FIRST LADY’S 1933 ROAD TRIP
Eleanor Roosevelt toured Quebec
It was the summer of 1933; the Great Depression was hitting North America with full force. To escape the heat of the American capital, two independent-minded Washington women hit the road and travelled north to Canada. For three weeks in July, they drove a new Plymouth roadster convertible through Vermont to Quebec, New Brunswick and back.
In and of itself, the story would be remarkable for the time, but it is more so because the two women were Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of newly-elected U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and her close companion and press secretary, Lorena Hickok. While rumours still abound that the two were “more than friends,” it has never been established with any certainty. There is no question this trip was a sign of their close relationship.
According to many biographers, Eleanor had always longed to travel along the St. Lawrence River and around the Gaspé. At 48 years old, her children were grown and she wanted to do “normal” things other Americans did. Beyond that, she was a francophile: Quebec was attractive to her because she spoke French fluently, having studied at a French boarding school in England and travelled in France.
When she initially proposed the trip to her husband, he resisted and the Secret Service were dead set against it. But Eleanor and “Hick” insisted, and the trip was on. The one concession the travellers made to the Secret Service was to carry a gun in the glove compartment — but without bullets. Eleanor joked that they could never be abducted anyway. She was nearly six feet tall; Hickok was a large woman, weighing 200 pounds. “Where would they hide us? They certainly couldn’t cram us into the trunk of a car.”
They left Washington in early July, stopping at the Roosevelt estate at Hyde Park, N.Y., for a few days, then travelling north via Vermont.
Although it was intended to be an informal getaway, there was a diplomatic role for Eleanor to play as she made her way north and east. Stopping in Quebec City on July 12 and 13, she met with dignitaries and the news media in her suite and told reporters, “I am travelling quite simply as a tourist, with my companion. We will stop where we think it is interesting and we will leave with an undefined itinerary.”
She was also quite discreet; one paper reported that “at no time did Mrs. Roosevelt comment on international problems or financial issues in which the president is involved.”
On July 12, at a lunch at Bois-de-Coulogne, the residence of Lieutenant-Governor Henry George Carroll, they dined with Premier Louis-Alexandre Taschereau, where they drank fine French wine and ate fresh strawberries. As everyone else spoke French, Hickok appreciated Carroll’s gesture to seat her next to a man who spoke English.
On July 13, they left la Vieille Capitale and after a tour around the city in an open calèche, drove around Île d’Orléans and to the shrine of Ste-Anne-de-Beaupré and along the north shore to Baie St-Paul and Murray Bay (present day La Malbaie). They passed through the town half an hour before the arrival of the widow of former Republican president William Taft (and rival of her Uncle Teddy). A reporter from the l’Action Catholique newspaper, not knowing about the acrimony between the families, suggested it was “disappointing” the two did not meet.
At St-Siméon, 150 kilometres east of Quebec City, the roadster was loaded onto the ferry to cross the river to Rivière-du-Loup, where the mayor welcomed the American visitors. They stayed overnight and travelled around the area, making impromptu stops.
On July 14, they headed east and at some point stopped to swim in the St-Lawrence and roast hotdogs on the beach. Later that day, they stopped for dinner at the Hotel des Touristes in Pointe-au-Père, just beyond Rimouski, and ordered a meal of pea soup, poached salmon and raisin pie. For many years, the hotel boasted a sign proclaiming, “Patronized by Mrs. Roosevelt.”
At one stop, the local priest approached and upon hearing Eleanor’s family name, invited them to lunch in the rectory. “Are you related to Theodore Roosevelt?” he asked. “Yes, I am his niece,” she replied. “Ah, I am a great admirer of your uncle.” It was clear he had no idea he was dining with the wife of the U.S. president.
They stayed overnight at the Hotel Belle Plage in Matane on July 15. The next morning, six-year-old John Claridge was out on the lawn when the women came by to admire the family’s substantial garden. Claridge, the son of the local mill manager, called his mother, and she recognized the first lady. The visitors stayed for an hour, and while Claridge (who died in July of this year) had a limited memory of that day, he told me he was impressed with the interest the two women showed and their politeness.
The trip continued around the Gaspé with stops at Percé Rock, and at a hunting lodge in Little Cascapédia on the Baie-des-Chaleurs July 20. Hickok wrote later that “only French was spoken in most of the villages. I had the feeling of being in a foreign country, not in North America.”
Returning via Maine and a stay at the Roosevelt summer home on Campobello Island, N.B., they were back in Washington on July 28.
Upon their return to the White House, FDR — severely limited in his travel by the demands of office as well as his debilitating polio — was curious about the trip: he asked “What were the people like? What was the role of religious institutions in education? How was the fishing?”
Today, such a trip would be impossible. Not only because of security issues, but also due to the impossibility of anonymity for a first lady in the Internet age.
Interest in the Roosevelt family fanned last winter after a Ken Burns documentary series, which devoted time to Eleanor’s Quebec visit, aired on PBS. Although buried in the annals of Canadian and U.S. history, the trip is a fascinating vignette that illustrates the curiosity and dynamism of one of the most interesting women of the 20th century.
I am travelling quite simply as a tourist, with my companion. We will stop where we think it is interesting and we will leave with an undefined itinerary.