FRENCH CANADA

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 71, 25 March 1933, Page 13

FRENCH CANADA

HANDICEAFTS KEVIVED

AN UN-MODERN LIFE

BUSY AND SELF-SUFFICIENT

(From "The Post's" Representative.) VANCOUVER, February 16.

The so-called depression has proved a blessing to Quebec, where, in .the past two years, the French-Canadian handicrafts of a century ago have been vigorously revived in the rural districts, encouraged and subsidised by a paternal Government.

\ Families are large in rural Quebec, and as the .country is self-contained, all help with the home industry. The boys tend the sheep, and do the shearing; the girls wash and comb the wool; the women spin and dye the yarn, and | weave the fabric ;of the famous Murray '33ay blankets, hooked rug, bedspread, or "ccintlire fleehee," that gay sash of many coleurs which the FrenchCanadian habitant loves to wind about his waist in winter. linen for towels, tablecloths, and other articles is woven; from flax grown on the same farm on j which the cloth is made. Even the dyes are .made from vegetables, wild plants, and berries.

The Department of Agriculture ana! the- Universities aro co-operating whole-1 heartedly in thus reproducing Old Quebec Canadian aTtists are employed in creating suitable motifs. Canadian steamship lines have undertaken to enlarge tho market. The City of Quebec has extended the functions of its' school of handicrafts, which had only one rival in the world—the famous school in Stockholm. Many public and private organisations are lending support to this new movement, reborn during depression, in which FrenchCanadian women are making a remarkablo contribution to national culture. LIFE OF A PAST AGE. The background of this industry is the Murray Bay blanket, a lightweight rug of pure wool and pastel shades. Oldpatterns, embodying leal beauty and local symbolism, have been recovered, after being rendered unpopular by. the more inferior designs of the mail order catalogue. Some of these patterns came originally from Brittany with the settlers who colonised. New Prance. Some show the influence of the old regime in the fleur-de-lis, others present the conventionalised fir tree, monarch of the Canadian forest; others, again, a variety of pattern, according to the wlxira of the weaver, or the terrain in which she lives.

Bural Quebec is unlike the rest of Canada. The straggle with Nature to-: mains primitive.' The people still build their own quaintly attractive* .homes of stones or logs. Holds are separated by rough fences, mado iby hand. Modern conveniences aro not regarded as essential, or even particularly desirable. While the men do the heavy farm Tvork, the women work up the flax and the wool—-a long, slow process, suited only to a'people attuned to a alow tempo ia-Mfg, ■ " -