 (July 1944), 148–54; Jean Laramée SJ, “Pour une pédagogie éternelle,” CF 1/3 (Mar. 1944), 87–92; Dr Marcotte, “Hygiène mentale scolaire: La désobéissance,” 60–62.
52 Jacques Maritain, L’Éducation à la croisée des chemins (Paris: Egloff), 1947 [1943]. Laramée quoted the first English version, Education at the Crossroads (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1943). Jean Laramée SJ, “Oui, Madame, pour une pédagogie dynamique,” CF 1/4 (July 1944), 155–60.
53 Robert Jean SJ, “L’Absent,” CF 6/4 (July 1949), 225–28.
54 Robert Jean SJ, “Correction corporelle,” CF 7/1 (Feb. 1950), 31.
55 Ibid., 33.
56 We remind the reader that Stanley Hall was close to the Mental Hygiene movement in the United States. Richardson, Century of the Child, 24; Sigmund Freud, “L’intérêt de la psycho-analyse,” Scientia (1913), 250, quoted by Jean SJ, “Correction corporelle,” 34.
57 Michelle Roy, “Le Courrier du Foyer rural,” Le Foyer rural 7/9 (June 1948), 15.
58 “Le Courrier de Rosemarie,” LF 10/1 (Jan. 1946), 34.
59 Ibid.
60 Marie-Joseph d’Anjou SJ, “Quand l’amour est absent,” CF 8/4 (Oct. 1951), 183, and “Quand les parents paralysent les enfants,” CF 9/1 (Feb. 1952), 35; Stéphane Valiquette SJ, “Papa gâteau,” CF 9/2 (Feb. 1952), 54–58, reprinted in EP 4/4 (Apr. 1953), 20–21; Mme Guy Boulizon, “On s’amuse en famille,” EP 1/5 (Apr. 1950), 2, and L’Équipe “Clinique de l’École des parents,” Le Devoir (4 Nov. 1950), 2, and (28 Feb. 1950), 5; Baillargeon, “‘We Admire Modern Parents,’” 255; “La Clinique de l’École des parents du Québec,” Le Devoir (22 May 1950), 5.
61 Claude Mailhiot, “La Peur,” EP 4/10 (Oct. 1953), 10–11; Stéphane Valiquette SJ, “Papa Hitler,” CF 9/1 (Feb. 1952), 7–10; Jeanne L’Archevêque-Duguay, “L’autorité du père dans la famille,” Le Foyer rural 10/7 (Apr. 1951), 11–17; Ministry of National Health and Social Welfare, “À votre santé,” Le Foyer rural 10/4 (Jan. 1951), 20; “Clinique de l’École des parents,” Le Devoir (11 Nov. 1953), 2; (15 Jan. 1951), 2; (25 Apr. 1950), 5.
62 Dr Benjamin Spock, Comment soigner et éduquer son enfant, French adaptation by Dr V. Chevalier (Verviers: Éditions Gérard, 1960), 9. Dr Spock was born in 1903 and died in 1998. In addition to being a pediatrician he was trained in psychoanalysis, which is why he was asked by a publisher to write this book on child care. He was married and the father of three children.
63 Dr and Mme Rémy, “Clinique de l’École des parents,” Le Devoir (3 May 1950), 5; (31 Mar. 1951), 2; (7 Feb. 1950), 2.
64 André La Rivière, psychologist and psychoanalyst, “Un cas par mois: Comment résoudre l’énurésie ou l’incontinence chez l’enfant?” LF 15/4 (Jan. 1951), 45–46.
65 Claude and Manon Mailhiot, “Le Courrier de Radio-Parents,” EP 5/1 (Jan. 1954), 22, and 6/11 (Nov. 1955), 31; Dr and Mme Rémy, “Clinique de l’École des parents,” Le Devoir (15 Nov. 1950), 2, and (29 Nov. 1950), 2; Dr and Mme Justin, “Clinique de l’École des parents,” Le Devoir (3 Apr. 1952), 2.
66 Jeanne L’Archevêque-Duguay, Comment j’éduque Paul et Marie: Propos sur l’éducation, preface by Paul-M. Carignan (Montreal: Fides, 1952), 7–8. This work had already appeared as a series of articles in Collège et famille.
67 Jean-Marie de Buck SJ, Votre fils (Brussels: L’Édition universelle, 1942), 160–63, 206, recommended in EP 7/9 (Sept. 1956), 12; and “Les symptômes et la cause,” CF 8/2 (Apr. 1951), 61–65. In 1944 this author, born in Belgium in 1898, founded the Centre d’orientation scolaire et professionnelle de la jeunesse, which was integrated with the Brussels Medico-Legal Centre. See Porter, Guides en éducation, 242–45.
68 Claude and Manon Mailhiot, “Le Courrier de Radio-Parents,” EP 3/1 (Dec. 1951), 14–16; Dr and Mme Justin, “La Clinique de l’École des parents du Québec,” Le Devoir (15 Nov. 1950), 2; (29 Nov. 1950), 2; (16 Dec. 1950), 2.
69 Claude and Manon Mailhiot, “Le Courrier de Radio-Parents,” EP 4/3 (Mar. 1953), 18–19. This letter and the reply were obviously inspired by Susan Isaacs, Parents et enfants, 154–56, but they did reveal the opinion of Dr Mailhiot and his wife on this matter.
70 Claude and Manon Mailhiot, “Le Courrier de Radio-Parents,” EP 5/10 (Oct. 1954), 10; “Principes de discipline,” EP 6/10 (Oct. 1955), 25.
71 Couture, La Mère canadienne et son enfant, 186.
72 Alberte Sénécal, La Mère canadienne et son enfant (Ottawa: Ministry of National Health and Social Welfare, 1954), 105–6.
73 Dr Benjamin Spock, Comment soigner et éduquer son enfant, 203; Claude and Manon Mailhiot, “Le Courrier de Radio-Parents,” EP 3/4 (Mar. 1952), 10; Thérèse Gouin-Décarie, Le Développement psychologique de l’enfant: Causeries de Radio-Collège (1952–1953) (Montreal: Fides, 1956), 124; Boulizon, “On s’amuse en famille,” 18.
74 Marie-Joseph d’Anjou, “Quand les parents paralysent les enfants,” CF 9/1 (Feb. 1956), 30.
75 Claude and Manon Mailhiot, “Le Courrier de Radio-Parents,” EP 4/10 (Oct. 1953), 17; Georges et Monique Dufresne, “Clinique de l’École des parents de Montréal,” Le Devoir (11 Nov. 1954), 6, and (20 Nov. 1954), 7. This debate has been analysed by Denyse Baillargeon, “‘We Admire Modern Parents,’” 266–67.
76 Yves Thériault, Le Marcheur (Montreal: Leméac, 1970 [1950]), 72. This play was first performed in 1950.
77 Anne Hébert, Le Torrent suivi de deux nouvelles inédites (Montreal: HMH, 1963), 11, 19. This novella was first published in 1950.
78 Jules Vallès, Jacques Vingtras. L’Enfant, 13, 50, 100; and Jacques Vingtras. Le Bachelier (Maxi-Livres, Profrance, 1998 [1879]), 235.
79 Marie-Joseph d’Anjou SJ, “Quand l’amour est absent,” CF 8/4 (Oct. 1952), 183.
80 Quoted respectively by Robert Jean, “Correction corporelle,” 37, and by Marie-Joseph d’Anjou SJ, “Quand l’amour est absent” (Oct. 1952), 186.
81 François Mauriac, Le Sagouin (Paris: Plon, 1966 [1951]), 9, 147.
82 Antoinette Grégoire-Coupal, “Le numéro 4,” Hérauts, Fides, 20 Mar. 1952, 36–39, and 15 Mar. 1952, 11. The author was a journalist and novelist, born in 1905 and married in 1927. DOLQ 2: 992. Pauline Gill, Marie-Antoinette: La dame de la rivière Rouge (Montreal: Québec-Amérique, 2005); Alice Miller, Libres de savoir, 8.
83 Marie-Joseph d’Anjou SJ, “Quand les parents paralysent les enfants,” CF 9/1 (Feb. 1952), 35.
84 L’Équipe, “Clinique de l’École des parents du Québec: La Force de l’exemple,” Le Devoir (4 Nov. 1950), 2; Lynn Z. Bloom, Doctor Spock: Biography of a Conservative Radical (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1972), 78, 132; Benjamin Spock and Mary Morgan, Spock on Spock: A Memoir of Growing Up with the Century (New York: Pantheon, 1985), 206.
85 Spock, Comment soigner et éduquer son enfant, 47, 305; Claude and Manon Mailhiot, “Pourquoi il importe d’obéir,” EP 6/7 (July 1955), 30; Baillargeon, “‘We Admire Modern Parents,’” 240.
86 Dr and Mme Rémy, “Clinique de l’École des parents du Québec: Comment punir une enfant de neuf ans,” Le Devoir (30 Jan. 1950), 5; Claude and Manon Mailhiot, “Le Courrier de Radio-Parents,” EP 6/7 (July 1955), 27–30; Dr Serge Lebovici, “La Psychologie des sanctions,” EP (Paris) (4 Feb. 1954), 17, and Pauline Lamy-Boisvert, “Où il est question de questions,” EP 4/11 (Nov. 1953), 3–5.
87 Lebovici, “La Psychologie des sanctions,” 21. On this last point Dr Lebovici may have been inspired by Dr Gilbert Robin’s description in L’Enfant sans défauts, 19.
88 Spock, Comment soigner et éduquer son enfant, 305.
89 Ibid.
90 Ibid., 14.
91 Claude and Manon Mailhiot, “Caractères, ces armures des âmes,” EP 1/5 (Apr. 1950), 16.
92 Ibid. See also “Le Courrier de Radio-Parents: L’Obéissance,” EP 3/4 (Mar. 1952), 11.
93 Monique Béchard-Deslandes and Roger Deslandes, “Faut-il les battre?” EP 6/6 (June 1955), 7–8. Monique Béchard held a doctorate in psychology; Roger Deslandes was a qualified teacher.
94 Françoise Lavigne, “Clinique de l’École des parents de Montréal,” Le Devoir (18 Nov. 1954), 6.
95 “Dressage ou éducation? Tu vas pleurer pour quelque chose.” Summary of a forum held at L’École des parents in Montreal, 24 Oct. 1951, in EP 3/3 (Feb. 1952), 6–9.
96 “Les pères oublient parfois,” condensed from People’s Home Journal, by W. Livingston Larned, Sélection du Reader’s Digest (hereafter SRD) 1/1 (June 1947), 17–18, reprinted with the title “Demain mon enfant je serai un vrai père,” in LF 21/11 (July 1958), 15.
97 All the information about Reader’s Digest is from André Beaulieu et al., La Presse québécoise des origines à nos jours, vol. 7, 1945–1954 (Quebec City: PUL, 1987), 98–99.
98 Louise Dickinson Rich, “Bébé devança le médecin,” SRD (July 1951), 73.
99 Frank Gilbreth Jr and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey, “Poils de carotte à la douzaine,” SRD (Aug. 1949), 120, 122, 136, 138, 150, 151. In 1950 this story was made into a film by Walter Lang, with the title Cheaper by the Dozen. It was remade, starring Steve Martin, in 2003.
100 Cheaper by the Dozen (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1948), 18.
101 Dorothy Thompson, “Quand j’étais petite,” SRD (Oct. 1954), 138–42.
102 Lebovici, “La Psychologie des sanctions,” 19–20.
103 Straus, Gelles, and Steinmetz, Behind Closed Doors, 102.
104 Frances Palmer, “Maintenant, nous sommes six,” SRD 24/139 (Jan. 1959), 183, 185, 187, 188.
105 Anna Perrott Rose, “La Maison douce,” SRD 16/93 (Mar. 1955), 170, 174, 180, 181, 184, 203, 204.
106 Elsie McCormick, “Ici on refait les ‘mauvais’ garçons,” SRD (July 1952), 118; Fulton Oursler, “Pourquoi y a-t-il une enfance délinquante?” SRD (Mar. 1951), 54–55; Spock, Comment soigner et éduquer son enfant, 45.
107 Mari Sandoz, “Ce que les Sioux m’ont appris,” SRD (Aug. 1952), 130. The Mohave did the same: Stuart Chase, “Sachez diriger votre agressivité,” SRD (Oct. 1956), 45.
108 Jhan and June Robbins, “Les enfants dont personne ne voulait,” SRD (Mar. 1962), 132–33.
109 Dr Donald Bloch, “Ne craignez pas de dire ‘non’ aux petits,” SRD (Feb. 1954), 80; Chase, “Sachez diriger votre agressivité,” 45–46.
110 Dr J.H. Conn, Professor of Psychiatry, “Ne blâmez pas vos parents,” SRD (Dec. 1952), 35–38; Ruth Alexander, economist and writer, “Choyer ou châtier les jeunes délinquants?” SRD (Apr. 1958), 174–80; Dr John Scofield, “Pourquoi ces jeunes sont-ils révoltés?” SRD (Dec. 1963), 69–70.
111 Karl Detzer, “Les blousons noirs ne l’impressionnent pas,” SRD (Sept. 1963), 116.
112 Lester David, “Un problème sérieux: Les enfants martyrs,” SRD (Jan. 1965), 107.
113 G.M. White, “Je me demande pourquoi maman me gronde,” SRD (Jan. 1950), 106–7; David, “Un problème sérieux,” 106.
114 Gleason, Normalizing the Ideal, 104; Baillargeon, “‘We Admire Modern Parents,’” 240, 247, 255, 269; Choisy, Savoir être maman, 24; Gesell and Ilg, Le Jeune Enfant dans la civilisation moderne, preface and 7.
115 A reference to the French Revolution. Louis XVI was sentenced to death on 19 Jan. 1793 and guillotined two days later.
116 Everest Foster, “Should Corporal Punishment Be Abolished in the Elementary School?” Teacher’s Magazine 37/185 (Feb. 1957), 38, quoted in our article “Qui bene amat bene castigat,” 163. Victor Poucel SJ, preface to the book by Maryse Choisy, Savoir être maman, 6.
117 At the time she had read the following: Geneviève Duhamelet, La Petite fille d’en face (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1950), 61, and Berthe Bernage, L’Homme au chapeau gris (Paris: Gauthier-Languereau, 1954), 78.
118 Françoise Cholette-Pérusse, Psychologie de l’enfant de zéro à dix ans (Montreal: Éditions du Jour, 1974 [1963]), 106. The author, who held a degree in psychology, had given a series of talks on Radio-Canada about the emotional and intellectual development of the child as part of a program called “Les Chansons de la maison.”
119 Gleason, “Disciplining Children,” 196, 208; Gölz, “Family Matters,” 27.
120 However, Samuel Laycock published at least one article in a Quebec Anglophone periodical: “Is Your Child Different from Other Children?” Quebec Home and School 4/3 (Dec. 1951), 10, quoted by Gleason, in Disciplining Children, 196.
121 Virginia Axline, Dibs: Développement de la personnalité grâce à la thérapie par le jeu, with an introduction by Leonard Carmichael, translated from English by Hélène Seyrès (Paris: Flammarion, 1967 [1964]), 111, 217; Louise Wilson, “Mon fils, qui es-tu?” SRD (Apr. 1969), 68.
1 Anna Ballestrazzi, “Laure Hurteau,” in Le Cercle des femmes journalistes, Vingt-cinq à la une: Biographies, 94–101.
2 Marcel-Marie Desmarais OP, La Clinique du cœur (Montreal: Éditions du Lévrier, 1958), and E.-Martin Meunier, “La nouvelle Ève: Marcel-Marie Desmarais (1908–1994),” in Gilles Routhier and Jean-Philippe Warren (eds.), Les Visages de la foi: Figures marquantes du catholicisme québécois (Montreal: Fides, 2003), 192; DOLQ 3: 41–42; Marcel-Marie Desmarais OP, La Magie du passé (Montreal: Leméac, 1985), Chapter 28, “Une Clinique du cœur très achalandée,” 397–415.
3 Rita Gagnon, “Huguette Proulx,” in Le Cercle des femmes journalistes, Vingt-cinq à la une, 169–73.
4 Janette Bertrand, Le Refuge sentimental (Montreal: Beauchemin, 1959).
5 Édith Manseau, La Presse du cœur: Un indicateur culturel, master’s thesis in Quebec Studies, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, 1985, 89–90.
6 “Le Courrier de Colette,” LP (10 May 1951), 26; “Réponse à tous,” LPa (13 June 1950), 12; Janette Bertrand, “Le Refuge sentimental,” PJ (12 Mar. 1967), 58; “Le Courrier de Michelle,” La Terre de chez nous (2 Jan. 1964), 16; “Le Courrier de Marie-Josée,” La Terre de chez nous (30 Aug. 1967), 17; Desmarais OP, La Magie du passé, 401.
7 Professor Lagache had collaborated with Ménie Grégoire, columnist in the Paris magazine Elle. Bertrand, Ma vie en trois actes, 209; Spock, Comment soigner et éduquer son enfant, 13. [The text of the quotation is from the English text, Baby and Child Care (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1968), 22.]
8 The evaluation was made by Yves Thériault himself, in “Pour hommes seulement,” La Patrie du dimanche (26 July 1959), 55.
9 “Le Courrier de Colette,” LP (29 Jan. 1947), 23; Janette Bertrand, “Le Refuge sentimental,” PJ (27 Jan. 1963), B15. The same role as a mother-substitute was played by the American Ann Landers, whose column appeared in 1,200 newspapers throughout the world between 1955 and 2002. Ellen Goodman, “Common Sense in Chicago: Mother Confessor Ann Landers Was as Universal as a Broken Heart,” Gazette (26 June 2002), B3.
10 Marcel-Marie Desmarais OP, “Les meilleures lettres de la Clinique du cœur,” LP (8 Jan. 1959), 13.
11 Throughout this chapter we shall use the word “child” with the broad meaning of “offspring,” even if some who complained of being beaten were eighteen or older.
12 Philippe Garigue, La Vie familiale des Canadiens français (Montreal: Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 1962), 35; Comacchio, “A Postscript for ‘Father,’” 404.
13 “Le Courrier de Colette,” LP (13 May 1946), 14; “Le Refuge sentimental,” PJ (2 Jan. 1955), 5; (13 Oct. 1957), 112.
14 “Les meilleures réponses à la Clinique du cœur: ‘Celui de trois ans, quel diablotin,’ LP (25 Feb. 1957), 24; Janette Bertrand, “Le Refuge sentimental,” PJ (21 Mar. 1965), M6, and (2 June 1968), 55.
15 The Quebec situation was therefore similar to what was observed by Linda Gordon, Heroes of Their Own Lives, 175, and Margo Wilson, Martin Daly, and Susanne Weghorst, “Differential Maltreatment of Girls and Boys,” Victimology 6 (1981), 249–61, quoted by Gordon, in Heroes, 347.
16 “Le Refuge sentimental,” PJ (6 May 1962), B15.
17 Of the sixty-four boys aged twelve or younger, twenty-eight were beaten by the father only, twenty-five by the mother only, eight by both parents, and the others by third parties. Of the thirty-nine girls in the same age group, seven were beaten by the father only, nineteen by the mother only, two by both parents, and the others by third parties.
18 Of the seventeen boys aged between thirteen and twenty, nine were beaten by the father only, four by the mother, and the others by third parties. Of the hundred girls in the same age group, fifty-three were beaten by the father only, twenty-one by the mother only, six by both parents, and the twenty others by third parties.
19 “Le Refuge sentimental,” PJ (30 Apr. 1961), 37; “Huguette Proulx vous répond,” La Patrie du dimanche (8 Oct. 1961), 15.
20 “Le Refuge sentimental,” PJ (30 Apr. 1961), 37; “Huguette Proulx vous répond,” La Patrie du dimanche (8 Oct. 1961), 15; (12 June 1960), 55.
21 “Le Courrier de Colette,” La Presse (19 Feb. 1942), 14; “Le Refuge sentimental,” PJ (4 June 1961), B14; “Les meilleures réponses à la Clinique du cœur,” LP (15 Jan. 1957), 18.
22 “Le Courrier d’Annie,” LPa (21 June 1954), 10.
23 “Le Courrier de Colette,” LP (29 Dec. 1932), 4; (10 Dec. 1946), 16; (4 Mar. 1954), 24.
24 On this subject, see Gaston Desjardins, L’Amour en patience: La sexualité adolescente au Québec, 1940–1960 (Sainte-Foy: Presses de l’Université du Québec, 1995), 157–83; Cynthia Comacchio, “A Postscript for ‘Father,’” 405; Marie-Aimée Cliche, “Morale chrétienne et double standard sexuel: Les filles-mères à l’hôpital de la Miséricorde à Québec, 1874–1972,” Histoire sociale 24/47 (May 1991), 104.
25 “Le Courrier de Colette,” LP (7 May 1947), 15; “Entretiens avec Laure Hurteau,” LP (8 Apr. 1959), 20. The same perception of abusive parents has been pointed out by Finkelhor, “Common Features of Family Abuse,” in The Dark Side of Families, 17–28, quoted by Linda Gordon, in Heroes of Their Own Lives, 173, 346.
26 Of twenty-five letters, one described the case of a drunken mother who beat her daughter, one other referred to both parents being drunk; the twenty-three others describe drunken, violent fathers. Of the last, twelve beat their wives as well as their children. Among the authors who stressed the link between alcoholism and abuse we would cite Michelle Rouyer and Marie Drouet, L’Enfant violenté: Des mauvais traitements à l’inceste (Paris: Bayard, 1994), 130, and Taylor, “Blessing the House,” 444. Re Canada, see L’Enfant en péril: Rapport du Comité sénatorial permanent de la santé, du bien-être et des sciences (Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada, 1980), 59.
27 “Le Courrier de Colette,” LP (17 Aug. 1943), 8; “Le Courrier de Marie-Josée,” La Terre de chez nous (22 June 1966, 14; “Les meilleures réponses à la Clinique du cœur,” LP (25 Jan. 1957), 16.
28 “Le Courrier de Colette,” LP (10 Mar. 1942), 16; “Huguette Proulx vous répond,” La Patrie du dimanche (9 Oct. 1960), 54; (20 Nov. 1960), 8.
29 “Le Courrier de Colette,” LP (14 Mar. 1949), 19; (27 Mar. 1942), 16; Janette Bertrand, “Le Refuge sentimental,” PJ (21 Mar. 1954), 20.
30 “Le Refuge sentimental,” PJ (15 Sept. 1963), B15; (26 Apr. 1959), 106; Mauriac, Le Sagouin, 9. On this subject, see Young, “Parents Who Hate,” 42–58, 60, and Brandt F. Steele and Carl B. Pollock, “A Psychiatric Study of Parents Who Abuse Infants and Small Children,” in Ray Helfer and Henry Kempe, The Battered Child, 126, 132.
31 “Le Courrier de Marie-Luce,” La Terre de chez nous (6 Apr. 1960), 16, and “Courrier de Colette,” LP (23 Mar. 1949), 23; “La Clinique de l’École des parents du Québec,” Le Devoir (15 Nov. 1950), 2, and (29 Nov. 1950), 2.
32 “Le Courrier de Colette,” LP (16 May 1942), 26; “Les meilleures réponses à la Clinique du cœur,” LP (6 May 1959), 22.
33 “Le Refuge sentimental,” PJ (10 Mar. 1963), B14.
34 Young, Wednesday’s Children, 52. This book was based on the files of three social service agencies in the United States.
35 This is the opinion expressed by Spock, in Comment soigner et éduquer son enfant, 13–14, and by Steele and Pollock, in “A Psychiatric Study of Parents,” 125.
36 “Clinique de l’École des parents du Québec,” Le Devoir (29 Nov. 1950), 2; “Le Refuge sentimental,” PJ (29 Mar. 1964), B14; (17 Mar. 1963), B14; Gelles, “Child Abuse,” 617–18.
37 “Le Courrier de Colette,” LP (17 Mar. 1943), 18; (12 Dec. 1953), 24, and “Le Refuge sentimental,” PJ (3 Sept. 1961), B14.
38 “Le Courrier de Colette,” LP (7 May 1954), 18; (13 Sept. 1948), 18; “Le Courrier de Marie-Josée,” La Terre de chez nous (30 Aug. 1967), 17; “Le Refuge sentimental,” PJ (1 Mar. 1959), 87, and (15 Nov. 1953).
39 “Les meilleures réponses à la Clinique du cœur,” LP (16 Dec. 1958), 23; “Le Refuge sentimental,” PJ (8 Sept. 1963), B14. See also “Le Courrier de Colette,” LP (29 Jan. 1947), 23.
40 “Le Courrier de Colette,” LP (16 Aug. 1948), 18.
41 “Les meilleures réponses à la Clinique du cœur,” LP (26 Sept. 1957), 36.
42 Martin, Étude des caractéristique, 3; Hay and Allen, La Violence et la négligence, 1, 5; Steele and Pollock, “A Psychiatric Study of Parents,” 109.
43 “Le Courrier de Colette,” LP (7 May 1954), 18; “Clinique de l’École des parents du Québec,” Le Devoir (18 Oct. 1950), 5, and (15 Jan. 1951), 2, quoted by Denyse Baillargeon, “‘We Admire Modern Parents,’” 262.
44 Jean Delumeau was struck by the advice given to confessors by the Magisterium that they should lend a sympathetic ear. L’Aveu et le pardon: Les difficultés de la confession, XIIIe–XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Fayard, 1990), 10, 31.
45 “Les meilleures réponses à la Clinique du cœur,” LP (16 Dec. 1958), 23; “Le Refuge sentimental,” PJ (26 Apr. 1959), 106; (29 Jan. 1961), 37; (13 Sept. 1963), B15. See the advertisements in La Presse (29 Mar. 1920), 20, and Le Soleil (4 Oct. 1920), 13. Leona Crabb, Minor Tranquilizing Drugs and the Medicalization of Everyday Life in English-Speaking Canada, 1945–1962, Doctoral thesis, Department of History, Carleton University, 1997, 37, 173.
46 Desmarais, La Clinique du cœur, 4, 91–93.
47 “Entretiens avec Laure Hurteau,” LP (8 Apr. 1959), 20.
48 “Le Refuge sentimental,” PJ (30 Apr. 1961), 37.
49 Ibid., (6 May 1962), B15.
50 Tardieu, “Étude médico-légale,” 378.
51 Straus and Donnelly, Beating the Devil Out of Them, 36.
52 “Le Refuge sentimental,” PJ (22 Nov. 1964), B16.
53 Ibid., (28 Apr. 1963), B14; Krafft-Ebing, Psychopatia Sexualis, and Sigmund Freud, Un enfant est battu, quoted by Ian Gibson, in The English Vice, 284; Greven, Spare the Child, 174–86; Straus and Donnelly, Beating the Devil Out of Them, 121–36.
54 “Le Courrier de Colette,” LP (14 Aug. 1950), 18; (23 Aug. 1950), 24; (15 Nov. 1940), 26.
55 Ibid., (28 Jan. 1944), 16.
56 Ibid., (8 Aug. 1950), 16.
57 “Réponse à tous,” LPa (10 Sept. 1948), 12; (21 Aug. 1949), 32; “Le Courrier d’Annie,” LPa (29 July 1953), 10.
58 “La Clinique du cœur,” LP (26 Sept. 1957), 36.
59 Desmarais, La Clinique du cœur, 9, 31–6. La Presse had refused to publish this reply, probably because in it Father Desmarais referred to someone as being mentally ill though his guilt (or mental illness) had not been proven in court.
60 “Les meilleures réponses à la Clinique du cœur,” LP (3 Jan. 1959), 15; (28 Feb. 1959), 19; (8 Jan. 1959), 13.
61 L. Évely, “Les enfants doivent-ils encore obéir à leurs parents?” Pédagogie, éducation et culture (Jan. 1952), 1. This article was initially published in 1951 in the Revue Cardinal Mercier.
62 Bloch, “Ne craignez pas de dire ‘non’ aux petits,” 79–82. The article by Abbé Évely is quoted in a box on 81. Perhaps Father Desmarais and his correspondent were inspired by the same article? Sigmund Freud, Nouvelles conférences sur la psychanalyse (Paris: Gallimard, 1936), 194, quoted by Annick Ohayon, “L’éducation des parents,” 87.
63 “Les meilleures réponses à la Clinique du cœur,” LP (3 Jan. 1959), 15, and (8 Jan. 1959), 13.
64 Ibid., (3 Jan. 1959), 15.
65 Victor Poucel SJ, in his preface to the book by Maryse Choisy, Savoir être maman, 6, quoted in “Les meilleures réponses à la Clinique du cœur” (3 Jan. 1959).
66 “Entretiens avec Laure Hurteau,” LP (17 Mar. 1959), 19. How could the same letter have appeared in both columns? Possibly the writer wrote to both columnists in order to compare their answers. Possibly also both columnists collaborated in writing the letter. The important thing, in this case, was to learn the opinion of each columnist.
67 “Entretiens avec Laure Hurteau,” LP (8 Apr. 1959), 20.
68 Ibid.
69 See the article by Vincent Duhaime, “‘Les pères ont ici leur devoir,’” 535–66.
70 JDC, 1935/507.
71 “Le Courrier de Michelle,” La Terre de chez nous (10 June 1964), 16.
72 “Le Courrier de Colette,” LP (21 June 1932), 4, and (27 Apr. 1945), 14; “Le Courrier de Michelle,” La Terre de chez nous (20 Mar. 1963), 25; (12 June 1963), 24; (16 June 1965), 16.
73 “Le Refuge sentimental,” PJ (30 Apr. 1961), 37; (4 June 1961), B14; (22 Nov. 1964), B16.
74 Sutherland, Growing Up, 84.
75 “Huguette Proulx vous répond,” La Patrie du dimanche (27 Nov. 1960), 7; “Le Refuge sentimental,” PJ (3 Nov. 1963), B15.
76 “Le Courrier de Marie-Josée,” La Terre de chez nous (27 Mar. 1968), 26.
77 At one time or another all the columnists expressed approval of mild corporal punishment with the exception of Claire Dutrisac, Huguette Proulx, and Marthe Beaudry, who did not explain their position on the subject clearly.
78 “Le Refuge sentimental,” PJ (24 Sept. 1961), B15.
79 Monique Béchard-Deslandes and Roger Deslandes, “Faut-il les battre?” EP 6/6 (June 1955), 7.
80 Philip Wylie, “Avez-vous des petits rois chez vous?” SRD (May 1955), 208–15. Dr Lebovici’s text is quoted on 212.
81 Lebovici, “La psychologie des sanctions,” 21.
82 Straus, Gelles, and Steinmetz, Behind Closed Doors, 151.
1 Loi instituant une clinique d’aide à l’enfance, Statuts du Québec, 1945, c. 25.
2 Joyal, Les Enfants, 208.
3 Loi relative aux écoles de protection de la jeunesse, Statuts du Québec, 1950, c. 11, Section 15.
4 Loi instituant la Cour de bien-être social, Statuts du Québec, 1950, c. 10.
5 To protect their anonymity, we continue to use fictional names or the initial of the last name of the individuals concerned. From here on we shall also use “child” with the legal meaning of the term, i.e., referring to anyone under 18.
6 SWC, 1955/1710.
7 SWC, 1960/649 and 255.
8 The references to scientific studies provided in Chapter 5 remain valid. To avoid any redundancies we shall not repeat them systematically.
9 Michelle Rouyer, “Psychopathologie de la maltraitance,” in Michel Manciaux (ed.), L’Enfant maltraité (Paris: Fleurus, 1993), 214, 226, and Latimer, Les Conséquences de la violence, 12. In this chapter we will frequently quote this document which provides a synthesis of the scientific studies on the question.
10 JDC, 1940/238. SWC, 1960/430.
11 Zola, L’Assommoir, 216–18, 372–8, 450–53.
12 JDC, 1945/8487.
13 These fourteen sentences were passed between 1912 and 1965, seven of them between 1940 and 1965.
14 JDC, 1940/663 and 593; 1945/8437; 1940/826.
15 SWC, 1965/1890. The newspaper cutting containing the extract from the advice column is in the file, but the name of the newspaper and the date are missing.
16 JDC, 1945/8307.
17 SWC, 1965/1608.
18 Rouyer, “Psychopathologie,” 217.
19 JDC, 1940/382.
20 JDC, 1945/7902, 7903, and 7904.
21 Leontine Young has observed similar situations in the United States: a parent abusing one child and encouraging the others to follow their example, in Wednesday’s Children, 51.
22 JDC, 1945/8126.
23 JDC, 1955/1623.
24 JDC, 1945/8076.
25 SWC, 1960/2036.
26 The notion that women have more fragile nerves than men is much older. In Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813) Mrs Bennett complains of her “poor nerves,” while her husband remains completely imperturbable.
27 JDC, 1965/1890. Desmarais, La Clinique du cœur, 9, 33.
28 JDC, 1945/8437. It deals with the man, already condemned on three occasions, whom the judge threatened with a whipping.
29 JDC, 1945/7790 and 1965/1714.
30 SWC, 1965/1148. The situation of a single-parent family is generally recognized as a risk factor for increased violence. Latimer, Les Conséquences de la violence, 12.
31 JDC, 1940/953; Sutherland, Growing Up, 84; “Le pitoyable enfant d’un ancien combattant aussi malheureux,” LP (5 Mar. 1947), 3.
32 JDC, 1950/873. SWC, 1960/1088 and 598. Some writers insist on the fact that an unfavourable socio-economic situation and unemployment increase the risk of ill-treatment. Latimer, Les Conséquences de la violence, 12, and Rouyer, “Psychopathologie,” 224.
33 SWC, 1955/471.
34 Katherine Barber (ed.), The Canadian Oxford English Dictionary (Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2001), 1269.
35 One of the earliest descriptions of the sadistic (before Sade) treatment of a daughter by her mother occurred in Les Dames galantes by Brantôme, text established and annotated by Maurice Rat (Librairie générale française, 1962 [c. 1583]), 175.
36 “Nouvelle Aurore enfant martyre,” Allô Police (hereafter AP) (30 Jan. 1955), 2.
37 JDC, 1940/271.
38 SWC, 1961/67.
39 SWC, 1960/2208; 1965/1419.
40 SWC, 1955/424. The father was seventy-nine [sic]. He was therefore forty-four in 1920.
41 JDC, 1941/655, 1955/1829, 1945/8142. SWC, 1965/227.
42 SWC, 1955/1710 and 1965/227.
43 SWC, 1955/1112. Neil Sutherland, Growing Up, 85.
44 SWC, 1965/227. Ruth Alexander, lecturer, economist, and writer, “Choyer ou châtier les jeunes délinquants?” SRD (Apr. 1948), 180.
45 Cynthia Comacchio has commented on the difficulty immigrants have had in adapting from as early as 1932. “‘A Postscript for Father,’” 405. However, in our sample social workers began to point this out in 1955.
46 SWC, 1960/743, 1955/879, 1960/689.
47 SWC, 1955/135.
48 Roger Martin du Gard, Les Thibault, vol. 1 (Paris: Gallimard, 1955), 110.
49 Gérard Parizeau, Joies et deuils d’une famille bourgeoise, 1867–1961 (Trois-Rivières: Éditions du bien public, 1973), 342–43.
50 Ibid., 210.
51 Nathalie Fontaine, “Maudits Françaîs” [sic] (Montreal: Éditions de l’Homme, 1964), 51, 125, 126.
52 Sohn, Chrysalides, 412.
53 Ibid., 413.
54 “Huguette Proulx vous répond,” La Patrie du dimanche (6 July 1958), 44.
55 JDC, 1950/2031. Young, Wednesday’s Children, 32–33.
56 SWC, 1960/1512. Gelles and Straus, Intimate Violence, 122.
57 SWC, 1960/2395. The notion of resilience was popularized by Boris Cyrulnik, esp. in Un merveilleux malheur (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2002 [1999]). See also Alice Miller, Libres de savoir, 8.
58 In a study carried out on runaway adolescents in 1987, 75% of the girls and 38% of the boys said they had been victims of abuse in childhood. M.D. Janus et al., Adolescent Runaways: Causes and Consequences (Toronto: D.C. Heath, 1987), quoted by Latimer, Les Conséquences de la violence, 10.
59 JDC, 1940/220. SWC, 1955/879.
60 JDC, 1945/8307. SWC, 1955/1710.
61 SWC, 1955/1112. JDC, 1940/953.
62 JDC, 1945/7903. SWC, 1960/483, 1965/444.
63 See Latimer, Les Conséquences de la violence, 14.
64 JDC, 1945/8076. SWC, 1955/1011.
65 Between 1940 and 1965 a diagnosis of aggressivity appeared in twenty files, of anxiety and insecurity in fifteen, and of inflexibility in six. Furthermore, twelve of these files described a case of aggressivity combined with anxiety, and four of them a case of aggressivity combined with inflexibility. On aggressivity as a consequence of violence, see Greven, Spare the Child, 193–98; Straus and Donnelly, Beating the Devil Out of Them, 99–120; Latimer, Les Conséquences, 14; Rouyer, “Psychopathologie,” 227–28.
66 JDC, 1945/8487. SWC, 1960/500. JDC, 1940/755 and 1278.
67 “Le Courrier de Colette,” LP (15 Nov. 1940), 26, and (23 Aug. 1950), 24; “Entretiens avec Laure Hurteau,” LP (15 Apr. 1958), 8.
68 SWC, 1965/1890.
69 SWC, 1965/444.
70 SWC, 1965/1890, 444, and 1590.
71 Six of the nine cases occurred before 1940 and three of them later. Five of the children were boys and four were girls.
72 JDC, 1945/7883.
73 SWC, 1952/988, 1959/3615, 1960/2036.
74 SWC, 1960/483 and 689. JDC, 1945/7903. SWC, 1960/2208.
75 SWC, 1960/1001. JDC, 1945/7931.
76 Fifty-two of the files before 1940 dealt with thefts committed by children under eighteen, and thirty-nine after that date. The thefts were considered serious enough to be mentioned in the charges in thirty-eight files from before 1940 and thirty-one later files (see Tables 8 and 11). We remind the reader that all these files concerned physically abused children.
77 Émile Laurent, on the subject of perversion, quoted by Gilbert Robin, L’Enfant sans défauts, 145; Frank McCourt, Les Cendres d’Angela: Une enfance irlandaise, translated from English [Angela’s Ashes: An Irish Childhood] by Daniel Bismuth (Paris: Belfond, 1997); Mordecai Richter, Hunting Tigers under Glass: Essays and Reports (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968), 71.
78 JDC, 1950/474. SWC, 1965/2540.
79 SWC, 1960/446.
80 SWC, 1955/365. An undated newspaper cutting mentions the murder and the sentence.
81 On inflexibility as a consequence of violence, see Greven, Spare the Child, 135–41.
82 SWC, 1960/2036.
83 SWC, 1960/2208.
84 SWC, 1965/1419.
85 On the reproduction of family violence, see Steele and Pollock, “A Psychiatric Study of Parents,” 111; also Gelles and Straus, Intimate Violence, 121–30.
86 JDC, 1941/655. SWC, 1955/1829. Josée Mattei, “À parents difficiles, enfants difficiles?” LduGRAPE, no. 41 (Sept. 2000), 64.
87 SWC, 1955/471.
88 SWC, 1960/824.
89 SWC, 1955/999 and 1965/1419.
90 JDC, 1945/7883.
91 JDC, 1915/2453.
92 “Le Courrier de Marie-Josée,” La Terre de chez nous (27 Mar. 1968), 26.
93 Latimer, Les Conséquences, 19, and Rouyer, “Psychopathologie,” 206.
94 J.-A. Robillard, (JDC judge), “La Cour juvénile, foyer d’éducation,” LF 6/4 (Dec. 1942), 129–31. Other articles by juvenile court judges were also published in this magazine. Julien Beausoleil, Comment prévenir la délinquance (Montreal: Centre d’orientation, 1949). “Entretiens avec Laure Hurteau,” LP (17 Mar. 1959), 19.
95 V. v. M., Superior Court, Richelieu, no. 110.140, 6 Mar. 1950, Rapports judiciaires du Québec, 1950, 279–81.
96 On this subject see the book by Sylvie Ménard, Des enfants sous surveillance: La rééducation des jeunes délinquants au Québec, 1840–1950, preface by Jean Trépanier (Montreal: VLB, 2003).
97 Straus and Donnelly, Beating the Devil Out of Them, 107–10, and J.L. Gillen, The Wisconsin Prisoner: Studies in Crimogenesis (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1946), quoted by Straus, Gelles, and Steinmetz, in Behind Closed Doors, 74; Joan Durrant and Linda Rose-Krasnor, Corporal Punishment: Research Review and Policy Recommendations (Ottawa: Health Canada and Justice Canada, 1995), 5; Latimer, Les Conséquences, 14–15.
1 LP (10 Apr. 1945), 2.
2 “Nouvelle Aurore enfant martyre,” AP (30 Jan. 1955), 2.
3 “Publication dénoncée par un sénateur,” LF (Oct. 1957), 15.
4 “Le drame de Rimouski,” AP (6 June 1954), 5. Out of discretion we have not used the real names of the individuals mentioned in the tabloid.
5 The author remembers a denunciation of the tabloid in a Sunday sermon in a town in the Abitibi region.
6 Carloni and Nobili, La Mauvaise Mère, 49, 75–6.
7 However, some specialists have stated that “the articles are generally well documented and present established facts.” Fabienne Cusson, “Les meurtriers qui tuent de nouveau,” in Jean Proulx, Maurice Cusson, and Marc Ouimet (eds.), Les Violences criminelles (Quebec City: Presses de l’Université Laval, 1999), 135.
8 We have not considered cases when a parent committed suicide after killing his or her children. We have dealt with this topic in another book entitled Fous, ivres ou méchants? Les parents meurtriers au Québec, 1775–1965 (Montreal: Boréal, 2011).
9 “Enfant martyrisée par une maman au trop lourd passé,” AP (15 Aug. 1954), 19. Better informed, Maryse Choisy wrote in 1947, quoting another author, “France is the country of child martyrs.” Urbain Gohier, quoted by Choisy, in Savoir être maman, 52.
10 The total comes to fifty-nine accused for fifty-four families because in some cases both parents were accused.
11 AP (30 Jan. 1955), 2; (6 Feb. 1955), 1; (10 June 1956), 1; (11 Apr. 1953), 2; (5 May 1957), 8.
12 AP (26 June 1955), 1, 7.
13 “Un ‘récital’d’horreurs: Nouvelle Aurore enfant martyre,” AP (30 Jan. 1955), 2; (27 Feb. 1955), 11.
14 AP (6 Feb. 1955), 6 and 7; Robert de Beaujolais, La Petite Martyre Victime de la Marâtre, Roman sensationnel (n.p., 1927), 23, and Benoît Tessier, Le Drame d’Aurore l’enfant martyre, 85, 103.
15 “Elle avait les lèvres fendues,” AP (10 June 1956), 4.
16 “La petite martyre va au restaurant,” AP (6 Feb. 1955), 20. In her study dealing with the city of Boston from 1880 to 1960, Linda Gordon found that step-parents were not at all overrepresented in abuse cases. Gordon, Heroes of Their Own Lives, 200. On the other hand, recent studies show that the children in blended families are particularly at risk: Robert Burgess and James Garbarino, “Doing What Comes Naturally? An Evolutionary Perspective on Child Abuse,” in Finkelhor et al., The Dark Side of Families, 93–94.
17 “Le Bourreau de Mackayville,” AP (15 July 1956), 1, 3, 4, 24.
18 “Dégoût du juge envers le bourreau d’enfants,” AP (29 July 1956), 12.
19 AP (15 Dec. 1963), 1; (6 Dec. 1964), 13.
20 Ibid., 14.
21 Ibid.
22 AP (6 Feb. 1955), 6; “En rasant sa tombe, veut-on faire croire qu’Aurore enfant martyre n’a pas existé?” AP (24 Sept. 1961), 3.
23 Tardieu, “Étude médico-légale,” 362; Latimer, Les Conséquences de la violence, 12; Annick Chauvin, “Jeune enfant et parents psychotiques,” LduGRAPE, no. 41 (Sept. 2000), 39–46; Gelles, “Child Abuse, 143-156”; Straus and Donnelly, Beating the Devil Out of Them, 89; Brandt Steele, “Psychodynamic Factors in Child Abuse,” in Ray Helfer and Ruth Kempe, The Battered Child, 101; Durrant and Rose-Krasnor, Corporal Punishment, 12.
24 Straus and Donnelly, Beating the Devil Out of Them, 89. Other authors use a broader definition of mental illness, which makes for a higher percentage. Research in Montreal has shown that, among mothers implicated in cases of neglect (but not abuse), 3.2% suffered from psychosis, 3.2% from neurosis, and 23% from depression. Quoted by Bouchard et al., “Les mauvais traitements envers les enfants,” 364.
25 Ruth S. Kempe and C. Henry Kempe, L’Enfance torturée, translated from English by E. Stafilas and S. Bredart (Brussels: Mardaga, 1978), 109–12.
26 “‘J’en peux plus. Je veux mourir!’” AP (13 Mar. 1960), 5; “Verdict rapide à Rimouski: Madame T. était malade,” AP (3 Apr. 1955), 7.
27 “Les procès bouleversants: Douze hommes acquittent une maman accusée du meurtre de son bambin,” AP (1 Jan. 1961), 15.
28 The earliest observations concerning melancholic filicide date from 1825. J. Delay, T. Lemperière, R Escourelle, and J. F. Dereux, “Contribution à l’étude de l’infanticide pathologique,” Semaine des Hôpitaux (Paris: Dec. 1957), 4070–71; Étienne De Greef, Introduction à la criminologie (Brussels: Joseph Vandenplas, 1946), 413–14; American Psychiatric Association, DSM-IV-TR: Manuel diagnostique et statistique des troubles mentaux, 4th ed. (Paris: Masson, 2000), 482–84; and Rouyer, “Psychopathologie,” 214.
29 “On a acquitté R.B.,” AP (23 June 1957), 24.
30 “Verdict rapide à Rimouski: Madame T. était malade,” AP (3 Apr. 1955), 7.
31 Epileptic states were also included in the classification by Delay et al., “Contribution à l’étude de l’infanticide pathologique,” 4073.
32 “Pour les protéger du vice: Elle a noyé ses trois fillettes pour les sauver de la damnation,” AP (22 July 1956), 3, 5; “Le drame de Walton,” AP (10 Mar. 1957), 11.
33 “Les aveux de D.,” AP (26 Feb. 1956), 11; “Le meurtre de la rue Montcalm,” AP (3 Jan. 1960), 17.
34 Illnesses described by Delay et al., “Contribution à l’étude,” 4070–73. Postpartum, or puerperal psychosis is mentioned in Michelle Rouyer, “Psychopathologie de la maltraitance,” 213–14, and in Annick Chauvin, “Jeune enfant et parents psychotiques,” in LduGRAPE, no. 41 (Sept. 2000), 40–41. DSM-IV-TR speaks of a brief psychotic distress beginning in the postpartum period, 382, 485–87.
35 “C’est dans l’épuisement qu’elle a noyé son bébé,” AP (10 June 1962), 6; “Elle a noyé ses trois fillettes,” AP (22 July 1956), 5; “Un drame de folie à Arvida: Elle tranche la gorge de son vrai fils mais ne touche pas à son fils adoptif!” AP (10 Apr. 1960), 4.
36 “‘J’en peux plus: Je veux mourir!’” AP (13 Mar. 1960), 5; “Le meurtre de la rue Montcalm,” AP (3 Jan. 1960), 17; “Un brave homme … qui a tué sa fille en la rouant de coups,” AP (12 Apr. 1959), 4.
37 “Celui qui tua ses trois enfants avec des sacs de plastique va être libéré,” AP (31 Dec. 1961), 2; “Le meurtre de Trois-Rivières,” AP (6 Sept. 1959), 24; “La fin du drame de Longueuil: Une pitoyable petite maman est acquittée,” AP (11 Mar. 1962), 17; “Elle a voulu tuer sa fillette pour la ‘clairer’ de la misère,” AP (17 May 1959), 5.
38 “Les femmes pleurent au procès de R.D. déclaré fou,” AP (11 Mar. 1962), 7; “Accusée du meurtre de son bébé, elle a eu la sympathie générale,” AP (15 Mar. 1959), 7.
39 Studies cited by Latimer, Les Conséquences de la violence, 12.
40 Burgess and Garbarino, “Doing What Comes Naturally?, 93–94.
41 Steele and Pollock, “A Psychiatric Study of Parents,” 103.
42 “Il est accusé du meurtre d’un bébé maigre et battu,” AP (26 Jan. 1958), 3; “Elle finit de cirer l’auto de son mari et, perdant la tête, tue sa fillette adoptive,” AP (17 Sept. 1961), 7.
43 “Le drame d’une pauvre maman malade!” AP (11 Mar. 1962), 3; “Guérie de la folie qui la poussa à étrangler son bébé, elle sera jugée,” AP (7 Oct. 1962), 13–14; “Elle souffrait de ‘mélancolie’ quand elle a étranglé son bébé,” AP (4 Nov. 1962), 15.
44 Edward Stern, “The Medea Complex: The Mother’s Homicidal Wishes to her Child,” Journal of Mental Science 94 (Apr. 1948), 321–31, and Carloni and Nobili, La Mauvaise Mère, 53, 184–95.
45 “Dans une rage destructive: Elle lui a tenu la tête sous l’eau jusqu’à la mort totale,” AP (30 Aug. 1959), 3; “‘Il a beaucoup souffert,’ dit-elle de l’enfant qu’elle vient de noyer,” AP (30 Aug. 1959), 3; “Un même jury trouve folles, en moins de deux heures, deux mères qui avaient tué leurs petits,” AP (27 Nov. 1960), 5.
46 “Vaste foule au procès par un froid de 55 sous zéro!” AP (27 Jan. 1957), 8, 9.
47 “Le procès de Madame L.L.,” AP (27 Jan. 1957), 7, 17.
48 Gelles, “The Social Construction of Child Abuse,” 368, and Latimer, Les Conséquences de la violence, 11.
49 AP (27 Jan. 1957), 7.
50 “L. tua le bébé de 5 mois en le frappant à tour de bras,” AP (25 Oct. 1959), 10. This case occurred in Ontario.
51 “Générosité d’un jury: L. acquitté d’avoir tué son bébé,” AP (1 Nov. 1959), 10.
52 “Une minute avant le verdict, A.R se dit coupable,” AP (29 Jan. 1956), 9.
53 “A. fera 14 ans pour avoir tué sa fillette,” AP (5 Feb.1956), 19.
54 “Meurtre à Westmount: Il aurait tué son bébé à coups de bouteille à lait,” AP (18 Nov. 1962), 9.
55 “Par pitié, même s’il avait tué son bébé, on le laisse libre!” AP (22 Dec. 1963), 30.
56 Steele and Pollock, “A Psychiatric Study of Parents,” 126, 132; Young, “Parents Who Hate”; “Le Courrier de Colette,” LP (16 May 1942), 26, (23 Mar. 1949), 23. See in Chapter 7 the letter to Janette Bertrand signed “I Hate Him.”
57 “C’est après le départ de C. qu’ É. aurait étranglé son enfant,” AP (10 Apr. 1955), 12; “Enfant martyre dans la région de l’île Maligne,” AP (5 Aug. 1956), 3; “Martyrisée par sa mère, Thérèse ne pèse que 29 livres à six ans,” AP (5 Aug. 1956), 3; “À quel point Monsieur et Madame L. ont-ils brutalisé leur enfant?” AP (12 Aug. 1956), 9.
58 “Elle le frappait toujours à la tête,” AP (6 Dec. 1959), 8; “La jeune mère de Hull avait souhaité souvent la mort de son fils de quatre ans,” AP (1 Nov. 1959), 19; “Le procès de Hull,” AP (6 Dec. 1959), 20.
59 “La marâtre découcheuse est acquittée du meurtre de son pauvre petit souffre-douleur,” AP (6 Dec. 1959), 7.
60 Kempe et al., “The Battered-Child Syndrome.” An early study is mentioned, published 16 years before: J. Caffey, “Multiple Fractures in Long Bones of Infants Suffering from Chronic Subdural Hematoma,” American Journal Roentgenology 56 (Aug. 1946), 163–73.
61 Lester David, “Un problème sérieux,” 108; “Pour la mort de ce bébé de 5 mois, martyrisé, on blâme autant la ville de Sudbury que les parents,” AP (26 Apr. 1964), 10.
62 “Il s’est couché les mains pleines du sang de sa petite Monique,” AP (1 Dec. 1957), 13.
63 “À quel point M. et Madame L. ont-ils brutalisé leur enfant?” AP (12 Aug. 1956), 9.
64 “Le bourreau de Mackayville,” AP (15 July 1956), 4 and 24.
65 “Il s’est couché les mains pleines du sang de sa petite Monique,” AP (1 Dec. 1957), 13, 24; “Bébé cruellement battu à New-Carlisle pour ne pas avoir fait pipi!” AP (31 Jan. 1960), 21; “À quel point M. et Madame L. ont-ils brutalisé leur enfant?” AP (12 Aug. 1956), 9; “Femme de Saint-Henri accusée d’avoir battu à mort son bébé âgé de sept semaines,” AP (19 July 1959), 7; “L’enfant martyr de C.: Gardé depuis Noël dans une cave où on l’arrosait pour le faire taire!” AP (7 Aug. 1960), 3.
66 “Le drame de Sherbrooke,” AP (21 June 1964), 10; “Meurtre à Westmount: Il aurait tué son bébé à coups de bouteille à lait,” AP (18 Nov. 1962), 9.
67 “Elle avait les lèvres fendues, les cuisses et les bras lacérés,” AP (10 June 1956), 5.
68 “Pour la mort de ce bébé de 5 mois, martyrisé, on blâme autant la ville de Sudbury que les parents,” AP (26 Apr. 1964), 10; “À quel point M. et Mme L. ont-ils brutalisé leur enfant?” AP (12 Aug. 1956), 9.
69 “Les 2 étudiants avaient enregistré sur ruban les cris de l’enfant qu’ils croyaient martyrisé,” AP (1 Apr. 1962), 12, 13; “Correction à l’enfant afin de combattre le feu avec le feu!” AP (20 May 1962), 12.
70 AP (20 May 1962), 18.
71 Odette Oligny, “Le climat de l’école marquera toute la vie de vos enfants,” Bonnes Soirées, no. 1746 (18 Aug. 1955), 61. Oligny worked for La Presse from 1925 to 1929 and for Le Canada in 1931. She published several books, including Entre vous et moi (Montreal: Éditions du Totem, 1935).
72 D. Gill, “Physical abuse of children, findings and implications of a nationwide survey,” Pediatrics 44 (1969), quoted by Carloni and Nobili, La Mauvaise Mère, 74.
73 We have taken the following explanation mostly from Carloni and Nobili, La Mauvaise Mère, 75, but it can also be found elsewhere.
74 Spock, Baby and Child Care, 20–21.
75 Carloni and Nobili, La Mauvaise Mère, 75.
76 Rouyer, “Psychopathologie,” 211, referring to four other authors.
77 Carloni and Nobili, La Mauvaise Mère, 75. Rouyer would say later that “the majority of abusive parents can give an outward appearance of normalcy and the pathology of narcissistic personality faults is evident above all in the relationship with the child. “Psychopathologie,” 209.
78 Carloni and Nobili, La Mauvaise Mère, 60–61.
79 “Les 2 étudiants avaient enregistré sur ruban les cris de l’enfant qu’ils croyaient martyrisé,” AP (1 Apr. 1962), 12.
80 Straus and Donnelly, Beating the Devil Out of Them, 89; Hay and Allen, La Violence et la négligence à l’égard des enfants, 1.
81 Steele and Pollock, “A Psychiatric Study of Parents.”
1 Cyrulnik, Les Vilains Petits Canards, 110. I am grateful to Michelle Perrot, Professor at the Université Paris VII-Jussieu, for her advice concerning the use of comic strips.
2 Ohayon, “L’éducation des parents,” 90.
3 The importance of humour was recognized by Lucie Marinier, “Avoir des parents difficiles et se le tenir pour dit,” LduGRAPE, 93. This author cited “a book the importance of which is above all its title”: Jeanne Van den Brouck, Manuel à l’usage des enfants qui ont des parents difficiles, preface by Françoise Dolto (Montreal: France-Amérique, 1979); “La Clinique de l’École des parents de Montréal,” Le Devoir (11 Nov. 1954), quoted by Baillargeon, “‘We Admire Modern Parents,’” 267; “D’après nature,” SRD (May 1959), 76.
4 Henri Bergson, Le Rire: Essai sur la signification du comique (Paris: PUF, 1961 [1900]), 3, 13, 102, 113.
5 Sigmund Freud, “L’Humour,” appended to Le Mot d’esprit et ses rapports avec l’inconscient, translated from German by Marie Bonaparte (Paris: Gallimard, 1930 [1905]), 368–72.
6 Lucie Marinier, “Avoir des parents difficiles et se le tenir pour dit,” LduGRAPE, no. 41 (Sept. 2000), 93. Alice Miller also pointed out (in Libres de savoir, 105) that it was his sense of humour that allowed Frank McCourt to survive his impoverished childhood and write Angela’s Ashes.
7 S. Vanistendael, Clés pour devenir: La résilience (Les Vendredis de Châteauvallon, Nov. 1998); Bureau international catholique de l’enfance, Les Cahiers du BICE (Geneva, 1996), 9, quoted by Boris Cyrulnik, in Un merveilleux malheur, 8.
8 Opinion expressed by Beausoleil, Comment prévenir la délinquance, 126.
9 Claude-Henri Grignon, “Histoire de Ti-Prince,” Bonnes Soirées, no. 1758 (10 Nov. 1955), 42.
10 Fréchette, Mémoires intimes, 133.
11 Martin, Dans un gant de fer: La joue gauche, 120, and Sylvie Dallard, “Dans un gant de fer, mémoires de Claire Martin (née Montreuil),” in DOLQ 4: 244.
12 Lucia-Pilar Cancelas y Ouvina, “Carroll contre Dahl: Deux conceptions distinctes de l’humour,” in Jean Perrot (ed.), L’Humour dans la littérature de jeunesse (Paris: In Press Editions, 2000), 228.
13 “Délinquance juvénile,” EP 4/8 (Aug. 1953), 11–15; Mario Pei, “Que demandent les jeunes?” SRD (July 1956), 61; Henry Link, “Comment assurer la sécurité de nos enfants,” SRD (June 1951), 168. For a more positive opinion, see André Berge, Le Métier de parent (Paris: Aubier, 1952), 43, and “Tintin: Un illustré conquérant,” EP 7/1 (Jan. 1956).
14 Nelly Feuerhahn, Le Comique et l’enfance (Paris: PUF, 1993), 79; Greven, Spare the Child, 150–55.
15 A survey carried out in the United States in 1962 found that the readership of comics strips peaks between the ages of 30 and 39, after which it slowly declines. Pierre Morel, La Bande dessinée (Paris: Larousse, 1976), 97.
16 Wilhelm Busch, Max et Moritz, adapted by Cavanna (Paris: L’École des loisirs, 1978); Hans-Heino Ewers, “Le comique dans la littérature enfantine de langue allemande,” in Jean Perrot (ed.), L’Humour dans la littérature de jeunesse (Paris: In Press Editions, 2000), 23.
17 Feuerhahn, Le Comique et l’enfance, 59; Jacques Saboul, 93 ans de BD (Paris: 1989), 25–26; Michel Pierre, La Bande dessinée (Paris: Larousse, 1976), 52; Marjorie Alessandrini (ed.), Encyclopédie des bandes dessinées (Paris: Albin Michel, 1979), 72; Maurice Horn (ed.), The World Encyclopedia of Comics (New York: Chelsea House, 1976), 209, 421.
18 Paul L’Anglais (b. 1907), said that he read the Katzenjammer Kids in an American newspaper. He added that these “funnies” had a remarkable circulation in Quebec. Paul L’Anglais, Ma Belle Époque (Montreal: Éditions Héritage, 1977), 59.
19 In Le Petit Journal, starting in 1959, this comic strip was taken over by Joe Musial using the title “Toto et Titi.” We ended our analysis in 1958 to preserve the unity of the authors’ thought.
20 Alessandrini, Encyclopédie des bandes dessinées, 142; Horn, The World Encyclopedia of Comics, 307, 455; Henri Filippini, Dictionnaire encyclopédique des héros et auteurs de BD (Paris: Glenat, 1998), 272, 757.
21 Filippini, Dictionnaire encyclopédique, 743, 802–3, 815.
22 Phyllis D. Coontz and Judith A. Martin, “Understanding Violent Mothers and Fathers: Assessing Explanations Offered by Mothers and Fathers for Their Use of Control Punishment,” in Gerald T. Hotaling et al. (ed.), Family Abuse and Its Consequences: New Directions in Research (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1988), 79.
23 “On Punishing,” Journal of Education for the Province of Quebec 15/9 (Sept. 1871), 137. See also the advice given by Father M.-M. Desmarais; see Chapter 7.
24 Jacques Zimmer, La Bande dessinée (Paris: Ligue française de l’enseignement et de l’éducation permanente), 15.
25 Gérard Blanchard, Histoire de la bande dessinée: Une histoire des histoires en images, de la préhistoire à nos jours (Verviers: Marabout, 1974), 178.
26 See Les Petites Filles modèles, in which Sophie has difficulty walking because of a beating by her stepmother, and Un bon petit diable, in which a judge reproaches Mme Mac Miche for beating a child (her cousin) so badly that he could move only with difficulty. Comtesse de Ségur, Les Petites Filles modèles, p. 79, and Un bon petit diable, p. 47.
27 Bergson, Le Rire, 112.
28 Ibid., 59.
29 Martin and Huin, Images d’Épinal, 136.
30 Feuerhahn, Le Comique et l’enfance, 69.
31 Bergson, Le Rire, 44.
32 Jacques Tramson, “Une figure rhétorique spécifique de la bande dessinée: Le gag de fin de planche,” in Jean Perrot (ed.), L’Humour dans la littérature de jeunesse (Paris: In Press Editions, 2000), 106.
33 Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown’s Schooldays, by An Old Boy (London: Nelson, n.d.), 145, and W. Welch, “School Discipline,” Journal of Education 20/8 (Aug. 1876), 118.
34 Feuerhahn, Le Comique et l’enfance, 21.
35 Marie Saint-Dizier, “L’humour en famille, ou le délectable plaisir de ne pas être compris,” in Perrot, L’humour dans la littérature de jeunesse, 239.
36 “La bonne presse,” SRD (Nov. 1952), 157, and “Usage externe,” EP 3/6 (May 1952), 13.
37 Alice Miller, Libres de savoir, 105.
38 Zimmer, La Bande dessinée, 15.
1 This is one of the conclusions of our article “Qui bene amat bene castigat,” 164.
2 Protection de la jeunesse, no. 905, Jurisprudence Express, summary no. 97-1369 (Cour du Québec, Chambre de la jeunesse).