BLESSED LOAVES : YOUNG HOWE'S DROWNING

BLESSED LOAVES : YOUNG HOWE'S DROWNING

A belief that was once popular along the Detroit River French - as it was in many other places - had to do with recovering a drowned body. According to this custom, people would bring a loaf of bread to the parish priest and have him bless it. The bread was then thrown on the water at the spot where the person had gone under. It would float away on the current and stop directly above the place where the body was. Norman Drouillard, from Rivière-aux-Canards, remembers such an incident from his youth along the Detroit River:

    ... And in the summer, Maurice Rocheleau had... somewhere around where the barn is, you know, that Bergeron had built there, Ulysse Bergeron? He had built there on Maurice’s land... Well, on the other side, they would fish with seine nets there, the boats would come in there, there was a pretty good beach there. And young Howe left on a Saturday afternoon - or Thursday, or Friday - and we went in a rowboat with his father. One of the oars fell in the water. The young man, he said;
    - “Never mind, I’ll go get it.”
He dove in the water, and he disappeared, eh. He drowned. And well anyway, they could never find him. There, Mrs Bergeron - Ulysse Bergeron’s mother - she said:
    - “We’re going to bake a bread, without any lard in it, and Father Loiselle is going to bless it, and his body will rise up to the surface.”
And then, Howe said:
    -“If this works, I’m going to become a Catholic. Guaranteed! But I don’t have any faith in this at all.”

And Ulysse Bergeron took the bread to Father Loiselle and he blessed it, and they went to where the boy had dived in, and they put the bread afloat there and it took off just like that... When it stopped, it turned around a couple of times and the body came up - half of it was above the surface. Right on the water. And I believe that this is the truth, because Ti-Coeur Meloche had lost a son too - that one was through the ice - and they had found him the same way. But, to finish the story... Howe disappeared. And he never did become a Catholic. But this one, you see, they can’t say that its a fairy tale, or something like that, because it’s the truth, because there were at least two hundred people who were there every day. They were fishing with nets, the police - they did everything to try and find that body. And they dragged the river, they did everything. For two or three days. And then, Sunday afternoon, when they made the body rise straight up to the surface, there were at least two hundred people there to witness it... That way, when all is said and done, it means that there really is a God somewhere.