Family
Wilfrid Laurier married Zoé Lafontaine in Montreal on 13 May 1868. She was the daughter of G.N.R. Lafontaine and his first wife, Zoé Lavinge dit Tessier. Laurier's wife Zoé was born in Montreal and educated there at the School of the Bon Pasteur, and at the Convent of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart, St. Vincent de Paul. The couple lived at Arthabaskaville until they moved to Ottawa in 1896. She served as one of the Vice-Presidents on the formation of the National Council of Women and was Honorary Vice-President of the Victorian Order of Nurses. The couple had no children. Beginning in 1878 and for some twenty years while married to Zoé, Laurier had an "ambiguous relationship" with a married woman, Émilie Lavergne, with whom he fell in love. Where Zoé loved plants, animals and home life, she was not an intellectual. Émilie was, and relished literature and politics like Wilfrid, whose heart she won. Rumour had it he fathered a son (Armand) with her, yet Zoé remained with him until his death.
Read more about this topic: Wilfrid Laurier
Famous quotes containing the word family:
“For every nineteenth-century middle-class family that protected its wife and child within the family circle, there was an Irish or a German girl scrubbing floors in that home, a Welsh boy mining coal to keep the home-baked goodies warm, a black girl doing the family laundry, a black mother and child picking cotton to be made into clothes for the family, and a Jewish or an Italian daughter in a sweatshop making “ladies” dresses or artificial flowers for the family to purchase.”
—Stephanie Coontz (20th century)
“Children should know there are limits to family finances or they will confuse “we can’t afford that” with “they don’t want me to have it.” The first statement is a realistic and objective assessment of a situation, while the other carries an emotional message.”
—Jean Ross Peterson (20th century)
“It’s a family joke that when I was a tiny child I turned from the window out of which I was watching a snowstorm, and hopefully asked, ‘Momma, do we believe in winter?’”
—Philip Roth (20th century)