ABBY PAIGE

I have been very fortunate during the last year to be engaged in a demanding and uniquely intimate creative process with my friend and distant cousin, Valérie Bilodeau. Like many French-Canadians of their generation, our great-grandfathers were migrant laborers who traveled between Québec and New England in search of work in factories, farms, and forests. We don’t know much about where they went or worked, but we do know that, eventually, Val’s great-grandfather, Honorius, went back home, and my great-grandfather, Wilfrid, settled in Vermont.

Today, Val and I are the strongest — but not the only! — connection between our two families. Despite the border, despite the distance, sometimes despite the language barrier, we have managed to maintain a connection. By sharing our creative practices with each other, we have been studying and learning about our shared family story. And we’re looking forward to sharing that story with an audience for the very first time.

Saturday, July 11, 2026, 7:00pm
Maison de la Culture de Bellechasse
Saint-Damien-de-Buckland, QC

You can join us for a special, one-night-only workshop presentation of this brand new work! Combining music and theater, story and memory, Les filles d’Honorius et Wilfrid is a joyful, bilingual encounter between two artists from the same extended family. This special evening will give a glimpse into a creative process in progress, the creation of a new work that asks urgent questions about culture, identity, and change. Carried by the history of a family that transcends borders of language, nation, and time, we explore the what is transmitted between generations and what is transformed, what is lost in translation and what is discovered.

We are deeply grateful to the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Conseil québécois du patrimoine vivant, and terro.art for making this work possible.

And if you’re interested in making a day of it, the Maison de la Culture in Saint-Damien-de Buckland is hosting a day-long series of events on July 11 in conjunction with our presentation. You can visit the local museum and archives, check out an outdoor artisan market, attend a panel discussion by Franco American and québécois artists and scholars, and try some delicious local foods prepared at the on-site café. More information about that will be posted right here soon.

And if you can’t make it, don’t worry! This is new work, and we definitely hope to present it again in the future, in other locations, when the work is further along. But if you happen to be in Quebec this summer, and you’re interested in visiting a beautiful village off the beaten tourism paths, consider yourself invited for this celebration of bonds between families, peoples, and cultures that transcend borders and time.