02- Aunt Lili

02 - Aunt Lili

Aunt Lili was 79 years old. She had been born into a wealthy family in Belgium, but life had drawn a difficult path for her. Her husband, Viktor, whom she married for love, was a kind, gentle, and humane man. He was also well-educated. However, when it came to work, he was a complete adventurer and very irresponsible. He constantly came up with new business ideas, but none of them ever brought in income that could contribute to the family. Because of this, they endured years of unnecessary poverty.

The couple had two sons. When they reached school age, she gave birth to two more sons, hoping for a daughter. But her life became a cycle of raising four boys and dealing with Viktor’s failures. For years, she bore all the burden on her shoulders—trying to support the household on a teacher’s salary, managing the housework and the children’s education. They always lived on the edge of poverty. Apart from a road trip to Italy in the 1970s when they had only two children, there were few opportunities for long travels.

The years passed like this; the sons grew up and set off into life. Only after retiring was Lili finally able to part ways with Viktor. Despite all those years, they had never managed to buy a home and had always lived in rented flats. It upset her that half of her small pension went on rent. However, for the first time in her life, being able to save a little and go on holiday every other year had become one of her greatest pleasures.

She read a great deal, and seeing the places she read about with her own eyes was one of her biggest dreams. That’s how she found herself travelling to places like Uzbekistan and Egypt—places most women her age wouldn’t dare to visit. She disliked luxury, preferred to get to know the locals and the culture, and would rather brush her teeth in the waters of the Nile than stay in a fancy hotel.

Despite her advancing age, she never considered retreating from life. She took great joy in helping her grandchildren with their homework and gathering her sons around her to cook delicious meals. She preferred to be called Aunt Lili instead of Mrs Lili. Though she never had a daughter, she had formed bonds with both the former and current wives of her sons. She even liked the second wife of her eldest son, Eda. She would share memories with her, gossip about her sons, and talk about her travels. With a few glasses of wine, her tongue would loosen, and they would have long, laughter-filled conversations.

Not long ago, while reading a novel by Marie-Bernadette Dupuy alongside her sister Ella, she added a new place to her list of dreams. The book spoke of a small town and a young girl who grew up there. This town had been built in 1901 around a paper mill. At the time, it was considered a model modern settlement and developed rapidly. But only twenty-five years later, the factory shut down, and the town was completely abandoned.

Interestingly, this wasn’t a fictional place. It was a ghost town in the deep forests of Canada, beneath a waterfall—Val-Jalbert. Back when it was built, many homes around the world didn’t have running water or toilets, but the workers’ houses here were equipped with both, and villagers from surrounding areas would come out of curiosity just to see them. While it had once been a dreamlike town, after the factory shut, it was left to disappear into nature’s arms for forty years. In the 1960s, it was overrun by hippies and vandalised. But for the last forty years, it had been protected, restored, and turned into an open-air museum.

What affected Aunt Lili so deeply was the fact that the young girl in the book had the same surname as her own mother. That’s why she read the novel as if conducting a genealogy study, paying close attention to every detail. As she read, the tragic fate of this town captivated her. How could a place so far ahead of its time have been completely abandoned? And so, the ghost town became a place she longed to see with all her heart.

As soon as she learnt that her eldest son and daughter-in-law Eda would be moving to Quebec for a while, her first move was to pull out a map and examine the distance between Quebec City and Val-Jalbert. She was overjoyed. Though she wasn’t particularly close to the gods, she chuckled and told her old friend Marianne: “Oh darling, I dream, and the gods roll up their sleeves to lay the stepping stones to carry me to my dreams.” A month after they had moved into their home, they invited her to spend a few weeks with them.

From the moment she stepped off the plane, Lili fell in love with Canada. Well, once someone sets their mind on loving a place, they’ll find a way to love it. Armed with her smartphone, which she had become well acquainted with in recent years, she was constantly gathering information and even adored the Canadian French, which was so different from the one she spoke. She spent her first days in Canada looking up towns around Lake Saint-Jean on her phone and map, jotting down ideas in her notebook in her loopy handwriting. Eda and her son researched hotels and restaurants.

Finally, the big day arrived. They laughed at the funny stories Eda made up about Canadian lumberjacks and breathed in the fresh air through the car’s open roof. As they neared Lake Saint-Jean, Lili turned into an excited young girl again. She started pointing left and right, guiding them as if she were showing places she had known all her life.

When they arrived at the hotel—an old monastery turned into a guesthouse—they found their room numbers handwritten on a sign on the wall, and the doors were unlocked. The enormous kitchen downstairs was available for guests to cook their own meals. A fire burned in the large lounge’s fireplace, guests sat in the dining hall, and a few young children were running around. The atmosphere warmed all three of their hearts.

The next morning, Lili woke up early, got dressed with excitement, and waited for the others in the breakfast room. As the three of them entered Val-Jalbert, “Here we are,” said Eda, linking arms with her mother-in-law. For a moment, they paused time and shared their mutual happiness.

They spent the day there. They visited the rooms where nuns had once stayed in the old school building and sat at students’ desks. The town was just as described: the only place in the region at the time with electricity and running water in homes, admired by villagers who visited in awe. They rode the cable car up to the waterfall and gazed at the view, then looked down at the lake, the dam, and the ruins of the factory. They toured the mill and relived the history of the town step by step.

Val-Jalbert, with its restored houses, old factory buildings, and silent streets, felt frozen in time. With each step, Lili recalled scenes from the novel. “This could be the house where Marie-Claire lived,” she murmured, stopping in front of a small wooden cottage.

On the way back to the hotel, she said, “I want to write a book.” Charles was surprised. “What about, Mum?” he asked. Lili gazed at her fingers for a long time before answering. “About Val-Jalbert. But not just a book that tells its history… The story of a woman visiting this town. Maybe I’ll include other places I’ve been too. Maybe… it’ll be my story. Who knows, maybe I’ll include you as well,” she said, bursting into laughter. All three of them laughed. They exaggerated the roles they wanted to be given in the novel. That evening, as they sipped wine at the monastery-turned-hotel, the stories deepened. It was then that Eda shared for the first time that she had also tried to write. But hers were just little tales of four or five pages. She knew her mother-in-law’s way with words was far stronger. She said she was looking forward to the book.

When the book was published a year later under the title Aunt Lili on the Road, it created a small literary sensation in Belgium. The travelogue, written by an 80-year-old woman, not only recounted her experiences in Egypt, Romania, Uzbekistan, and Canada, but also told a life story full of dreams, hopes, and disappointments.

When she returned to Quebec for the book’s promotion, she visited Val-Jalbert once more. This time, her name was also written on the plaque at the entrance to the town:

“Aunt Lili, the Woman Who Carried the Spirit of Val-Jalbert, was here.”