Stories of women from silent generation on display at UdeM

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Stories from 36 women of the silent generation from the pages of Stella d’Entremont’s book are now on display at l’Université de Moncton’s Acadian Museum. 

The Moncton photographer said her work on the project began in 2020 when she met with Acadian women to hear their stories and take photos of their faces and hands. 

“The idea was that if you look at somebody’s face and hands closely, you can tell their stories,. The biography that was going to be accompanying them was simply there to confirm what the viewer was seeing,” she said. 

Realizing the information she was getting from the women was “powerful and important”, d’Entremont wanted to expand upon her original idea by interviewing more women and sharing their photos and stories in a book. 

In the bilingual book, Acadiennes: Voices of the Silent Generation, Acaidan and Cajun women born between 1925 and 1945, who d’Entremont travelled to Louisiana to interview, share their life stories.

Now, the project has grown again with the exhibition at the university. The exhibit, which is on display until April 28, features the photographs d’Entremont took of the women’s hands and faces alongside their biographies. 

Those biographies contain common threads, according to d’Entremont. She said for the older women she spoke with, they were not expected to go to university, and many of them left school early to go to work to help their families. 

She heard from some that they were married at a young age because it was one less mouth for their family to feed in a time when money was tight. 

Within the demographic she interviewed, she also saw an evolution with the younger women talking about going to teaching college and she saw that the church played less of a role in their lives. 

“A lot can be learned from that generation,” she said.

“Our generation benefited a lot from the work that they had done. . . This silent generation is the first generation where the women were entering the workforce, so they started paving the way for us.” 

She said the women’s stories are helping people gain insights and answer questions about who their loved ones from the time period were and why they were the way they were. 

As a baby boomer who lost her own Acadian mother when she was 34, d’Entremont said that’s just what the project did for her. 

“Every single lady told me a little more about who she was,” she said. 

“I was kind of getting to know who she really was through them.”