Witching Hour - Strange History: The priest who wrote down how New France talked

Witching Hour - Strange History A Jesuit priest at the old Huron mission in what is now Windsor kept a notebook of how people talked. From 1743 to 1758, Pierre Potier wrote down sayings he heard. It is called the only dictionary of New France French.

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Witching Hour is our nightly local history and folklore feature. Ghost stories and legends are retold as stories people tell, not reported as fact. Sources are listed below the story.

Not a ghost story tonight. This one is about a notebook, and the voices it kept.

The priest at the river

Jesuit Pierre Potier reached the Huron mission at the mouth of the Detroit River on Sept. 25, 1744, after months at the mission of Lorette near Quebec learning the Huron language. The mission was then on Bois Blanc Island. In 1747 it was moved to La Pointe de Montréal, now part of Windsor.

In 1767 the mission became the parish of Our Lady of the Assumption, and Potier became its first pastor, serving both the Huron people and the French settlers on the south shore. It is the oldest continuous parish in Ontario. Potier served there until his death in 1781.

The odd part

From 1743 to 1758, Potier filled a notebook with words and sayings he picked up in everyday conversation, from his crossing of the Atlantic to Quebec, Lorette and the Detroit River. He called it "Façons de parler proverbiales, triviales, figurées, etc. des Canadiens au XVIIIe siècle."

That notebook is described as the only dictionary of the French spoken in New France on the eve of the British conquest. Language historians still use it today. It is kept in Montreal.

The place

The church that stands on Huron Church Road today is not Potier's. It was begun in 1842, on land given by the Huron nation.