Gaspésie Festival of Tales and Legends 2024
As part of the GASPÉSIEN FESTIVAL OF STORYTELLERS AND LEGENDS, we have made a good habit of organizing a creative residency with professional storytellers from very contrasting worlds. The objective of this residency is the design of a collective show based on the same theme.
This year we offered the storytellers the father with the lice as a starting point.
In a collection of legends from all over Quebec, cataloged in 1919 by Marius Barbeau, resides the local legend Le père au lice, attributed to the family of Mr. Pascal Lemieux of Mont-Louis. It talks about Father Barthélémy Robinson, the first representative of the Robinson line in the region. Father Robinson is frequently cited as an informant by the most prolific singers and storytellers of the Gaspé coast, including François Saint-Laurent de Tourelle.
The legend of the father with the lice relates that Father Barthélémy was not a great believer and that a priest who tried to convert him would have cast a spell on him following an argument. This anecdote echoes certain observations of Marius Barbeau, who argued in a 1931 article that pagan beliefs and the supernatural world were still well-anchored realities in the lives of the region’s inhabitants at the turn of the 20th century. The transcription of this legend would also be one of the first documents to mention the place called Pointe-sec de Mont-Louis, from which the performance hall located there today takes its name.
with Yolaine, Jocelyn Sioui, Évan Kuakuapishish and Yoda Lefebvre
