Excerpts from LePailleur’s diary 2
Source: Land of a thousand sorrows (Journal d’un patriote exilé en Australie 1839-1845), published by Éditions Septentrion.
Translated transcript:
(March 23, 1840) We start to do the same work as last week: breaking stone, unloading the barges, carting the stone from the wharf onto the big piles of stone, sifting the small stone from the big ones, carting the stones that we break onto the piles of broken stones,
and so on.
(October 11, 1841) Niech told me that he would have his house painted and he will ask me to do it.
(November 4, 1841) At three o’clock in the afternoon, I received a letter from my dear and beloved wife, which is dated March 15, 1841, in Montréal. This gives me great joy. Louis Pinsonnault also received a letter from his wife today.
(November 23, 1841) We learned today that a petition had been presented in the House of Commons, in England, on behalf of Mr. Duncombe, asking for the release of all political prisoners, without distinction; and the gazette, which is an English gazette, does not say who made this petition, but we assume that it comes from the Chartists of England. […] This news pleases us very much.