(28 Sept. 1840-7 Dec. 1907), workman, “lost child” of well-known narrative. (Pierre Cholette, Louis Marin) Born at St-Polycarpe, Que., about 8 miles east of GC. Parents: Hyacinthe Cholet and his wife Angélique André dit St-Amand. When Pierre was not quite five years old, in July 1845, he and two other children, who were his brother and cousin, were kidnapped by a tradesman or pedlar who soon after sold them to the captain of a French ship. The purpose of the sale seems to have been to supply recruits for the French merchant marine. Young Pierre, who was given the new name of Louis Marin, was educated in St-Malo, France. Thereafter he served in ships of the French marine in many parts of the world, till he deserted ship in Labrador in 1870 and after many harrowing adventures returned to Quebec in search of his parents, whose surname and residence he by this time no longer remembered. His brother, who was his long-term companion in many trials, had died recently; the cousin had died many years before.

     Pierre Cholet’s search for his parents lasted over more than ten years, during which he was still known as Louis Marin. A few people he met were unsympathetic to his enquiries, but he also found many kindnesses, which he afterwards warmly recalled. Places where he lived after his return from exile on the sea included Morrisburg, Casselman, Russell (then known as Castor) in Russell County, and Cornwall, Ont., where he was a cotton-mill employee. It was in Cornwall that a Glengarrian, who happened to be his fellow resident of a boarding house finally broke the code of the problem which had so long troubled Cholet, that of where his parents lived. And thus in 1881 Cholet was finally reunited with his elderly parents, who were still living at St-Polycarpe. After some hesitations they accepted that he was their long-lost son and not an impostor.

     A near Glengarrian by birth, Cholet became for a time a GC resident. He was the sexton (sacristain) at St. Raphael’s for several years, later following the same occupation at Ste-Anne-de-Prescott. Cholet was married at St. Raphael’s in 1882 to Hannah Levesque (Anna Levac) of the parish of St. Raphael’s, but his wife died young, preceded by the death in infancy of their only child. In his later years he was a house painter. By this stage, if not before, he had reverted to a somewhat wandering and disoriented existence, but without travelling now very far from the place of his birth. Everywhere he went, a great talker, he told people, as he had done over so many years and in so many places, the extraordinary story of his life. Occasionally he showed people the scars he bore on his back from a whipping he received in the fierce merchant-marine discipline. His speech still had the accent of continental French. The 1901 census included him as a carpenter boarding with a family called Bissonette in Charlottenburgh Township, GC. He died at Coteau-du-Lac, where he had been brought in his final illness to be cared for by the Sisters of Providence. Roman Catholic. The burial was in the parish cemetery at his native St-Polycarpe. In later years the Cholet family to which he belonged used the spelling Cholette, but even in Pierre’s lifetime he commonly appeared under the spelling Cholette.

     Fr J.-B. Proulx, a well-known priest, wrote L’enfant perdu et retrouvé ou Pierre Cholet (Montreal, 1887), which was the story of Cholet’s life written in the first person but with much of the appearance of a novel, and which is described in Proulx’s life in the The Dictionary of Canadian Biography as an “adventure novel.” It has gone through at least 18 reissues in French and there have been two English translations, one of them issued in New York a few years ago. Fr Proulx worked on a written text of Cholet’s conversations, as copied down by a 16-year-old neighbour of Cholet’s, Georgianna Brisbois, at Ste-Anne-de-Prescott, and he augmented his information through talks with Cholet. Proulx is normally regarded as the author though he modestly presents himself merely as the man who enables Pierre to speak. The book still makes gripping reading. For social history, it is valuable as a record of contemporary Canadian working-class life in country and town.

     Whether we call the book a novel or not, we may say that as a human document and a work of literature it is not unreasonable to see it as taking its place in the succession of GC-area novels which begins with James Drummond’s Forest Flower (which like the Cholet book is a narrative based on a real person), and continues with Margaret Murray ROBERTSON’s Shenac and includes William McLennan on John (“Spanish John”) Macdonell and A.P. Gardiner on Cariboo Cameron and most famously The Man from Glengarry (1901) and Glengarry School Days (1902) by Ralph Connor (C.W. Gordon).

J.-B. Proulx, Lost and Found Again or Pierre Cholet, trans., J. R. Koenig (New York 2007, repr. U. K. by Lightning Source * Le récit de Pierre Cholette l’enfant perdu & retrouvé 35 ans plus tard, revu et augmenté par Serge Cholette (Joliette, Que., 2007), a heavily revised edition of the 1887 L’enfant perdu text; this new publication is noted, described, Journal de Cornwall 8 novembre 2007 * Both the handsomely prepared books of 2007 just named are from the hands of connections of the Cholet family and include portrait of Pierre, other illust., maps, notes, much valuable additional biog. material; the later volume includes space in its documentation for a suspicion that resurfaced in the 1930s that Pierre Cholet might have been an impostor after all.