Week 4 of the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge is Education. My grandmother, Constance Meloche, grew up in Montreal where she was the eighth of eleven children born to her devout, Catholic parents, Laura and Exalapha. Ensuring her daughters had good educations and were able to support themselves if needed was important to my great-grandmother, Laura, who worked as a bilingual secretary prior to her 1917 marriage. I don’t know if it was Nana Connie’s choice or Laura’s, but Nana followed in her mother’s footsteps and studied to be a bilingual secretary. Regardless of how she ended up on that career path, it was a good one for someone so beautiful and vivacious – especially in the 1940s when those were features male employers often looked for in addition to (and sometimes over) competent secretarial skills.
Bilingual professionals were in high demand in Quebec, a province where both languages were spoken, but not everyone knew both languages. Nana Connie had a distinct advantage because she was fluent in her native French as well as English. Both languages were spoken in the Meloche home. Laura was born to French-Canadian parents who lived in America, where she was born and lived until she was 16, at which point her family moved back to Montreal. When Laura was growing up in Maine, it was common for many French-Canadian immigrants to stay within their comfortable, French-speaking communities and never learn English. Maybe Laura saw how limiting that could be, and made a conscious decision to raise her children speaking both languages. All the postcards she wrote to my grandmother were in English, as were all the letters my grandmother and her brother LeClerc (aka Johnny) exchanged.
I believe my grandmother and her siblings all attended a Catholic School affiliated with their church, Ste-Cunegonde Academy. Nana Connie later attended the Saint Angela Commercial School where she received a degree in Bilingual Studies of Commercial Courses. Proving that she was more than just a pretty face, she graduated with First Class Honors on June 20, 1944.
Her course of study was taxing and required her to take and pass multiple certification exams. As a student seeking bilingual certification, requirements were doubly difficult; she had to pass most exams in both French and English. Many of these courses had multiple levels of proficiency, with tests for each level. She received certifications in Business Writing, Typing, Artistic Typing, Bookkeeping, and Gregg Shorthand.
After graduation, she immediately found a job as a stenographer at the Department of Health in Montreal, where she likely did well both personally and professionally. Nana Connie took pride in working hard. She was also extroverted and possessed a quick and witty sense of humor, making her a favorite among all who knew her, including her co-workers. The income she brought home was a big help to her family. Most of her siblings lived at home until they married, and though Nana Connie was the eighth child, she was the first one to tie the knot. In 1949, she married my grandfather, Phil, bringing an end to her five years of employment at the Department of Health.
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