Mission mitchif : Courir le Rougarou pour renouveler ses liens avec la tradition orale

Pendant presque soixante ans, la société de la colonie de la rivière Rouge du XIXe siècle fut majoritairement franco-métisse. Issus de mariages entre des Canadiens français engagés dans la traite de la fourrure et des femmes amérindiennes, les Métis ou, pour employer le terme qui correspond à la prononciation métisse du mot, les « Mitchifs » croyaient alors constituer la « Nouvelle Nation ». Cependant, avant la fin du siècle, ils étaient en train de devenir le « peuple oublié du Canada » : les conséquences de la création de la province du Manitoba en 1870 et ensuite, de leur défaite à la bataille de Batoche face à l’armée canadienne en 1885, suivie de la mise à mort pour haute trahison de leur chef spirituel et politique Louis Riel, ont entraîné la dispersion de leurs communautés et la ré-identification d’un grand nombre d’individus. Ils sont disparus de la scène publique et ce, jusqu’aux années 1960. Au sortir du « Grand Silence », le groupe avait subi de grandes pertes : comment transmettre une tradition orale lorsque la communauté s’est fragmentée ou si l’on n’ose plus avouer son patrimoine? Actuellement, les artistes de la communauté métisse at large aident les leurs à célébrer les noyaux culturels qui leur restent, mais des pans entiers de la mémoire collective leur manquent. Cet article traite d’un projet qui vise à rendre à la communauté métisse une minuscule partie de leur patrimoine.For nearly 60 years, the nineteenth century colony of the Red River was mainly Franco-Métis. Born of marriages between French Canadian fur traders and Amerindian women, the Métis—or to use the Métis pronunciation “Mitchifs”—believed they were the “New Nation”. Yet, before the end of the century, they were becoming “Canada’s forgotten people”. The creation of the Manitoba province in 1870, followed by their defeat at the Battle of Batoche against Canadian forces in 1885, and then the execution of their spiritual and political leader, Louis Riel, for high treason—these events had consequences which led to the dispersion of their communities and the re-identification of many individuals. They disappeared from the public scene until the 1960s, and after this period of “great silence”, they had experienced significant losses: How does a fragmented community, or a community that no longer dares to admit its heritage, hand down its oral tradition? Today, Métis artists are helping their own to celebrate what remains of their cultural core, but entire segments of the collective memory are missing. This article looks at a project aimed at giving back to the Métis community a small part of their heritage

Cuisine et identité culturelle: discours et représentations chez des écrivains franco-canadiens et métis d’ascendance française contemporains

Dans cet article, Pamela V. Sing s’intéresse à une écriture révélatrice de l’importance du lien entre la langue maternelle ou ancestrale et l’identité, et ce, même chez ceux dont les pratiques linguistiques sont hautement diglossiques. Les trois écrivains dont il est question ici, Paulette Dubé, Sharon Proulx-Turner et Joe Welsh, ont des liens avec les Franco-Métis du XIXe siècle dont la culture et les pratiques ont subi une cruelle stigmatisation dès 1885, l’année de la défaite des Métis à la bataille de Batoche, suivie de la mise à mort de Louis Riel, condamné pour haute trahison. Pendant presque un siècle, celui du «Grand Silence», ils ont constitué le «peuple oublié du Canada», et lorsqu’ils sont retournés sur la scène publique, c’était en tant qu’anglophones pour qui bien des pratiques culturelles ancestrales avaient été oubliées. Aujourd’hui, les écrivains d’ascendance franco-métisse pratiquent une écriture qui, en se rappelant certains aspects de leur patrimoine, subvertit les stéréotypes réducteurs et dévalorisants dont les leurs sont victimes depuis longtemps. Il en résulte, entre autres, un discours culinaire dont le fonctionnement consiste à transformer une pratique culturelle en code culturel. Comme la remémoration de mets traditionnels fait presque inévitablement appel à la langue ancestrale, on a affaire à des textes hybrides écrits principalement en anglais, mais où viennent surgir des bribes dans une langue première dont le souvenir est aussi indestructible qu’il est imparfait. Il s’agit d’une écriture «bi-langue» étonnamment poétique, innovatrice et traditionnelle en même temps.In this article, Pamela V. Sing examines writing that brings forth the importance of the connection between one’s native or ancestral language and identity, even in speakers whose use of language is highly diglossic. The three writers studied here—Paulette Dubé, Sharon Proulx-Turner, and Joe Welsh—are historically linked with Western Canada’s 19th-century Franco-Métis, whose culture and mores were subjected to harsh stigmatization beginning in 1885, the year in which the Métis were defeated at the Battle of Batoche and Louis Riel was put to death, having been convicted of high treason. For nearly a century—the years of the “great silence“—the Métis were Canada’s forgotten people, and when they returned to public life, it was as English-speakers, for whom many of the ancestral traditions that defined their culture had slipped into oblivion. Contemporary writers of Franco-Métis ancestry engage in writing that, by recalling certain aspects of their heritage, subverts the reductive and demeaning stereotypes that have been inflicted on the Métis people for many long years. One manifestation of this trend is a culinary discourse that functions by transforming a cultural practice into a cultural code. Because the recollection of traditional dishes almost inevitably calls on words from the ancestral language, the resulting writings are hybrid texts, written primarily in English, but interspersed with tidbits of a primordial language that is both unforgettable and imperfectly remembered. The resulting writing is a meeting of two languages that is astonishingly poetic, innovative and traditional all at once

Intersections of Memory, Ancestral Language, and Imagination; or, the Textual Production of Michif Voices as Cultural Weaponry

Anthologies and studies published in Aboriginal or Native writing and storytelling in Canada or Quebec generally suggest that First Nations and Métis writings form one and the same literature. While such groupings do not prevent the recognition that a particular writer is Métis, nor do they address the question of a distinct Métis cultural production. This state of affairs is further complicated by the fact that the majority of such volumes are written from an English-language perspective, which has historically overlooked the connections between Métis, French, and Franco-Canadian ancestry. The continued “neglect” of this reality threatens two oral traditions which are the product of these diverse groups, Michif and Michif French. While both of these languages may well be disappearing—despite efforts to conserve and resuscitate them—they have become incontestably rich sources of an emergent creative expression of place and identity that validates peoples and cultures that might otherwise be obscured or forgotten altogether

Pressure dependence of the Verwey transition in magnetite: an infrared spectroscopic point of view

We investigated the electronic and vibrational properties of magnetite at temperatures from 300 K down to 10 K and for pressures up to 10 GPa by far-infrared reflectivity measurements. The Verwey transition is manifested by a drastic decrease of the overall reflectance and the splitting of the phonon modes as well as the activation of additional phonon modes. In the whole studied pressure range the down-shift of the overall reflectance spectrum saturates and the maximum number of phonon modes is reached at a critical temperature, which sets a lower bound for the Verwey transition temperature T$_{\mathrm{v}}$. Based on these optical results a pressure-temperature phase diagram for magnetite is proposed.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures; accepted for publication in J. Appl. Phy

Upgrades of Two Computer Codes for Analysis of Turbomachinery

Major upgrades have been made in two of the programs reported in "ive Computer Codes for Analysis of Turbomachinery". The affected programs are: Swift -- a code for three-dimensional (3D) multiblock analysis; and TCGRID, which generates a 3D grid used with Swift. Originally utilizing only a central-differencing scheme for numerical solution, Swift was augmented by addition of two upwind schemes that give greater accuracy but take more computing time. Other improvements in Swift include addition of a shear-stress-transport turbulence model for better prediction of adverse pressure gradients, addition of an H-grid capability for flexibility in modeling flows in pumps and ducts, and modification to enable simultaneous modeling of hub and tip clearances. Improvements in TCGRID include modifications to enable generation of grids for more complicated flow paths and addition of an option to generate grids compatible with the ADPAC code used at NASA and in industry. For both codes, new test cases were developed and documentation was updated. Both codes were converted to Fortran 90, with dynamic memory allocation. Both codes were also modified for ease of use in both UNIX and Windows operating systems

Prediction and measurement of radiation damage to CMOS devices on board spacecraft

The CMOS Radiation Effects Measurement (CREM) experiment is presently being flown on the Explorer-55. The purpose of the experiment is to evaluate device performance in the actual space radiation environment and to correlate the respective measurements to on-the-ground laboratory irradiation results. The experiment contains an assembly of C-MOS and P-MOS devices shielded in front by flat slabs of aluminum and by a practically infinite shield in the back. Predictions of radiation damage to C-MOS devices are based on standard environment models and computational techniques. A comparison of the shifts in CMOS threshold potentials, that is, those measured in space to those obtained from the on-the-ground simulation experiment with Co-60, indicates that the measured space damage is smaller than predicted by about a factor of 2-3 for thin shields, but agrees well with predictions for thicker shields

Transit spectrophotometry of the exoplanet HD189733b. II. New Spitzer observations at 3.6 microns

We present a new primary transit observation of the hot-jupiter HD189733b, obtained at 3.6 microns with the Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) onboard the Spitzer Space Telescope. Previous measurements at 3.6 microns suffered from strong systematics and conclusions could hardly be obtained with confidence on the water detection by comparison of the 3.6 and 5.8 microns observations. We use a high S/N Spitzer photometric transit light curve to improve the precision of the near infrared radius of the planet at 3.6 microns. The observation has been performed using high-cadence time series integrated in the subarray mode. We are able to derive accurate system parameters, including planet-to-star radius ratio, impact parameter, scale of the system, and central time of the transit from the fits of the transit light curve. We compare the results with transmission spectroscopic models and with results from previous observations at the same wavelength. We obtained the following system parameters: R_p/R_\star=0.15566+0.00011-0.00024, b=0.661+0.0053-0.0050, and a/R_\star=8.925+0.0490-0.0523 at 3.6 microns. These measurements are three times more accurate than previous studies at this wavelength because they benefit from greater observational efficiency and less statistic and systematic errors. Nonetheless, we find that the radius ratio has to be corrected for stellar activity and present a method to do so using ground-based long-duration photometric follow-up in the V-band. The resulting planet-to-star radius ratio corrected for the stellar variability is in agreement with the previous measurement obtained in the same bandpass (Desert et al. 2009). We also discuss that water vapour could not be evidenced by comparison of the planetary radius measured at 3.6 and 5.8 microns, because the radius measured at 3.6 microns is affected by absorption by other species, possibly Rayleigh scattering by haze.Comment: 19 pages, 13 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysic

L’Autre asiatique chez Gabrielle Roy, Marguerite-A. Primeau, J. R. Léveillé et Annie-Claude Thériault

Les communautés franco-canadiennes reconnaissent, du moins sur le plan discursif, le besoin de former de nouvelles solidarités interculturelles et d’intégrer de nouveaux savoirs, de nouvelles perspectives et attitudes et de nouveaux goûts, mais on pourrait bien se poser la question de savoir quels Autres peuplent l’imaginaire de leurs artistes littéraires. Étant donné l’importance pour la littérature d’expression française au Canada de l’œuvre d’écrivains d’origine asiatique, dont, par exemple, Ying Chen, Kim Thúy, Ook Chung et Aki Shimazaki, cet article s’intéresse à l’Asiatique imaginaire chez des auteurs issus des francophonies à l’ouest du Québec. Dans le but de déterminer dans quelle mesure il serait possible d’inclure l’immigrant ou l’émigrant asiatique au chapitre des nouvelles solidarités imaginées au sein du Canada francophone, cet article interrogera quatre textes : « Où iras-tu Sam Lee Wong ? » de Gabrielle Roy, « Une veille de Noël » de Marguerite-A. Primeau, Le soleil du lac qui se couche de J.R. Léveillé et Quelque chose comme une odeur de printemps d’Annie-Claude Thériault.French-Canadian communities acknowledge, at least in discussion, the need to form new intercultural solidarities and integrate new knowledge, new perspectives and attitudes and new tastes; we may well wonder, however, what “Others” populate the imagination of their literary artists. Given the importance, for French-language literature in Canada, of the work of Asian-born writers including, for example, Ying Chen, Kim Thúy, Ook Chung and Aki Shimazaki, this article examines perceptions of the Asian in authors from Frenchspeaking communities west of Quebec. To determine to what extent the Asian immigrant or emigrant can be included within the chapter of the new solidarities imagined within French-speaking Canada, this article focuses on four texts: Où iras-tu Sam Lee Wong? by Gabrielle Roy, Une veille de Noël by Marguerite-A. Primeau, Le soleil du lac qui se couche by J.R. Léveillé and Quelque chose comme une odeur de printemps by Annie-Claude Thériault