Pruche à Peter [English]

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Lines, borders. Porous, felt, tangible, or fragile.

How does a sense of belonging to a territory take shape despite the demarcations? The force of attraction?

How do our language and imagination work together to manipulate the landscape in our minds, as if we were folding a road map to carry it with us? How do we construct reference points—and why do we interpret them to suit our own purposes?

There is the geography of the surveyor who defines the line.

And then the child’s, not without a touch of playfulness and daring, who constructs the world that their creative gaze chooses to see.

La pruche à Peter [Peter’s Hemlock], located in Hope, a municipality on the eastern edge of Paspébiac, seems to have been adopted as a landmark in the imagination of the residents of the Bugeaud sector (a former hamlet bordering Paspébiac), embracing a cartography of its own.

Whether we feel a sense of belonging to Paspébiac – its parish – or whether, from the other point of view, we are found to be distant from it, Peter’s hemlock denotes this ambivalence while making itself “center of the world”.

DÉCOUVRIR > tous les lieux-dits de cette ville

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AUDIO

Interview with Roy Whittom, May 14, 2025.

Symbolism of the hemlock, hypothesis about the origin of the nickname « Berlan/Berlin » to designate Bugeaud.

The feeling of belonging.

 

Interview with John Aspirot, April 21, 2023.

The hypothesis mentioned above seems to be confirmed. A certain John Jim (Jacques Grenier) was supposedly nicknamed “the Pope.” It cannot be confirmed whether he traveled or lived outside of Bugeaud, or whether he introduced the berlan/brelan system there.

 

Interview with Fernand Alain, May 5, 2022.

“We were teasing people.”

A humorous way to greet each other.

 

Interview with Rina Hort et ses filles Lisette et Estérina Castilloux, September 22, 2025.

The nickname The Pompons.

 

IMAGE

1. Archives of Raymonde Tremblay. The house belonged to her father, Pierre, known as Peter (pronounced Piteur), Tremblay.