Phantom Ships
The Author
Claude Le Bouthillier has published seven novels and one book of poetry. His eighth novel and second collection of poetry are both slated for publication in fall 2004. He has won several major literary prizes, including the Pascal-Poirier Prize (2000) from the province of New Brunswick, an award of excellence bestowed for an author’s life’s work. For Phantom Ships, originally published in French as Le Feu du Mauvais Temps, he received the Champlain Prize (1989) and the France-Acadie Prize (1990).
Born in New Brunswick, Claude Le Bouthillier studied psychology at the University of Moncton and the university Paris-X-Nanterre. He has worked in educational and university settings, in a clinic, and in his own practice. At present, his office is in Caraquet. For the past thirty years, he has devoted a great deal of his time and energy to writing and to promoting literary activities and reading. From 1989 to 1991, he chaired the Public Lending Rights Commission. Claude Le Bouthillier represents Acadian writers on the Board of Directors of the New Brunswick Arts Council and chairs the Acadian Poetry Festival held every fall.
The Translator
Susan Ouriou translates fiction from French and Spanish and writes fiction in English. She has been nominated twice for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Translation (2003, 1995). She is the founding editor of TransLit, a bi-annual anthology of literary translation, and still serves on its editing collective twelve years later. Her first novel, Damselfish, was published by XYZ in 2003 and was a finalist for the 2004 Alberta Book Awards Georges Bugnet Award for Novel and the City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize. Susan Ouriou lives in Calgary and works as a simultaneous interpreter.
Phantom Ships
a novel by
Claude Le Bouthillier
translated by Susan Ouriou
Originally published as Le Feu du Mauvais Temps by Québec Amérique © 1989 by Claude Le Bouthillier and Québec Amérique English translation © 2004 by Susan Ouriou and XYZ Publishing
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.
National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Le Bouthillier, Claude
[Feu du mauvais temps. English]
Phantom ships: a novel
Translation of: Le feu du mauvais temps
ISBN 1-894852-09-5
I. Ouriou, Susan. II. Title. III. Title: Feu du mauvais temps. English.
PS8573.E336F4813 2004 C843’.54 C2004-940464-4
PS9573.E336F4813 2004
Legal Deposit: Second quarter 2004
National Library of Canada
Bibliothèque nationale du Québec
XYZ Publishing acknowledges the financial support our publishing program receives from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) of the Department of Canadian Heritage, the ministère de la Culture et des Communications du Québec, and the Société de développement des entreprises culturelles.
Editor: Rhonda Bailey
Layout: Édiscript enr.
Cover design: Zirval Design
Cover painting: Joseph Turner, Typhoon Approaching, 1840 Map of ancient Acadie (p. vi): Victoria Tico Thibault
Set in Caslon 12 on 14.
Printed and bound in Canada by Transcontinental Imprimerie Gagné
(Louiseville, Québec, Canada) in April 2004.
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For my mother… and for my family, both close and extended, guardians of the seeds that sprouted through my imagination into this novel
Chapter 1
The land we have seen on the south side of this gulf is as fertile and as beautiful as anything we have ever seen, with its stunning countryside and prairies as flat as a lake. The land to the north is a highland with tall mountains covered in forests and many varieties of tall, thick trees. Among others, there are beautiful cedars and pine trees as far as the eye can see, tall enough to make masts for ships of over three hundred tons…
… The heat in this region is more temperate than in Spain.
–Jacques Cartier in the Baye des Chaleurs, 1534
At the entrance to the Baye des Chaleurs1 in the spring of the year of grace seventeen hundred and forty under the reign of Louis XV, Captain Hyacinthe, an old Breton seadog, his beard white, his face weathered by the salt of the sea, scanned the horizon, a pipe clenched in his teeth. The trip from Quebec2 had been made without incident, and favourable winds had pushed L’Ensorceleuse down the St. Lawrence River3 and past Gaspeg4. Some ten Atlantic crossings had made of Hyacinthe an experienced seaman, and his men – thirty-sixers for the most part (since they had signed up for thirty-six months) – respected him as much for his strict discipline as for his sense of justice.
Joseph was leaning on the ship s rail, lost in thought. Tall and fair with pearl-grey eyes, a slender nose, a bushy brown beard with auburn-coloured streaks, and long brown hair held back off his face, he had an aura of nobility about him, of grandeur and generosity. His wiry muscles hinted at great strength; he walked with a wave s fluid grace, and his fine, knotted hands held both a workers strength and a violinist’s sensitivity. His origins, however, were a mystery. His adoptive parents were already in their forties when he arrived as a present from France. Their love for him was all the greater because they themselves were unable to have children. Joseph
