Celebrating a Pioneer Journey

By Pat­ty Con­ly, Danville His­tor­i­cal Society

A large and enthu­si­as­tic crowd enjoyed Autumn On (tem­porar­i­ly off) the Green, held on Sun­day, Octo­ber 6, despite the threat­en­ing gray skies and cool tem­per­a­tures of ear­ly Octo­ber. The weath­er, how­ev­er, was not a deter­rent for the array of craft and food ven­dors who par­tic­i­pat­ed. Shop­pers enjoyed brows­ing and vis­it­ing with friends and neigh­bors from far and near while lis­ten­ing to an assort­ment of musi­cal groups as they per­formed for the festivities.

The Danville His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety act­ed as host for Mr. Her­tel Boisvert along with his grand­daugh­ter Hei­di Hop­per, her hus­band and young son from Danville, Que­bec. Mr. Boisvert pro­mot­ed his new book based on a dai­ly trav­el jour­nal kept by his wife, Mar­garet, dur­ing their four­teen day jour­ney in a chuck wag­on. The trip began on Danville Fair day, 1960, and the cou­ple, along with a bor­rowed dog, made the trip from Danville, Ver­mont, to Danville, Que­bec. It was planned to coin­cide with Danville, Quebec’s cen­ten­ni­al cel­e­bra­tion and to com­mem­o­rate the twin­ning of the two towns and the pio­neers who once made a sim­i­lar journey.

Mr. Boisvert was greet­ed dur­ing the day by sev­er­al fam­i­ly mem­bers of peo­ple he met dur­ing his jour­ney; he enjoyed shar­ing mem­o­ries and sto­ries with them. As he auto­graphed copies of his book, he expressed a great sense of pride and accom­plish­ment in this attempt to keep mem­o­ries alive for gen­er­a­tions to come to help strength­en the con­nec­tion between the sis­ter towns. The Danville His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety exhib­it fea­tured a time­line map of the chuck wag­on trip with pho­tographs, busi­ness adver­tise­ments and news­pa­per arti­cles of the time. Vis­i­tors at the booth were able to enjoy rem­i­nisc­ing about famil­iar peo­ple and places at stops where the chuck wag­on made along the way. The map and sto­ries allowed a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the mag­ni­tude and dif­fi­cul­ty of such a journey.

A rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Danville, Que­bec, His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety was also on hand at the event and stat­ed that plans are cur­rent­ly being made to insure that future cel­e­bra­tions and events will keep com­mu­ni­ca­tion and con­nec­tions between the two towns.

Mr. Boisvert’s book is avail­able at the Danville His­tor­i­cal Society’s Choate-Sias House in both hard­cov­er and paper­back for­mat for those inter­est­ed in pur­chas­ing a copy.