La Bolduc

Mary Rose-Anne Bolduc, born Travers, (June 4, 1894 – February 20, 1941) was a musician and singer of French Canadian music. She was known as Madame Bolduc or La Bolduc. During the peak of her popularity in the 1930s, she was known as the Queen of Canadian Folk Singers. Bolduc is often considered to be Quebec's first singer-songwriter. Her style combined the traditional folk music of Ireland and Quebec, usually in upbeat, comedic songs. Mary Rose Anna Travers "La Bolduc" was born in Newport, Quebec, in the Gaspé region. Her father, Lawrence Travers, was an Anglophone of Irish heritage, and her mother, Adéline Cyr, was of mixed French Canadian and Mi'kmaq heritage. Her family included five full siblings, and an additional six half-siblings from her father's first marriage. Bolduc and her eleven siblings spoke English at home, but also spoke French fluently. The family was extremely poor, but Bolduc attended school for a time, becoming literate in French. Her only music teacher was her father, who taught her how to play the instruments that were traditional in Quebec culture of the era: the fiddle, accordion, harmonica, spoons and jaw harp. She learned traditional music from the two heritages, both Irish melodies and French-Canadian folk tunes. The family did not own a record player, piano or sheet music, so Bolduc learned jigs and folk songs from memory or by ear. She was giving casual public performances by the spring of 1908, when she played the accordion at the logging camp where she worked as a cook and her father as a lumberjack. In 1908, at the age of thirteen, Bolduc was sent to live with her half-sister Mary-Ann in Montreal, Quebec. Mary-Ann worked as a maid and had secured Bolduc a job as a maid in the house of Dr Lesage. She was paid $15 per month, in addition to room and board. A few years later she took a job at a textile mill, which paid$15 weekly for 60 hours of work per week. On August 17, 1914, she married Édouard Bolduc, a plumber. The couple's first child was stillborn.