In Jacques Marie’s possession,
wrapped in oiled moose hide, was an old map made by Samuel de Champlain, with whom there was a family connection. It was this map which guided Frazier on a voyage of exploration along the St. Lawrence River. He was 19 years old, according to his own account, when alone on the St Lawrence River, he learned what had happened to his home in Grand-Pre -- and of the subsequent hunting and execution of escaped Acadian men. There was no home. There was no going home.
The map, Memere told Sido and Tyrone -- as they stood together on the banks of the many miles long Bayou Lafourche -- guided him Westward, as far as Niagara Falls. "From there, it was only 100 miles to the Mississippi River. After a year-long journey down the Mississippi, he reached Louisiana. There in La Fourche des Chetimaches, he married a free black woman. Then, because of the unwelcome influx of sugar plantations and slavery, hunter/fisherman Jacques Frazier and his wife moved deep into the Bayou swamps."
With their bleak, desolate beauty and stark weathered buildings, during the journey on which Memere took them, there were places that reminded Tyrone of Alviso, San Jose's access to the Bay in the 1970's, where, before it was developed, he used to go to fish.
"Stories of Jacques Marie's adventures" Memere continued, "and of his life with the remarkable woman with whom he raised a family were told in his diary."
