At 75 years of age, Rhea Trudeau is still as active and vibrant as ever. A third generation St. Adolphe resident, she can’t imagine anywhere she’d rather live. The small French community has been home her entire life, and it’s also where she raised her son and four daughters. They’ve long married and moved on, but Rhea’s spirit is buoyed by regular visits from her kids, ten grandchildren, and six great grandchildren—and she still enjoys the company of lifelong friends in this close-knit community.
Born in 1943, Rhea remembers a time before housing developments, parks, and sports facilities. Growing up in a community of about 500 people meant that everyone was invited to the weddings. The children entertained themselves tobogganing down the slope of the Red River to see who could reach the other side. They made boats out of garden produce and played outdoor games.
And growing up with older working brothers had its advantages.
“I was very spoiled and I had nine dolls,” Rhea marvels. “I would put all of my dolls in my carriage and go to find my friends and we played with them. Then a fight would start and I would go back home with all of my dolls.”
The village had gravelled streets and wooden planks for sidewalks. Neighbours gathered regularly at the St. Adolphe Parish and the community hall on Main Street. Her earliest memories go back to her home on the southside. With no indoor plumbing, the family fetched drinking and wash water from the Brodeur Brothers garage. They had an outhouse, and each family member kept a “piss pot” under their bed which had to be emptied in the morning.
She recalls her mother labouring over the cookstove to clean the family’s laundry in a large pot. Her father used manure to fill cracks in the house’s exterior every fall. She shared a bed with her only sister, and when fights broke out they’d stuff pillows between them to establish boundaries.
The Great Deluge
A most vivid memory for Rhea was the year she turned seven. The great flood of 1950 swept over them like a deluge, forcing residents to flee to higher ground.
“A boat picked us up at the door and we had my grandmother’s dog Finette,” Rhea recalls. “We lost [the dog] because she couldn’t come with us.”
The family then packed into a train for Portage la Prairie. From there, they were transferred to the farm of a family near Elie, where they stayed until it was safe to return home.
“The trip got us all very dirty and muddy. We were five kids and my parents in a wagon behind the tractor. [The people] were very nice. The three boys were put to work on the farm with my dad, and my sister and I were sent to Elie school.”
When they were able to return to St. Adolphe, they discovered that the family home had been devastated by seven feet of floodwater.
Festivities
The family started over with grants provided by the government and built a new home on Main Street, bigger and roomier than the last. It proved to be the perfect location for regular family parties and Rhea has fond memories of visits from her mother’s family who lived in the city. They would bang on their doors and windows late at night, appealing to the family to wake up and let “the happy gang” in. They’d come bearing an assortment of musical instruments. Furniture was quickly pushed aside to make room for dancing. Into the wee hours of the morning, the home came alive with square dances, polkas, and waltzes.
Christmas, too, was a time for festive celebration, although Rhea says the occasion was focused much more on religion than it is today. Rhea’s family gathered on Christmas Eve at the local parish for midnight mass. They stayed for the three-hour service and returned home in the middle of the night to open gifts. At 4:00 a.m., the table was spread with turkey, meatballs, and all the traditional Christmas dinner fixings.
By the time the sun came up, the children had settled in for an exhausted but satisfied sleep.
Rhea and her husband continued this tradition with their own children for years afterward.
School Days
The village’s only school was in the convent next to the parish, and the children were taught by nuns who called themselves Filles de la Croix (Girls of the Crucifix). They ran a strict regimen and had little tolerance for girls like Rhea who occasionally broke the rules by pulling a tight-fitting sweater over her loosely fitted uniform.
The boys had no dress code and were treated much better, Rhea jokes.
Once or twice a year, the school was visited by English and French inspectors. When the French inspector came by, the children were instructed to hide their English workbooks. The same held true for the days when the English teacher stopped in. Rhea speculates that the school was likely receiving double grants, which required a level of secrecy within the school.
The convent also held chapel every morning at 7:00 a.m., which Rhea and her siblings were required to attend. After chapel, they returned home for breakfast and then headed back to the convent for school.
“[My sister] was four years older than me and she didn’t want me to walk with her to mass, so she would throw rocks at me on the way to church,” Rhea recalls, laughing.
Nursing Home Life
Rhea eventually married and, with the exception of a short period of city living, they settled in St. Adolphe to raise their own family. Times were difficult and Rhea worked most of her adult years to help bring in the family income. The hardest years of all were those spent working after-school hours as a custodian in Winnipeg, and later working the night shift at the local nursing home. Sleep was sparse in these years, challenging her desire to be a doting mother.
At the St. Adolphe nursing home, she worked in every department from the kitchen to healthcare aid and housekeeping supervisor. Seeing a need, Rhea eventually put the third floor of the old convent to use by establishing Third Floor Treasures, a second-hand store.
“The third floor was not being used, so I took all the rooms and started [to ready them], and at the end we had all the rooms upstairs full,” she says. “We got donations like crazy and got someone to build a donation drop-off outside. I had a lot of volunteers that would come and help and it was so much fun… It was like Christmas every day… With all of the pennies and dimes and quarters, we made over $30,000 and we bought things for the seniors that were living there… and paid for their outings.”
It was at this time that she experienced a difficult marital separation. She credits the store with saving her during that hard time.
Rhea remained a loyal employee of the nursing home into her seventies, giving up her position only because the nursing home was closing and being readied for demolition.
“It broke my heart,” she says, “because I spent my whole life at that building. I did all of my schooling there and then I worked there for 33 years.”
Her friend and manager of the nursing home, Steve Neufeld, encouraged Rhea to write a book to commemorate the convent’s century-long relevance in the community. She took him up on the challenge, pulling together nurses, nuns, and friends to contribute stories and pictures. She found professionals to help her with grant applications and book compilation.
Today, the book, The Old Convent Tells Its Story, has sold over 400 copies.
Family: The Most Important Thing
Even now, at 75, Rhea chooses to involve herself in community life. She works actively on the Services to Seniors committee, helping with fundraising for a variety of local events and projects. With all of the challenges that life brought her way, the loss of her son-in-law to a heart attack, and later a daughter-in-law to a sudden illness, have been the most heart-wrenching ones of all.
“My mom is the strongest person I know,” says her youngest daughter Michelle. “Every day [there was] so much stability and consistency. In eighth grade, all I cared about was getting the most expensive badminton racket so I could compete in the Provincials. Times were financially hard in our family, but Mom saved her change… to buy me the racket. I won the Provincials that year.”
Michelle says it took her many years to realize the many sacrifices her mother made for the family.
“She has always been the rock in our family… and continues to teach all her kids and grandkids that family is the most important thing in life.”
