Boss of the River

Published in 1937 as Menaud, maître-draveur, this Quebecois novel is regarded as one of the most significant nationalist novels of Quebec and in 2005 was selected as one of Canada’s 100 Most Important Books by the Literary Review of Canada. It is first and foremost a demonstration against the Anglophone takeover of Francophone lands for the exploitation of its natural resources.

The author, Félix-Antoine Savard (born 31 August 1896), was a Roman Catholic priest ordained in 1922. It was his ministry in the rural Charlevoix region that inspired him to write Boss of the River. Throughout the novel the central character, Menaud, is concerned with loss — some of what he fears losing is perhaps metaphorical for the greater loss of land and livelihood. He loses his son, Joson, to the river when they are part of a team trying to move huge numbers of logs downstream:
“Already the evening, like a grave digger, began to cast over the scene its cumulating dusk and here the man entered the very valley of torture, now on his knees, gazing up at the skies, imploring that at least there be granted to him the body of his son, to bury it at home beside his mother under the big birch, whose bark in a strong wind rustled like a prayer.”
Savard’s flowery prose is not to everyone’s taste. Interestingly, though, the author had described the scene prior to the young man’s death in the language of war, saying how the men in trying to subdue the raging log jam were “hurling insults at the enemy, shouting the satisfaction that surged in their hot blood”.

Having lost his wife and his son, he struggles to keep hold of his daughter. She has secretly agreed to marry Délié, the traitor in the community, who has arranged to sell the local land rights to the Anglophone outsiders. Another of the young men, Alexis, who had tried to rescue Joson from the river, is a more honourable suitor. He refuses to return to the work on the river:
“It would make me think too much about Joson. It is terrible — terrible how that haunts me.”

The concluding scenes of the novel depict Menaud suffering mental torment:
“The strangers have come! The strangers have come! Joson! Alexis! The mountain is full of them — the whole country is full of them”
He, however, clings to a nationalist trust:
“We are a people that knows not how to perish.”