Looking for fiddlers in the county by Christian Giraldeau
Image: Photographer unknown (graphic design by Audrey Fauteux-Robillard), 1976.
Private collection of Monique Villeneuve.
Audio excerpt: Interview with Christian Giraldeau, one of the organizers of the Fêtes du Vieux Saint-Eustache, by Sandrine Contant-Joannin, ethnologist, 2023.
Excerpt length: 3 minutes, 10 seconds. Patrimoine culturel Vieux-Saint-Eustache collection.
Christian Giraldeau was one of the organizers of the Fêtes du Vieux Saint-Eustache between 1974 and 1976; his main role was to gather and promote various kinds of content for the event. Here, he describes his encounter with a fiddler who had lost the fingers of his left hand, and who had come to perform during the event. The interview excerpt is transcribed below:
Christian Giraldeau: And I found a few, and the ones who made the biggest impression on me, the ones that stand out a little more clearly in my memory, were the Binette brothers. So the Binette brothers, there was at least one of them who was on the reserve in Oka [Kanehsatà:ke], he was married to a native woman, and his brother… I can’t remember his first name… But I asked him, “Do you still play the fiddle?” you know, and I got him to tell me his story, because after all he was… I’d say he was maybe 75 years old when I met him. And uh, he was still playing his fiddle.
So I said, “Can you play me some tunes? Would you like to get together? It would be fun to get some fiddlers together in Saint-Eustache.” And then his eyes lit up, and his wife stopped in the middle of her housework, and came over to listen to our conversation. He’ll get his fiddle out again, that’s just what he needed …
And then he started telling me his story. Well, the thing was, while he was talking to me, I saw that, you know, when you play the fiddle, your fingers here, the fingers on your left hand are important. And his were just stumps. He just had stumps of fingers. He only had half of each finger. I didn’t say anything. He went and got his fiddle, and he started playing just as if he had all his fingers, you know!
And then he told me the story, he said: “I guess you’re wondering about that?” It was his wife who told me. You know, he said: “Go on, you tell him.” So when he was young, he used to play at dances, he was one of the most popular fiddlers in the county and even on the other side of the lake. He’d have everyone dancing, and then uh…
Eventually he went to work in the logging camps in Abitibi, and he had an accident. Chop! An axe cut off the three main phalanges there, you know, the three middle fingers. So obviously he wouldn’t be doing any more fiddling. It was terrible for him – I’ve forgotten his first name, that Mr. Binette, there was no way he was doing any fiddling for years. Many, many years. Nearly 10 years, I think. And um, that’s what I remember.
One evening, he took his fiddle with him to a family get-together, and he started playing better than he’d ever played before, 10 years earlier. All that time, he’d been secretly practising his fiddle with his stumps, and he ended up better than he’d been before. Listen, as I, I tell you the story, it still gives me shivers.