Awhile back I wrote a paper called What the Mills Made about Grace Metalious, the author of the notorious Peyton Place. Her story is a compelling one indeed but it’s humble beginnings are one most of us New Englanders share. We are the children, grandchildren and great grandchildren of the mill workers. Their courage, brought forth from necessity, took them across the border from Canada and into these mill towns. Their ancestors were fur trappers. A rough and rugged people - both the men and women. Canadian winters don't leave early and they don't come late. Upon their arrival to a new country, they faced adversity, hunger, horrific work conditions and a way of life that didn’t allow for a childhood. The time passed hadn't quelled much hate between the English and the French and so they lived in all together in sections of the towns they fled to called "Little Canandas." They were a hardened people, work made them that way, but they were still a people who loved. They showed you that love when they clothed you, fed you tourtiere pies and made a new world that allowed you to dream bigger than an elementary education like they had. They reminded you to stand up straight not just to correct you but so you learned to be proud of who you were. The life of the French Canadian immigrant families are a well-oiled machine, the gears are greased with work and chores but never lacking in faith, tradition or family. Midnight masses, five minute jobs that most certainly will last the weekend, families gathered around a table playing rummy are the memories of our childhoods. While their childhoods were dampened by hunger, short lasting educations and the dangers of mill work. Anyone of us descended from the
mills have heard "if you're hungry enough you'll eat it" more times than we can count but we also had book after book placed into our hands. It is in the story of these mill workers that us, those who came after, can find our home. For it is us, their descendants, who are truly what the mills made, as our ancestors had intended all along.