The Tragedy of the Commons (Côte-des-Argoulets Part IV)

By 1680,[i][ii] fifteen years after seven colonists of Ville-Marie contracted with the crown and with each other to settle on the St. Peter River, Jean Chicot had died and bequeathed his land along the Côte-des-Argoulets to his widow Marguerite and their only son, Jean-Baptiste. Marguerite remarried a man much closer her age, Nicholas Boyer, with whom she would have several more children.  Others of the original inhabitants of Verdun had also died, leaving their descendants fertile land and a more peaceful island; Ville Marie had gone from a few dozen citizens to a few hundred, and was growing.  Some of the Argoulets were still around though, and one of them was Étienne Campeau.  He had taken the charge to develop his land very seriously, perhaps too seriously, eventually landing himself in a legal dispute with the other settler of Ville-Marie.

It's O.K. Cicottes, You're Still #7 in My Book (Côte-des-Argoulets Part III)

I've been lying about the Cicotte family for a while now,

The Pharisees Would have Loved the Bill of Rights...

...Or Why I don't Support the Ordain Women Movement.

I. Why Did the Pharisees Care More About Boiling an Egg on Sunday than Starving the Poor?

It Takes a Village to Lose a Child

Outside a typical suburban high school in Ohio sits a concrete bench with my name carved in it, alongside the names of my brother Matthias and sister Regan.  The school engraved our names in memorial of the countless hours we spent sitting on that cold seat, waiting for our parents to remember to pick us up from school.  You haven't experienced calculus until you've tried to integrate trigonometric functions by the dim glow of parking lot security lights.

As it turns out, forgetting one's children is a family tradition.

A Talk at Camp Hinckley

The following is a talk I gave at my Stake's Young Women's camp the week of July 4th.  A few important points of context: First, the location of the talk was the amphitheater which they refer to as the Sacred Grove.  Second, each day's lessons share a theme, and that day's theme was love.  Third, some parts may seem disjointed because the questions were not rhetorical; each question involved receiving answers and comments from the audience. So, without further ado:

Eat, Pray, Marry

Once again, many thanks to Yvon Sicotte.

As movies have taught us, marriage serves the exclusive purpose of validating romantic love.  If you're not out-of-control, head-over-heels stupid in love then you have no obligation to marry, stay married, or remain faithful, regardless of circumstances.  In contrast, our ancestors married and respected marriage for a bunch of dull reasons like Religion, Morality, and Survival. BOR-ING! So to those of you of modern sensibilities, the story of how the Cicotte family established itself may cause you anything from distaste to horror, but I think there's a human, even tender story to be told here, so bear with me.

Côte des Argoulets Part II

    I owe this post to Yvon Sicotte, a distant relative who has had a twenty-five year head-start studying the same documents I have been piecing together for about five years.  His work's comprehensiveness puts mine to shame and renders it useless.  I may only meagerly contribute by providing translations since his work is only in French.  Still, I encourage anyone reading this to visit his site here, if only to boost the number of visits and encourage him to continue.  I also owe this post to my father, who found the website.

A long time ago I promised a transcription of Jean Chicot's land grant.  I got about a third of the way before the less-than-legible handwriting and archaic language forced the project onto the back burner.  Later attempts only got me about half-way.  Then my father provided me M. Sicotte's website which contained a complete transcription, as well as some useful contextual commentary.  Here is my English translation, along with my own commentary: