(1878 or 1879-28 Jan. 1936), community organizer and worker. Place of birth given both as Bourget, Ont., and Papineauville, Que. She is said to have been a descendant of the great Louis-Joseph Papineau. Parents: Pascal Beaudry and his wife Angèle Gauthier. She was married at age19 to Euclide Rouleau. She and her husband operated a hotel at Bourget, then resided briefly in Hawkesbury before they came to Alexandria. In Alexandria, they operated the Ottawa Hotel. All their children are said to have been born in Bourget. Elda Rouleau was active in many charitable causes in Alexandria. These included gathering clothes for people burned out in fires in Timmins and Haileybury in Northern Ontario, and for people burned out in Alexandria fires. Also, she was active in distributing food to the poor, including soup made at the hotel and sent out in honey pails (the tin pails in which honey was sold). Her work in operating the family hotel included pickling and preserving.

     She was a co-founder of Femmes de la féderation canadienne-française (F.F.C.F.). One of the purposes of this organization was to assist soldiers in World War I. Among the events when Governor General Byng and his wife were in Alexandria, 1 Oct. 1923, for the unveiling of the war memorial, “Mrs. E. Rouleau, President of the Alexandria Branch of the F. F. C. F.,” presented a bouquet of flowers to Lady Byng. (Glengarry News 5 Oct. 1923)

     Mrs Rouleau was a promoter of the French language and of French culture in Alexandria. Through the work of Elda Rouleau and the Féderation it was possible to start teaching French in Alexander School, the separate primary school of Alexandria. She also taught French in the evenings at her family’s hotel, and in her home. In 1972, École Elda-Rouleau, in Alexandria, was named in her honour. The history of the diocese says that this honour was a recognition of “her charitable work and her pioneering efforts” in teaching French to adults and children in her home. She was a schoolteacher by training, and had taught school briefly before her marriage, but never officially taught school in Alexandria.

     She staged French-language plays to raise money for charitable purposes. She would take the plays on tour in the diocese of Alexandria, and would translate them into English for anglophones in the audience. She spoke little English when she came to Alexandria, but learned it there. She played the piano and violin. She did no writing. A skilled seamstress, she made costumes herself for the plays.

     Elda Rouleau died of cancer. She and her husband are buried in the Sacré-Coeur cemetery, east of Alexandria. Two of her sons became priests of the diocese of Alexandria: (1) Fr J. A. Raoul Rouleau (Raoul Rouleau), d. 1954, and (2) Fr J. Roland Rouleau (Roland Rouleau), d. 1961. Other sons were J.E.U. Rouleau, who was reeve of Cornwall Township at the time of his father’s death in 1947, Bruno Rouleau, a dentist in Cornwall (d. 1978), and Roméo Rouleau, who was mayor of Alexandria at the time of his father’s death.

Glengarry News 31 Jan. & 7 Feb. 1936 * private information* interview with Elda Rouleau’s grandson Paul Rouleau (later Judge Rouleau) taped 10 Nov. 1977 for the Multicultural History Society of Ontario * Paroisse Sacré-Coeur: Souvenir 75: Livre souvenir publié à l’occasion du 75e anniversaire de fondation de la Paroisse Sacré-Coeur d’Alexandria (1985), 39, 60 * Villeneuve 68, 70, 141, 154, 223 * obituary of Fr Raoul Rouleau, GN 23 Sept. 1954 * Mrs Rouleau named to Alexandria’s Public Welfare Board (a board to deal with relief matters), GN 16 Dec. 1932 * Alexandria’s new senior elementary French-language school to be named after her, GN 20 April 1972 * Lynn McCuaig, “Ecole Rouleau Celebrates 25 Years,” GN 1 Oct. 1997, also many other notices over years of this school in GN * Judge Paul Rouleau: Jean Yves Pelletier, Nos magistrats (1989) 116-117 with portrait