A mes cousins et mes amis canadiens. Je m’exprime mieux en anglais. Aujourd’hui, on pleure.
To my cousins and my Canadian friends. I express myself better in English. Today, we cry.
My cousine, Heidi Lepage, has passed on. They are innumerable and amazing testaments to Heidi’s good works. You can read these here. Click the button below.
Heidi was a hero and an inspiration
Heidi was my parents’ godchild, which is a magical relationship. Even though our family left Quebec in 1964, we still maintained ties as best we could, and Heidi became a strong link to our roots. Mom lived through the women in the family who chose nursing. Heidi was one of them.
My parents loved Heidi more than anything. My mother saw herself living on through Heidi – her goddaughter was a nurse and everyone who talked to her knew it. She always gushed proudly about all her nieces who chose nursing – because it was a good thing.
My brother, Marc and I took our Mother to visit Quebec in 2013. Therese, though suffering from dementia, knew Thetford Mines was home.
We visited Heidi at her clinic in Laurier-Station. My mother, suffering from vascular dementia, knew through all her disease that this was indeed a very good thing. The beauty and goodness of it cut through the physical hell of her dementia. Mom was happy. The world was right. For everyone.
la rive sud
Heidi helped publish our grandmother Amabilis Bedard’s memoirs about life in St-Flavien, Laurier-Station, Issoudun, and Ste-Croix – a book called la rive sud.
Amabilis left us with an eyewitness, first-person account of life in early 20th-century Quebec, and prophetically, a chronicle of life in a pandemic-stricken Quebec. Heidi used the text to teach nursing students – about pandemics – the one in 1919, not the one in 2020.
Amabilis wrote her memoirs with the encouragement of our uncle Michel Bedard. I translated the manuscript from French to English – well-adapted and translated is probably a better way to state it. Heidi made sure the French part of the book was done right, allowing me to publish a bilingual record of early and mid-century Quebec.
I have no doubt that this work will live on as an excellent first-person account of life in a pre-Quiet Revolution, industrializing Quebec.
When my parents had both passed on, it was time for Jean and Therese to return to Sainte Croix.
Heidi made it possible.
We buried Jean, his brother Laurent, and Therese’s ashes together in Sainte Croix.
Heidi was a hero and an inspiration.
Let good thoughts about her time here live on!
