Dieppe - Claude Monet's Garden

This weekend I went to two places on my wish list: Dieppe and Claude Monet’s garden in Giverny. It ended up that I had a train ticket good for two days, so could go both places for one price (18 euros!).

Claude Monet’s garden was first. Giverny is less than an hour from here going toward Paris. Mi-Hyang, one of the students from the school came with me. The day was perfect: partly cloudy and not too hot.

Monet has been a favourite painter of mine for a long time. I have a book of his paintings and I had several prints of his paintings in my house. When I was in Paris I made sure to see his water lilies paintings at the Musée l’Orangerie as well as his other works at the Musée d’Orsay.

There is a shuttle bus that goes from the train station in Vernon to Giverny – all of 10 minutes away. (Maybe Vernon BC is named after the same village?) There was quite the line of people getting tickets for the garden. We must have waited 20 minutes to get through. Once we did, however, the gardens were enchanting:

 

The visit included a tour the house. We were not allowed to take pictures inside but I found a couple to give some sense of the space.

When I was in his original studio (above), I was quite moved to think of all the work that he had done in that place. If the walls could only talk! The walls were filled with replicas of his works, but the furniture was original. You could see, for example, the wear on the arms of the chaise lounge.

Such a good day.

I went to Dieppe on Sunday. It, too, is only about one hour away by train. I arrived in the morning and found the tourist information bureau first thing for a map. I knew that Mass at St. Jacques church was at 11:15, so I had time to wander and take pictures of the port..

The cliffs…

The entrance to the port…

where there was a lot of fishing happening...

And not just the young...

And the beach.  The beach is not of sand, but of small pebbles.

And the castle.

 The church was quite impressive.

It took over 300 years to build - started at the end of the 12th century and completed at the beginning of the 16th. I don't think that it had been destroyed during the wars, but I did notice what looked like bullet holes on the walls.

Inside there was quite a crowd of people of all ages gathered for Mass, including novice French speakers (easily spotted when they used the supplied worship aid for all the responses…).

I was quite taken with the kites flying overhead. 

Every other year in Dieppe there is a large kite festival held in September, and this is the year. The ones overhead are some new and old kites

After Mass I wandered around and in the first little side chapel I came to I found this…

I started to cry. It’s really true. The Demers family came from here.

The plaque says, in essence, [with a few additions in square brackets] “The Demers family pay their respects to Jean Dumay, Miotte Lecombe, his first wife, and Barbe Mauger, his second wife, father and mother of Etienne, André and Jean Dumay, members of the family of the country [region] of Ceux at the start of the 17^th century. The father and his sons left Dieppe to emigrate to New France [Quebec] in 1643. The three sons are the ancestors of 12 generations of Demers descendants in [North] America today. This plaque was unveiled September 20, 1998, as part of a voyage organized by the Demers Family Association.”

“Caux” refers the to the type of rock that dominates in the area: limestone - calcium carbonate. This ancient territory (pays) was linked by the geography, language and culture, and included Dieppe, Fécamp, St. Valery-en-Caux, Étretat and Le Havre. The people in this region were called “Caletes” or “Caleti” which means the hard/courageous people. You had to be to live among the cliffs making your living from the sea.

In Mom’s family history book, it says that the family originated a little north of Dieppe in the seaside village of Le Tréport. It is located at the cliffs that you can see in the distance in this photo.

If possible, I would like to travel there as well.

Over the generations the family name changed in Canada from Dumay to Dumet and finally Demers, which can mean “of the sea” (de mer).

The chapel had a few other plaques of other families that immigrated to Canada.

The chapel itself commemorates Frs. Antoine Daniel and Jean de Lalande, two Jesuit priests who were born in Dieppe and who traveled to Canada in the early 1600's and worked among the Huron people. They were  killed in 1648 during a raid of the Huron village by the Mohawks. (Five years after the Dumay's arrived in Quebec.) They are commemorated by the church as two of the Canadian Martyrs, along with 6 other companion Jesuits.

Dieppe has close ties to Canada. This monument names some of the links.

Not only was it one of the main ports for ships of settlers traveling to Canada in the 17^th century, is also the place of the a disastrous World War II raid against the German army that claimed the lives of hundreds of Canadian soldiers: the August 19, 1942, Dieppe Raid.

There is a museum commemorating the event.

I watched a movie there that had actual film footage of the event as well as commentary by those who survived. There were massive casualties. One of the only good things that came from it, was that the Allies learned it was too costly to try and take a established port. The landing on the Normandy beaches was the result of that lesson. Rather than try to take a port, they took a long stretch of beach and brought their own harbour and port with them, fabricated in England and ferried over by ships. Actually, they built two harbours: Mulberry A and B – one at Omaha Beach and one at Gold Beach. Unfortunately, there was a terrible storm on June 19^th and the port at Omaha Beach was destroyed while the one on Gold Beach suffered damaged. Gold beach was repaired with some of the surviving pieces from Omaha Beach. The repaired harbour was used for 8 months to supply the war with soldiers, equipment and supplies.

The people of Dieppe have never forgotten that raid. Two years later when the town was finally liberated, it was Canadian soldiers who came and liberated the town.

The plaque at Canada Square commemorating the events says essentially “On August 19, 1942, on the beach of Dieppe, our Canadian cousins traced by their blood the path of our final liberation, thus foreshadowing their victorious return September 1, 1944.”

Canada Square...