10. Léon and Marie Arsenault

His godparents were Jean Arsenault (probably his father's brother) and Magdeleine Arsenault (Gonzague's sister).

Léon and Marie had little formal education. They briefly attended a small school entirely run by the local population. It was only in 1894 that a school district was formed in Maximeville and formally recognized by the Board of Education. Léon could read and write to some extent while Marie, thanks to her own efforts, became somewhat more literate. According to Aunt Emily Blacquiere: "She very much enjoyed reading. She liked to read story books and she could write well. She never had the opportunity to be formally educated." Aunt Matilda Richard remembers reading for her parents when she was very young: "I wasn't in school for very long before I could read rather well. In the evenings, my mother and my father would ask me to read to them English and French books. They enjoyed listening to the stories."

Like many teenagers of her time, Marie worked at least one summer in a lobster cannery. Owned by Johnny McNally, it was located at the "Cove", near the Cape Egmont lighthouse. She did not, however, spend much time doing that type of work since she had a talent which was not given to every young women: she was a very accomplished dressmaker and seamstress. "When someone was getting married in the parish, either in Mont Carmel or Egmont Bay, they came to get her’, says Aunt Emily Blacquiere. “She went to their homes for weeks at a time to sew for them making wedding dresses and everything else." After her marriage, she didn't move around any more but continued working for others at home. In particular, she sewed for her sisters-in-law with whom she exchanged time, which meant doing housework and taking care of the children. One of these was Aunt Julie Arsenault, a widow with a large family, who paid for Marie's work by weeding her vegetable garden. "She worked almost day and night”, recalls Aunt Aline Poirier. “She did all the sewing, she dressed all the children. We were a big family and we didn't have much money." After becoming a grandmother, Marie was kept busy making clothing for her numerous grandchildren.

In those times of large families, every penny counted and nothing was wasted. Marie knew all the tricks for recycling used clothing. Aunt Emily recounts: "I remember, people brought her old faded coats to be renewed. She had to undo them and reverse the material. It made them a "new" spring coat. There was a lot of work in that."

Marie often told her children the story of how she had started to sew. Aunt Emily:

She learned it all on her own. Many times she told me about the first time she sewed something. In those days, little boys wore dresses until they were two or three years old. My grandmother had some fabric to make a dress for my uncle Sylvére but she

hadn't made it yet. While Pépé and Mémé were gone to church to go confession, my mother took that material and she cut out a dress for Uncle Sylvére. She had sewed it

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