Interview With Annette Noël
Date of the interview: 2019
Credits: Société d’histoire de Malartic
Title of the photograph: View of a settlement village in Abitibi.
Date of the photograph: 1940
Credits of the photograph : BAnQ Rouyn-Noranda, Canadien National fonds. 08Y,P213,P032.
In this excerpt from an interview, Annette Noël tells us about her arrival in Abitibi in September 1939.
Mrs. Noël: “We came when I was nine years old. We arrived in Amos by train.”
Interviewer: “Where from?”
Mrs. Noël: “St-Théodore-de-Chertsey, Montcalm County. Not far from Joliette. I remember that when we came, they said on the train that War had just been declared. We arrived in Amos and from there we went up to St-Mathieu. The road was all like side roads. There were things and the gravel was on top. When it got wet, you couldn’t go over it.”
Interviewer: “On logs?”
Mrs. Noël: “Yeah, logs. And then my father’s cousin, Fernando Crépeault; they stayed, it seems to me, 15 days with the rest of us. The two families all together. I left Roc-d’Or, I came to work in Malartic… uh, in Rivière-Héva to begin with. And then I went to Malartic, but that was in 1949. I got married in 1951.”