The story of little Aurore Gagnon, who died at age 10, in 1920, after being tortured for months by her stepmother, is it more a myth than reality? This is the astonishing thesis defended by journalist Daniel Proulx, specialist in legal affairs, in The lie of the century (La Presse, 2021, 280 pages), a solid historical essay on this affair.
Proulx reread the official transcripts of the trials of Marie-Anne Houde, made history as an infamous stepmother, and Télesphore Gagnon, father of the little victim and prosperous farmer in Lotbinière county, as well as the abundant accounts published in the newspapers of the time. His conclusion is astounding: “media and legal blunder”, the whole affair “is, in reality, a witch’s tale turned into a pan-Quebec myth and nevertheless false.”
Called to the witness stand in history, the lawyer Jacques Dupuis, who was a criminal lawyer before becoming a prosecutor and, later, Minister of Justice in the government of Jean Charest, corroborates Proulx’s thesis. He qualifies the trial of Marie-Anne Houde as a “parody of justice” and notes that the mother-in-law “was found guilty on the basis of inconclusive testimony”.
For those who, like me, know of this story only what the works it has inspired tell about it, such a reading of events is disconcerting. Aurora, the martyred child, the original play based on the drama and written by Léon Petitjean and Henri Rollin, was premiered in 1921. Its success bears witness to the impact of the affair on Quebec society. In 30 years, it would have been played 5,000 times! I only read this play, frankly lamentable from a literary point of view. I saw, however, The little Aurora, the martyred child, the film directed by Jean-Yves Bigras, in 1952, from the same screenplay.
Even if it is very bad – Denys Arcand says he believed, seeing it, in a supercanular produced by cynical and greedy people – Bigras’s film can only upset the public. To witness the spectacle of the abuse of an innocent child by a wicked monster is, indeed, unbearable. The film will be seen by 750,000 people and will establish itself as the canon of this story. In 2005, the director Luc Dionne put on a layer with Aurore, a film much more polished than its predecessor, but which takes up, for the most part, the scenario of the odious mother-in-law.
And now Daniel Proulx arrives saying that it did not happen like that! Where is the truth then? Proulx wants to restore it. Marie-Anne Caron, Aurore’s biological mother, was interned in an asylum in 1916-1917. Marie-Anne Houde, a young widow from a neighboring village and mother of two boys, then arrives at the Gagnon’s to help the father of the family. In 1918, the interned mother died and the widower married the widow Houde, with whom he was already living in cohabitation, thus fueling gossip.
On August 31, 1919, a doctor went to the Gagnon’s to examine Aurore’s injured foot. He doesn’t notice any other injuries. From mid-September to mid-October, the little one is hospitalized to treat this foot which does not heal. From the hospital, she writes to her mother-in-law that she is bored. In February 1920, neighbors alerted the authorities to the pitiful state of the little girl, who died on the 12th of the same month, covered with wounds. The parents are arrested two days later.
The doctor who performed the autopsy, without being an expert in the matter, attributes the wounds to blows. However, he evokes “superficial” injuries, incompatible, notes Proulx, with poker shots given by adults in the previous days. An analysis of the deceased’s viscera concludes that there is no poison, which contradicts the rumors of forced ingestion of detergent.
The doctor, at the trial, admits not having examined the spinal cord of the victim, an essential step which could have revealed the presence of a disease such as polio, spina bifida or Friedreich’s ataxia, a compatible thesis, she , with the condition of little Aurore, a child from a consanguineous marriage since her parents were cousins.
Moreover, the only eyewitnesses to the abuse are children, and their assertions, notes Proulx, “are full of implausibilities and glaring contradictions.” The judge of the case, finally, badly hides his aversion for the accused, while the thunderous media are already treating the mother-in-law as a culprit.
The father and the stepmother will be condemned in April 1920. The first will be released after five years in prison and the second, cancerous, will be freed in 1935, before dying ten months later. Were they monsters? For Daniel Proulx, whose plea is convincing, reasonable doubt is required.