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The funniest thing about acadians is that we only have a handful of last names, which is why two of my great-grandmothers were named Marie LeBlanc
One of them said they were cousins, the other said it was impossible, but WHO WAS CORRECT
(Legit siding with Impossible Great-Grandmother because she was from Cape Breton and the other Marie LeBlanc was from the Magdalen Islands)
This was Magdalen Islands Marie LeBlanc (photos taken 40-ish years apart? I love her sheer top in the right-hand photo but eyebrows never change)
This is Cape Breton Great-Grandmother on the occasion of her 60th (I think?) wedding anniversary. She doesn’t look super enthused but she loved my Grampy more than organized religion (which she loved a LOT)
My great-grandfather was a lowkey lapsed Anglican and they were married at the back of the church (as they used to say, I guess). My great-grandmother was an extremely catholic lady who went to mass literally every day and twice on Sundays
After my great-grandfather died, their parish (where all their kids had been raised) got a brandnew priest, who told my great-grandmother that her husband wasn’t in heaven because he wasn’t a real catholic. And like, you have to understand, she was SO catholic
She just ... stopped going to church. Because she had loved him so much and couldn’t imagine an afterlife without him. She went from eight masses a week to zero. I’m sure her reasoning was complex but part of it was that if she couldn’t spend the afterlife with him, then so what?
Anyway, St Stephen’s eventually got another new NEW priest who heard about this and was horrified. He called my great-grandmother up and was like “Billy is waiting for you in heaven, i’m SO sorry anyone tried to tell you otherwise” and she went back to church
But it was super eye-opening for teen me to see this low-key terrifying woman who had, like, glow-in-the-dark crucifixes around her house to suddenly give it all up for love
Bless her, she had 10 kids, over 50 grandkids, and I don’t know how many of us great-grandkids. Every Christmas she would send each of US dollar store presents and I would roll my eyes but my god she remembered all of our names, birth dates, and addresses
