Les " noms à coucher dehors "

Un drôle de nom pour un projet plein de nostalgie et de poésie: célébrer en lettres de glace, les vieux noms français d'exilés chercheurs d'or au Yukon. Ces noms ont été retrouvés dans les archives du Dawson City Museum.

Les " Noms à coucher dehors " was a project situated in front of the Dawson City Museum. The letters are made of ice and spell a series of old french names. Here they are seen with sunlight shining through them, which is rare in Dawson in january. To see a photo of me at work go to: www.flickr.com/photos/rangergord/3252636360/
The museum is an beautiful building and thank you to the director, Laura Mann for letting me create this project. The names were taken from the archive's 1901 Census of French Canadians who were there during the gold rush. for more on the museum, visit: www.dawsonmuseum.ca/

Les Noms a Coucher Dehors:

Is a project of names made out of ice and installed in front of the Dawson City Museum in the Yukon. The names were gathered in the museum archives from the 1901 Census. These old- fashion French names represent people who came to Dawson for the gold rush. These are names that are no longer in use and date from the generation of my grandparents. The project was initially conceived from my grandmother's name: Aurore. The aurora borealis is common to the northern regions of Quebec and also in the Yukon. Many of the names in the Census were misspelled or anglised and i presented them as found to point to how minority communities get absorbed into the mainstream culture through language. For example one person's name was written down as JB, which probably stood for Jean-Baptiste and the man may have just called himself JB to fit into a predominantly English speaking community. On the other hand there was also a Jeanbaptis in the register and in this case it may gave been a misspelling from the census employee of from the man himself.Les noms a coucher dehors literally means: names that sleep outside. As kids we used to make fun of these names because they represented a backward, habitant time. This project celebrates these beautiful and poetic names by letting them out of the Museum for all to witness, even if it is for only a brief, ephemeral moment.