Dedaume

His real name was Guillaume, son of Anselme d’Entremont (old Sémi), but everybody called him Dedaume. He had married Colombe Amirault, a sister to Charles Amand Amirault; and the family resided in West Pubnico, close to the old school, now the Legion Hall. The house had been built by Sémi’s father Benjamin (Benjamin, son of Paul, son of Jacques II d’Entremont) and was occupied in turn by Dedaume’s twins, Sam and George. Father Clarence d’Entremont tells us that in the 1816 census done by Father Sigogne, Sémi’s house was the first house one would pass upon entering the village. The second was that of David d’Eon, Octave d’Eon’s grandfather.

Like many young men of his time, Dedaume was called to do some military training with the impending threat of the Fenians. For a long time, the Irish from the South of Ireland had been eagerly sought their independance from the Great Britain, which caused all kinds of tension and conflict between both nations. However, the Irish had attracted the sympathy of their American cousins (these were especially established in New York) who, in the year 1858, organized military units to assist their Irish cousins overseas. Since Canada was a British territory, the country’s authorities feared an invasion and organized a militia reserve; the partisans of the Americo-Irish company indeed tried to invade upper Canada in 1866, but were quickly subdued.

Several years later, the Canadian government decided to reward all these men who had participated in the exercises by sending each one a cheque valued at one hundred dollars. Dedaume received his like the others and to celebrate the occasion he went with some of his neighbours to Évée Amirault’s store, where for some time one could buy ice cream: a true novelty. Dedaume did not eat his immediately; instead, he took it home. The following morning, while leaving the village, one of his friends asked him how he had liked his ice cream, he answered: “It tasted good, but after having heated twice on the stove, it was still cold on the palate.”

Dedaume and another citizen of the village of approximately the same age, named Alexis Amirault, were good friends. When they met, they always spoke to each other in a language that only they understood, which one would call to speak with half words. It’s a shame that we could not have preserved these original expressions.

Dedaume was also very philosophical. He always took life in measured steps. Nothing excited him too much. One day when the doctor had been called for but failed to arrive, Dedaume tried to calm the others, declaring there was “no need to worry too much, if it’s urgent it’s already too late; if it’s not urgent there’s no rush.”

Guillaume (Dedaume) & Colombe d’Entremont’s burial.Did you ever know of geography boots? Well, Dedaume had a pair. It appears that in a catalogue, there was a portrait of a Chinaman wearing shoes with the end “turned up in the air.” The boots that Dedaume had bought resembled the shoes of the Chinaman.

Dedaume and his wife died suddenly during the night, one after the other in their sleep, and were buried the same day, in the same pit, each in their own coffin. They rest in the new cemetery in back of our church.