“Madeline, I’m happy that I am going to live with F. Vinet at the Rectory. I’m too young for babies.” Marie-Anne turns to face her friend with her pillow under her dress, like a bulging pregnant belly. She performs an exaggerated pregnant waddle before falling back on her bed. “Boys are yucky, and men are hairy. I’m too young and scared to have babies. Remember our friend, Germaine. God bless her. She and the babe died when she was birthing. We both heard how there was so much blood. The baby died before taking its first breath.” Anne Marie grimaces, births out the quilt, then dramatically dies on the bed. 

“Remember what the midwife said? She said, Fr. Vinet turned as white as the Holy Ghost and threw up in the doorway after he baptized the babe and gave Germaine last rites. Germaine was two years older than us. She was only fourteen!” 

Most women worked as maids until their twenties before marrying. Germaine’s father spent more time drinking than farming. With every poor crop, he took out his anger with his fists on the family. Germaine apprenticed under M. Thiebault as a washerwoman until her father married her off to a visiting fur trapper in exchange for a keg of rum. 

Hudson Bay Company men promised young men in Maskinongé adventure and riches beyond their wild dreams in exchange for a three- or five-year contract. Fur Trade Widows sat together at the back of St. Joseph’s Church. They lived on the money the company sent them and prayed for their husband’s fidelity, safety and return. Not everyone who survived the rapids, beasts, and weather came home. Men regularly married Indigenous women in à la façon du pays (by “the custom of the country”). The Catholic Church did not recognize these unsanctioned marriages or the children they produced.  Not all men chose to come home and abandon their mixed-race children in Rupert’s Land. Germaine’s grizzled husband worked near Cumberland House. He left his three “half-breed” children to live in the bush with their mother’s family. 

Priests preaching fidelity forgave men’s promiscuity. Biology gave men the prerogative to relieve their natural sexual desires and discipline wives and children. Chastity was demanded of women. Fallen women lost their virginity before marriage. Germaine’s father caused her fall from God’s grace.  Temptresses openly expressed their sexuality, exchanging sexual favours for money at logging camps and cities. The community wrestled with the moral dilemma of whether the Fur Trade Widows had exchanged their virginity for their husband’s paycheque. Aside from their families, no one risked associating with the Fur Trade Widows.