Roots: A memento to remember Dad by

Today is my father’s birthday. Leonide Carrière (that last "e" got dropped somewhere along the line) died, at 90, in January 2003, and although more than a decade has passed since then, I still think of him every morning.

That’s because a daily ritual always brings Dad to mind. It involves a memento of my father — a two-inch-long feather carved from moose bone. The feather is attached to a thin black cord, and every morning without fail, I pull it over my head and tuck it into my shirt.

My father didn’t give me this token, nor was he with me when I bought it. But I think of it as Dad’s feather. That's partly because I acquired it at a Maine crafts show only two months before he died, but primarily because it reminded me of my father and his heritage the very first time I spotted it.

Both of my parents were Franco-American; both traced their ancestry to the earliest settlers of New France (modern-day Québec). But Dad also had a bit of Indian ancestry. Perhaps that's why he always had a special place in his heart for native people.

My father was a direct descendant of Jean Nicolet, the 17th-century French explorer who is sometimes called the Father of Wisconsin because he was the first European to reach Lake Michigan and what is now Green Bay. Nicolet had an illegitimate daughter (“enfant naturel” in the French records) with a member of Canada’s Nipissing tribe. His partner’s name is lost to us, but he gave their child his surname.

It seems Nicolet brought his daughter, Madeleine dite Euphrosine Nicolet, with him when he returned to Québec. There, he married a Frenchwoman; Madeleine married a Frenchman. If you go back nine generations, Madeleine was Dad’s grandmother.

To me, that bone feather symbolizes not only my father, but his link to Madeleine and her mother’s people. A small black bead that came with Dad’s feather is long gone, and the cord has become frayed from daily wear. But I suspect the feather itself will outlast me, as it did my father.

If Madeleine dite Euphrosine Nicolet could peer into the 21st century from her perch back in the 17th, perhaps she would view that as a good thing.