François Brassard, Victoria, BC

INTRODUCTION

François Brassard I have known for thirty years in the Diocese of Victoria. He is man of many gifts and many aspects to his life, as revealed in his newly minted Memoirs told from a perspective he adapted recently on his journey.

At present he is an Eco-warrior who serves with The Town of Esquimalt Environmental Citizens Committee. He was very active volunteer with Dogwood, another west coast Eco-consciousness association. In concert with this, I would see him at Earth Literacy workshops held in the Quaker hall in Victoria.

His first call was to the Catholic priesthood in the Augustinian Order. Based in The New England region of the United States, his family spoke a Quebec French. He studied as a seminarian in Europe and served as a business manager for his order for a time at one of its colleges.

He came to Canada when he was discerning his vocation after Vatican II and was part of Therafields in Toronto, a therapeutic community that was part of the Basic Christian Community scene in that city. Eventually he married Connie Kurtenbach, a gifted counsellor and life coach and they settled in Ladysmith on Vancouver Island running a dynamic pastoral service as active members of the Corpus community of laicised religious that was burgeoning here at the time.

One typical creative effort was to instruct aspirants to the Roman Catholic Women Priests Canada in their preparation for ordination as part of that prophetic movement. Francois is now a member of our house church community which meets monthly to check in together, read the Sunday liturgical readings, share Eucharist and have pot luck. A more progressive and passionate pursuer of the truth would be hard to find. In this vein he has made a serious personal study of reincarnation and how it effects one’s spirituality, clearly a dynamic development in his senior years and since the passing of Connie.

I challenged him to write his memoirs, and typical of Francois he has seen it through in short order. Anyone who would like a copy may have one from ICN for a donation that fits your budget. He has generously donated a batch to ICN for this purpose. An extraordinary person who lives an extraordinary life. – Patrick Jamieson

I, François, was born on December 28, 1934 in a Franco-Canadian enclave of the city of Pawtucket, R.I., USA. My first language was Canadian French, though I could also speak English. We were firmly embedded in the traditional Franco-Canadian culture of the day, strict in terms of religious practice, heavily jansenistic as regards sexual mores.

My parents modelled opposition to smoking and drinking and frowned on behaviour disrespectful of others. In terms of enforcement, my parents, like many others at that time, believed in and practiced corporal punishment. My mother handled ordinary infractions but insisted that my dad deal with the serious ones. I can still see my brother Johnny, six years older than me, having to hold his hand out, palm up, while my mother administered 15 strokes with a heavy ruler. If he flinched, she would double the amount. He didn’t flinch, but the tears rolled down his cheek.

My brother Roger, the second oldest, could get into a lot of trouble. Once, his 7th grade nun/teacher kept him after school to write lines because of misbehaviour in class. The class was on the second floor of the parochial school. Fed up after 15 minutes of detention and because he had a paper route to run, he ran to the open window and jumped out. The nun fainted and was, later so distraught, the Mother Superior had to assign her to another school. What the nun never knew was that Roger had grabbed the downspout beside the window and shimmied down to the ground.

Of course, my parents were informed about this and, so, it was my dad who gave Roger a serious licking in the cellar of the house. I remember running to the small cellar window outside to watch what was happening. I was very frightened and I felt very bad for watching.

My turn came when I had just turned four. It was at the beginning of January. I was wearing my new green snowsuit. I had been outside playing in the back yard. I came back inside by the back door and for whatever reason, I climbed the stairs to the second-floor apartment. Apparently, the tenants had left in December and my father from the hardware store had arranged to have the apartment painted. Our family rented the first floor.

All the paint cans, brushes and paint thinner were all on the floor just outside the closed door. I started playing with the paints and brushing some of it on the landing wall and some of it got onto my snowsuit. In my child’s mind I thought I was helping my dad and it never occurred to me that I was making a mess. Then, mom started calling me from the open back door downstairs, thinking I was outside. I called down to her and she came up and saw the scene.

She was beyond angry. She told me to take off my snow suit and go downstairs and that she would deal with me later. It was midafternoon, she still had to prepare supper and, now she had to clean me up and the mess with paint thinner. It was hard work since there were no water-based paints at that time. By the time she got that done, Roger, Bert and Johnny had just arrived from school. Julie was not there.

Mom explained what had happened and that I needed to be disciplined. Just as she was about to administer the first strokes, my brother George arrived home from high school. He asked my mother what had happened. She explained. Standing to my right and facing her, he put down my outstretched hand, stretched out his own hand, looked my mother straight in the eyes and calmly said: “Don’t hit him, hit me instead.” And so, my mother did. And that was the beginning of a strong loving bond between me and my charismatic brother.

I was 8 years old when George, a U.S. Marine pilot, died in an airplane crash in WWII. Like all my older brothers, I was traumatized by his death. In the dark of night I cried for many nights after his death. I remember often dreaming that I too would die at age 20. And at age 16, I went on a mission to interview many people who were close to George and to learn how they were affected by him.

My brothers told me stories about how all the kids in the neighbourhood gravitated toward him. He would engage them in all kinds of creative projects like building a beautiful clubhouse from wood that they found in a deserted box car on a spur track far down the hill near the Hope Webbing textile factory. He asked Dad for all the extra supplies, like nails.

George

I have one more very emotional story to tell about my brother George. The memory of it came to me recently while listening once again to the recording of the past life regression session I underwent in 2010. The hypnotherapist, Riva, took me to the death scene in my immediate past life as Juliette. The only person in the room is my brother Robert. I have just given up my last breath. My soul as Feeno leaves Juliette’s body and floats above close to the ceiling, looking down on the scene.

Robert had been crying and now rested his head on Juliette’s arm. A short while later I rise out of the house and up into what appears to be a very long, thick foggy passageway. At the far end the light gets clearer and brighter and I begin to see two figures approaching me. I immediately recognize Aiko, my ever-faithful Spirit Guide. He greets me warmly and says “well done.”

Then the other being comes forward and I am stunned and overjoyed to recognize the soul of my brother George in my present life as François. We embrace and exchange information about others in our soul group. We have been friends for a long time and have worked together in different roles in many past lives.

Riva interrupts and asks me, François, what George and I contracted to do for one another in my present life. I didn’t understand the question and asked her to explain what she meant. She said that it was common practice among soul friends working together in a particular incarnation to mutually agree to be helpful to one another in a special way during that lifetime. So, Riva asked me what George agreed to do for me.

After a short pause, I said that he agreed to watch over me and protect me. “Very good,” Riva said. Then she asked me what I agreed to do for him. A long pause followed and after a couple prompts from Riva, I finally answered that I didn’t know. A silent pause followed. Then Riva said: “On the count of three I’m going to take you to another past life when you and ‘George’ once again were brothers. One, two, three.” And she touched my forehead just above the middle of my two eyes. A long pause…. Then I began breathing very heavily and became hysterical, repeatedly screaming “He can’t breathe.”

Realizing that I would not be able to continue under the present circumstances, Riva practiced a calming technique, and I was soon able to continue. Riva then asked, “where are you both right now?” Still somewhat upset I explained that my younger brother was standing on a rock at the edge of a lake and that I, his elder brother in this life, was about 25 feet further up the embankment.

And then he slipped and fell into deep water. I ran down the embankment and dove into the water. At first, I couldn’t find him. So I dove down again, found him, pulled him to the surface and quickly swam and dragged him to the shore. The water was extremely cold. I could hardly breathe and was shaking all over. But ‘George’ wasn’t breathing at all. I tried everything I could, but couldn’t get him to breathe.

At this point in the hypno session, I became hysterical again, crying and shaking all over. Riva calmed me again. I no longer returned to the lake scene, but I knew that ‘George’ had died. A couple minutes later, Riva asked me if I had discovered what it was I agreed to do for ‘George’ in that life. I said “Yes” I told George’s soul that I was prepared to give up my own life to save my brother.