a minute or two/without remembering

The first 120 years of my ancestors’ arrival in New France, poems spoken in their voices.

The dust cover is a translucent map of Montreal in 1685 or so, overlaid with My father’s family in Gold.  The map shows where my sixth and seventh great grandparents lived between 1690 and 1700 during the worst Iroquois threats. The well they used is still there, (and covered) though the river has been filled in.  It is on the north side of the Pointe-à-Callière, Montréal Museum of Archaeology and History.  When I sit by that well, I  canfeel my seventh great grandmother, Margeurite LeSiege, sitting beside me for a few minutes before carrying her water to the humble dwelling they rented.