Jack Kerouac’s Road: A Franco-American Odyssey is a 1987 NFB/ONF docudrama directed by Acadian artist and writer Herménégilde Chiasson. The film presents the life and work of writer Jack Kerouac through archival footage, interviews, photographs, and dramatic reconstructions.
I knew of Kerouac as a Beat Poet; I didn’t know about his deep Québec roots. This film has a fascinating story to tell.
Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac (Jack Kerouac) was born in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1922 to parents who had migrated south from Québec with their families. Kerouac’s father, Léon Kirouac was born in Saint-Hubert-de-Rivière-du-Loup, and his mother Gabrielle Ange Lévesque in St-Pacôme, Kamouraska.
Léon and Gabrielle were two of the 900,000 French-Canadians who moved to New England between 1840 and 1930 looking for work. At that time wages were higher in the U.S. and many people in Québec were poor.
In Lowell, Léo worked as a printer for the Franco-American newspaper L’Étoile and Gabrielle worked in a shoe factory. The Kerouac family lived in the mainly French-Canadian neighbourhoods of Centralville and Pawtucketville. Kerouac and his siblings attended French school in the mornings and English school in the afternoons. At this time, more than a quarter of Lowell’s population had French-Canadian roots.
Watching Jack Kerouac’s Road: A Franco-American Odyssey has piqued my curiosity. I want to find out more about this world-famous English-language author, who once said that everything he knew came from his French-Canadian origins.
Image: Jack Kerouac, from Jack Kerouac’s Road – A Franco-American Odyssey, NFB/ONF
Catherine Fisher, blogger
