Cover art by Esther Maloney

The$Life$and$Times$of##

Lucille$Sanche$Maloney$

by#Suzanne#Maloney#Lebensold#

Table!of!Contents!

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4%"#$50,)6+789:+7;<=)******************************************************)+>!

LUCILLE’S'CHILDHOOD!.........................................................................!13!

EDUCATION!............................................................................................!18!

COMING'OF'AGE'FOR'LUCILLE'AND'OF'QUÉBEC'(1942-1948)!....!23!

ÉCOLE'DES'BEAUX-ARTS'AND'L’AFFAIRE'MAILLARD!.....................!24!

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NEW'SURROUNDINGS!...........................................................................!35!

ALBAN'WILLIAM'MALONEY'(1919'–'2011)!..................................!40!

FINDING'A'TREASURE!...........................................................................!42!

THE'CITY'MOUSE'MARRIES'THE'COUNTRY'MOUSE!........................!43!

4'$&%(BE!,,-)6+7;G:+7G8=)*********************************************)97!

A%!"#-:(,0!$-)6#B-)-0$,1)1-0$/H)+7G>:+7G3=)*******)G>!

THE'1967'MONTREAL'INTERNATIONAL'WORLD’S'FAIR:'EXPO'’67

!.................................................................................................................!72!

VIETNAM,'RACISM,'AND'THE'CIVIL'RIGH T S 'MOVEMENT!................!73!

FIRST'ENCOUNTERS'WITH'THE'BAHÁ’Í'FAITH'(1967)!..................!74!

NEW'FRIENDS!.......................................................................................!79!

D04!,1)0"&)(%44'"!#1),!D-)6+7GI:+77<=)****************)I+!

BEAULAC'BAHÁ’Í'SCHOOL'(1968-1971)!........................................!81!

BUYING'AN'OLD'FARMHOUSE'(1968)!..............................................!83!

THE'BAHÁ’Í'COMMUNITY'IN'MONTREAL'AND'SURROUNDINGS'

(1968'TO'1975)!.................................................................................!84!

EXPANDING'COMMUNITY'OF'FRIENDS!...............................................!87!

LUCILLE'AND'HER'CHILDREN!.............................................................!91!

STORY'OF'THE'BEAR!.............................................................................!94!

A Light in All Our Lives

LUCILLE’S'TRAVELS'(1975-1990)!..................................................!97!

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… love is light no matter in what abode it dwelleth …

¾ ’Abdu’l-Bahá

Introduction!

With the encouragement of members of my family and several friends,

I have written this biography of my mother, Lucille Sanche Maloney.

I write about Lucille principally as her daughter, knowing aspects of

her life of which few others are aware. Lucille became a member of

the Bahá’í Faith in the region of Montreal at a time when there were

very few Bahá’ís of French-Canadian origin. Her life may be of

interest to future generations since, like many early believers, she

chose to be part of a world-embracing and universal Faith in the

second century of its existence.

As Lucille's only daughter and the eldest of her three children, I have

access to the few documents she left in my care. I also write because

as a woman, like my mother and largely thanks to her, I have had

opportunities that many of my own generation may not have had. I

realize that there are innumerable women who have lived important

and valuable lives throughout diverse cultures and societies, over

centuries and even millennia who have remained unknown, invisible

simply because no one wrote about them.

Lucille admired Gilles Vigneault, the great raconteur (storyteller) and

chansonnier (singer) who came from a tiny village on the upper north

shore of the Gulf of Saint-Lawrence, that mighty river that crosses the

entire province of Québec. Vigneault, like the Saint-Lawrence is an

integral part of the spirit that is Québec. Now, this wonderful artist is

in his 90s. In the 1970s Lucille described him as coming from very

poor and humble beginnings, becoming a veritable folk hero for

several generations of Quebecers.

https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/abdul-baha/ selections-writings-

abdul-baha/3#159531595. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was the eldest Son and appointed

Successor of Bahá’u’lláh.

A Light in All Our Lives

Reading Vigneault’s recent description of what inspired him to write

his soul-stirring songs, I thought of Lucille as he recounted that, “It

was in the cemetery of my native village of Natashquan that my first

songs were born. I saw the tombstones of people I did not know, and

it bothered me. I wanted to speak about their courage, their resolve

and their hopes; to celebrate them, rather than those of mythical

heroes.”

Vigneault’s short description suggested an excerpt from the Writings

of Bahá’u’lláh, the prophet and founder of the Bahá’í Faith, about the

nature and purpose of the soul. Particularly since Lucille once

recounted how she found this concept central to her own aspirations:

Blessed is the soul which, at the hour of its separation from

the body, is sanctified from the vain imaginings of the peoples

of the world. ... The light which these souls radiate is

responsible for the progress of the world and the advancement

of its peoples. They are like unto leaven which leaveneth the

world of being, and constitute the animating force through

which the arts and wonders of the world are made manifest.

Through them the clouds rain their bounty upon men, and the

earth bringeth forth its fruits. All things must needs have a

cause, a motive power, an animating principle. These souls

and symbols of detachment have provided, and will continue

to provide, the supreme moving impulse in the world of being.

I am also grateful to those who have already led the way, having

written biographies of remarkable individuals, particularly those who

wrote about women, and from whom I derive inspiration.

From my own earliest years as a Bahá’í youth until now, in my late

60s, I have cherished books and stories lovingly researched and

Free translation of Gilles Vigneault during a performance, source: La Presse

newspaper, 6 October 2019. « C’est au cimetière de Natashquan que sont nées

mes premières chansons. Je voyais les pierres tombales de gens que je ne

connaissais pas et ça me dérangeait. J’ai voulu raconter leur vaillance, leur

endurance, leurs espérances et, plutôt que célébrer des héros mythiques, les

célébrer, eux. » — Gilles Vigneault, lors de son spectacle, La Presse, 6 octobre

2019.

Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, Chapter LXXXI.

Introduction

written about individuals whose lives have enriched humankind,

whatever their circumstances. Their stories have sometimes been my

companions in the worst and in the best of times; reminding me that

countless others have lived through great joys and many difficulties.

Some are biographies and narratives of people I have known, and

others about those I truly wish I had.

I chose to write Lucille’s biography in English since, although I am

fluently bilingual, I am a better English than French writer. I also hope

that having this biography available in English will make it more

accessible to more readers who may be interested in the lives of early

members of the Bahá’í Community in the Region of Montreal.

Montreal has great significance for the Bahá’í Community since it is

the only city in Canada where ’Abdu’l-Bahá stayed for several days

during his travels across North America in 1912. While in Montreal,

’Abdu’l-Bahá spoke eloquently in churches, and in meeting and union

halls on many diverse and pressing issues

It was well over half a century later, in 1967, that Lucille discovered

the Bahá’í Faith. She often told me that, throughout her life, she

longed to understand the “big questions” such as that vast and ever-

present question which most of us ask ourselves in some way or other:

What is the purpose of life?

Later, what concerned Lucille even more was how and what to teach

her children about life, and values that are sound, which would serve

them and would have them strive to make a positive contribution to

the betterment of the world throughout their own lives. Gaining a

deeper understanding of these questions through the spiritual and

social teachings of Bahá’u’lláh and wishing to share this joyous

discovery became the motivating force that guided and sustained her

in the last quarter century of her life. The all-encompassing, coherent,

and universal nature of these teachings does not pit one people, race,

religion, or nationality against another. It was this world-embracing

vision that attracted Lucille to this new Faith.

For further details about Abdu’l-Bahá’s nine-day visit to Montreal see:

https://bahai-library.com/mclean_centenary_abdul-baha_montreal and on the Bahá’í

Faith see: www.bahai.org.

A Light in All Our Lives

Lucille received a fine and rather exceptional education for a woman

living at that period in Quebec; and she was intelligent, independently

minded, and resourceful. She made important and sometimes

unconventional choices that left their mark and influenced the lives of

many people in positive ways. As a determined and radiant spirit, she

did not care for any undue attention, remained true to herself and

loving to all who knew her. She passed away almost 30 years ago and

yet when a treasured friend, Raymond Flournoy, passed away more

recently, my husband and I received a note from an old friend stating

that “… As I write to you, Suzanne, I think of your dear mother and

what a wonderful gift to the world was her being.”

My daughter Esther, Lucille’s first grandchild, recently wrote about

her grandmother, and as I read her words, I hear my mother’s voice

also assuring me that:

… in the end, of course, we don’t really make anything

ourselves. We only allow what is already there to emerge. And

when it does, it is unspeakably glorious and far greater than

anything we might have imagined ourselves.

Now Esther is a mother herself, living in Toronto with her husband

and young son, Liam. Wanting to introduce French into Liam’s life,

the language she associates with her beloved “Grandmaman Lulu”,

she recounted this story where Lucille appeared to be ever present in

her life:

… Today, after a stressful drive out to this little store in the

east end of Toronto, where I was almost in tears myself

because Liam was crying so much, he finally settled in the

wrap, we walked a bit and I walked into a used bookstore.

There was a pile of baby books on the floor, and I sifted

through and then asked the sales lady if she happened to have

anything in French for babies. She said "Yes! There was one

book! Really cute!" Then tried to find it and struggled for a

bit. She picked up a lovely book with a rabbit on it. The title

was "Le rêve de Lulu" (Lulu’s Dream) ... Of course, I teared

"""

M.R., email 2015.

Esther, June 2015

Introduction

up immediately and said, "that looks good, I'll take it." ;) it

felt confirming, like she's nudging me along! And like this

French thing is a good idea.

And her father, my beloved husband of almost 50 years responded:

I do believe she is much closer to us than we realize.

Dad (who is known as Jaja to his grandchildren Clara, Liam

and Na’im)

Esther, September 2016

A Light in All Our Lives

Lucille's!Ancestry!and!Origins!

Lucille’s mother was named Maria Brassard (1893 -1986), though her

baptismal name was Marie-Thérèse and yet, in Church records

, she

is Marie Rose de Lima Brassard. The marriage registry of 1919

records Marie Louise alias Maria Brassard. Since Lucille was born

in 1924, her mother was 31 when Lucille was born.

The Brassard side of the family is not very well known since Maria

became an orphan at a young age and was adopted by an aunt.

However, in 1991, Lucille wrote, “Roch Brassard married Delvina

Dupuis at Saint-Isidore de Laprairie (a town on the south shore near

the island and port city of Montreal, on the Gulf of Saint-Lawrence in

southwestern Québec) on 15 February 1881...” Maria and her twin

brother were the youngest, but he died in infancy.

During the 1880s and 90s rural people in Quebec, particularly farmers,

left their land to work in the factories of the United States where it was

easier to find factory work and higher wages. Most of this work

required few skills or formal education and often employed women

and children. This was especially true in the huge textile mills of New

England where several members of a family could find work.

According to Lucille:

Roch and Delvina moved to the U.S. to find employment and

returned home around 1895 when my mother, a twin, was

born (the boy died at birth). Delvina was very sick and unable

to care for herself or her family. … She died at 41… Beatrice,

the oldest, took over the care of the family but my mother was

later adopted by her childless aunt, Annie Dupuis, and uncle

Venant Leduc. They lived on Bourbonnière Street in

Hochelaga (now an eastern district of Montreal).

When Lucille was in her 60s, I remember her recounting that her

mother may have had an Abenaki

parent or ancestor, although the

family has no record to that effect. More recently, after having had a

Thanks to Heather Harvey Desson’s research, through Ancestry.com

Abenaki means "the people of the rising sun," or "People of the east Wabum-light

A'ki-land." http://www.angelfire.com/mi4/polcrt/ Abenaki.html

A Light in All Our Lives

genetic analysis of my origins, there is no indication of First Nations’

origins. Nevertheless, like most French-Canadian families, it was

unlikely, given the little concern for or knowledge of First Nations’

peoples at that time, that members of Lucille’s family would have

even acknowledged any familial lineage with First Nations. Children,

generation after generation in Catholic schools, were taught of “first

contact” (Jacques Cartier, French explorer, lands in Gaspé, Québec in

1534) with First Nations’ people when European settlers first arrived

and little else.

Lucille’s father was Hector Sanche (1893-1967) (Figure 1). Hector

was from a farm family near Casselman, Ontario. As a small child

Hector broke his arm and it had been badly set so he could never use

it fully. As a result of this accident, he was deemed unfit to be a farmer.

Instead, a local priest decided that Hector should be sent to college or

more specifically to a seminary in Montreal. That seminary has since

become a private French high school in downtown Montreal.

Boys who attended such schools were destined to become priests,

doctors, lawyers, or notaries. Hector became a doctor and specialized

in obstetrics. In doing so, his own family became part of Montreal’s

French-speaking professional class.

Lucille wrote:

My father Hector Sanche was born in a poor Catholic,

French, farming family in Casselman, Ontario. Public

schools there were only for English Protestants. For the few

lucky French kids, the parish priest established private

catholic elementary schools. From 9 years old, my father was

handicapped, a broken right elbow had been badly set and he

couldn’t fold his arm completely. Therefore… no good for the

farm… he was sent to college in Montreal (expenses paid by

the Church because there were nuns and priests in the family),

and he seldom went home again. He must have been a very

lonely young boy in the stern discipline of those days.

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collège_de_Montréal.

Lucille’s Ancestry and Origins

Figure 1: Hector Sanche circa 1911

On the Sanche side of the family there is little information about

ancestry; nevertheless, Lucille’s brother, Paul, who lived from the

1950s onward in Guatemala and later in Mexico City, looked into the

origins of the name and ancestry in the late 1970s or early 1980s.

Lucille recounted that her brother was directed to the Jewish ghetto of

Mexico City where an elderly gentleman, who knew much about

Sephardic ancestry, told him that the name Sanche had likely never

been Sanchez, as we had mistakenly thought, but indicates that these

ancestors were most likely Sephardic Jews.

We were also told that this couple then left Mexico for New Orleans,

most probably because of the Inquisition in Mexico, which was at least

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sephardi_Jews.

A Light in All Our Lives

as devastating as in Spain

. New Orleans was nearby, had a large

Hispanic community, and no Inquisition occurring there; all likely

reasons why they moved. They then travelled north, which meant up

the Mississippi River, and eventually they settled on the

Ontario/Quebec border region just south of Ottawa, in or near

Casselman, Ontario. Somehow in this process the couple or their

progeny became French-Canadian Catholics. According to the

historian and philosopher John Ralston-Saul

, it was illegal at the

time to be of any other faith than Christian in Canada so, like many

Jews who came to the New World, they were compelled to convert,

or they simply left the other inhabitants to assume that they were

Christian.

However, as mentioned earlier, according to my own genetic analysis

there is no evidence of Spanish or Jewish origins. A more likely

explanation for the settlement of the Sanche family in Casselman is

that they moved to that region from the Lower-Laurentian region just

north of Montreal because the land in that region of Ontario was less

expensive.

We have no knowledge of how Maria (Figure 4) and Hector met,

except that they both lived in Montreal and married in 1919 (Figure

2). As in many French-Canadian families, children were born in rapid

succession. By 1928, Maria and Hector had four children (Figure 3)

including Lucille, and five more were to follow.

As a small child, in the late 1950s, I have wonderful memories of my

grandparents’ summer cottage near the Laurentian village of

Nominingue, where I met most of my aunts, uncles, and many cousins

who were about a year or so younger than me. I also met some of them

later, when we moved to the suburbs of Montreal in the early 1960s.

We usually saw one another at the annual Réveillon on New Year's

Day when we would all converge at my grandparents’ home in Town

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Inquisition

Ralston Saul, J., A Fair Country: Telling Truths About Canada (2008)

This explanation came from a distant cousin who had also had this same genetic

analysis.

Lucille’s Ancestry and Origins

of Mount-Royal, now a borough of the City of Montreal, to enjoy a

meal together and catch up on one another’s lives (Figure 43).

Figure 2: Dr. Hector and Maria Sanche, August 6, 1919

A Light in All Our Lives

Figure 3: Hector Sanche with Claire, Paul, Pierre, and Lucille in the summer of

1928

Figure 4: Maria Brassard Sanche in 1930

Montréal!(1924-1950)!

Lucille’s Childhood

Lucille, born in Montreal into a French-Canadian Catholic family, was

sent to the “convent” from the age of five until she was 18. Convents

were private Catholic boarding schools founded, administered, and

operated by nuns. Holidays and summer months were spent with her

family in the country, usually with the help of a maid.

A few years after Lucille’s parents married, the family moved from a

modest working-class neighborhood below Sherbrooke Street near

Sanguinet and Amherst, to a more middle-class neighborhood on

Saint-Hubert Street above Sherbrooke Street (in a trendy

neighborhood now referred to as the Plateau). Lucille’s parents bought

a three-story grey-stone row house like the one pictured below (Figure

5). Hector established his medical practice at street level, while the

family lived on the upper floors.

In Lucille’s own words she describes her father and her family as she

saw them at that time:

He became famous as an obstetrician in French Montreal. He

was Director of Hôpital de la Miséricorde, professor and

dean of the Faculty of Obstetrics at the Université de

Montréal, chief director of nursing studies in Montreal, and

advisor to the archbishop, etc. Many people worshipped him

and called him “Papa Sanche”. His office was on the ground

floor of our home at 3709 Saint-Hubert Street in Montreal.

Maman had two maids and a maintenance man to care for this

big house. Most of us children went to boarding schools. We

were very proud of our father. Yet, to me, he was a shy

uncommunicative man; whatever question I ever asked him,

he left unanswered or ridiculed it! He was overburdened with

responsibility, and he had to deal constantly with women (as

an obstetrician) … and to note that in those days, men were

like kings and women were treated as illogical bundles of

emotions whose rights were denied, naturally!

A Light in All Our Lives

Figure 5: A residence on Saint-Hubert Street, similar to

Lucille’s childhood home.

As I grew up, I reacted to my father’s attitude. My mother,

sisters and brothers were so captivated by papa’s fame that

they misunderstood my point of view. To me he was

undoubtedly a good man; he worked very hard and made us

proud of him.

Lucille and Her Grandchildren (1982-1991)

I wish I had been better able to communicate with him and my

mother, sisters, and brothers. They were more like strangers

to me, maybe because I was the only one to be placed in

boarding school from the age of five.

Being the fourth of what was to become a family of nine children may

have been why Lucille was the first child in the family to be placed in

a boarding school at such a young age. Since the family lived in the

center of Montreal in a row house with her father’s medical practice

on the ground floor, it was probably too cramped for this growing

family to all be living there all the time.

Lucille’s parents may have thought it essential to have the children

placed in boarding schools if her father was to continue with his large

practice and his many other hospital, ecclesiastical and community-

based obligations in the heart of the city. Although they lived near a

beautiful park (Parc Lafontaine), there was no yard for children to play

outside the home since the back stairs lead to storage, parking garages,

and narrow alleys. These alleys were used for pick-up and delivery

including coal for heating. Many of these alleys were later converted

into streets (Figure 6).

Figure 6: Alley behind 3709 St. Hubert in 2020