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1		HOUSE RESOLUTION
2		WHEREAS, The members of the General Assembly are proud to
3		designate a section of Interstate 57 that encompasses an area
4		where the first non-Native Americans in Illinois settled as the
5		"French-Canadian Heritage Corridor"; the majority of settlers
6		in the area were French-Canadian pioneers who immigrated in
7		large numbers to what is now Kankakee and Iroquois Counties
8		from the late 1820s to 1850s; those settlements included
9		Bourbonnais Grove (now Bourbonnais), Le Petit Canada (gone now,
10		but the site is located in the Davis Creek area of Kankakee
11		River State Park), Rockville (gone now, but the site is located
12		in the northwest section of Kankakee River State Park), St.
13		George, L'Erable, Papineau, and St. Anne; after the Potawatomi,
14		the first significant ethnic group to make contributions in the
15		Kankakee area were the French-Canadians; and
16		WHEREAS, The French were no strangers to the heartland of
17		North America; as early as 1543, France established the colony
18		of New France, which eventually covered about half of the North
19		American interior; the nineteenth-century French-Canadians
20		were very familiar with the land south of the Great Lakes; they
21		knew about Rene-Robert Cavelier Sieur de la Salle's (1643-87)
22		quest to explore the rivers of New France that flowed into the
23		Mississippi; he and 33 men made a portage from the St. Joseph
24		River to a marshy river's headwaters; in 1679, the party

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1		continued paddling into the "Great West" along a new
2		"connecting river" with 8 canoes; the party eventually
3		completed the journey from Montreal to the mouth of the
4		Mississippi; La Salle named the "connecting river" between the
5		St. Joseph and Illinois Rivers, the Seignelay, in honor of
6		colonial minister of France; the name was later changed to the
7		Theakiki and is now called the Kankakee; the native Potawatomi
8		called the land adjacent to the river "Te-yar-ac-ke"
9		("wonderful land"); the word "Ky-an-ke-ke" evolved; some
10		Indian tribes called the land "Te-ok-e-kee" ("wolf") while some
11		coureurs de bois (French "runners of the wood") used the name
12		"Quin-que-que"; and
13		WHEREAS, The Kankakee River Valley of the Illinois Country
14		was sparsely settled until Noel Levasseur (1799-1879) began
15		recruiting settlers from his native Quebec Province, Canada;
16		hundreds of French-Canadians soon came to settle and farm along
17		the fertile Kankakee River in an area they called Bourbonnais
18		Grove-extending from today's Kankakee River State Park to Cobb
19		Park in Kankakee - an area 12 miles long by 1 mile wide; at the
20		age of 19 in 1817, Levasseur was employed by the American Fur
21		Company (headquartered in Astor, New York with a recruiting
22		station in Montreal) along with his friends Dominique Bray,
23		Henri Boucher, and 15-year-old Gurdon Hubbard (1802-86); after
24		the Black Hawk War of 1832, Levasseur and Hubbard purchased
25		land from the Potawatomi and opened the Chicago to Danville

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1		Road through the Grand Prairie along the Kankakee River (now
2		Route 102), and the Hubbard Trail which Illinois highway 1 now
3		follows; in the late 1820s and early 1830s, 2 other notable
4		French-Canadians joined Noel Levasseur in the settlement along
5		the Kankakee: the brothers Francois Bourbonnais, Sr. and
6		Antoine Bourbonnais "Bourbonnais Grove" was named after them;
7		and
8		WHEREAS, By 1846, there were at least 22 French-Canadian
9		families living in Bourbonnais Grove; the records of St. Leo's
10		Parish in Bourbonnais Grove (later to become Maternity of the
11		Blessed Virgin Mary Church in Bourbonnais) in 1847 noted 77
12		French-Canadian families or 471 people; when Canadian-born
13		George Letourneau (1831-1906) - destined to become a renowned
14		statesman - arrived in Bourbonnais Grove in 1848, he attended
15		church at St. Leo's Chapel, a wooden structure which had been
16		built in 1841; a new church (Maternity of the Blessed Virgin
17		Mary) replaced the chapel in 1849; this was the church in which
18		Letourneau was married to Elodie (Langlois) Letourneau in 1852;
19		it burned to the ground in 1853; work began 2 years later on a
20		new church to be constructed of local limestone; construction
21		was completed in 1858; over 150 years later, Maternity of the
22		Blessed Virgin Mary Church appears much the same as it was back
23		then; and
24		WHEREAS, George Letourneau became mayor of Bourbonnais in

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1		1875 and mayor of Kankakee in 1892; he was present at the first
2		Illinois State Republican Convention in Bloomington in 1856,
3		and listened to Abraham Lincoln's "Lost Speech" - this
4		reference denotes the few notes taken by the audience which was
5		spellbound as Lincoln delivered an impassioned condemnation of
6		slavery; the address was the precedent for his famous "House
7		Divided" speech delivered in Springfield on June 16, 1858;
8		Letourneau served in just about every Kankakee County political
9		office, and was elected State Senator in the Illinois 38th and
10		39th General Assemblies from 1892 to 1996; and
11		WHEREAS, French-Canadian priests and brothers of the
12		Viatorian Order and French-Canadian nuns of the Congregation of
13		Notre Dame were instrumental in the religious and educational
14		development of the Bourbonnais Grove community; in the later
15		part of the nineteenth-century, girls attended the new Notre
16		Dame Convent and School after it was built in 1862; boys were
17		instructed by the Viatorian priests and brothers in the
18		Bourbonnais Grove public school and then St. Viator Academy
19		after 1868; young men could attend St. Viator College when the
20		Viatorians were granted a university charter in 1874; when
21		Letourneau became mayor of the Village of Bourbonnais, when it
22		was incorporated in 1875, the community was already a thriving
23		educational center; a new boy's school, another St. Viator
24		Academy, was built in 1891; and
25

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1		WHEREAS, The French-Canadians Noel Levasseur, George
2		Letourneau, and Captain Francis Seguin spearheaded the
3		organization of Kankakee County in 1853; the new county had a
4		population of 8,000 people; the population would soon shift
5		from Bourbonnais to Kankakee with the arrival of the railroad
6		in 1853; Kankakee was originally platted as the "town of
7		Bourbonnais" in 1853; 2 years later, the name was changed; the
8		population of Bourbonnais Township in 1850 was 1,720 with 81%
9		or 201 out of 248 families of French-Canadian descent; other
10		French-Canadian settlements in Kankakee and Iroquois Counties
11		were St. George (1848), L'Erable (1854), St. Anne (1851), and
12		Papineau (1872); and
13		WHEREAS, At about the same time as the formation of
14		Kankakee County in 1853, Canadian-born Father Charles Chiniquy
15		(1809-99) was pastor of Maternity Blessed Virgin Mary Church in
16		Bourbonnais Grove; after disagreeing with the Bishop of Chicago
17		over the bishop's treatment of Catholics in Chicago,
18		particularly French-Canadians, Fr. Chiniquy led an exodus of
19		Bourbonnais Grove French-Canadian Roman Catholics to the
20		village of St. Anne; this crisis split many French-Canadian
21		families; older French-Canadians in the Kankakee area still
22		today resent Fr. Chiniquy's schism; Fr. Chiniquy was
23		excommunicated in 1856; he then left the Roman Catholic Church
24		and formed the Christian Catholic Church of St. Anne; and

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1		WHEREAS, Up until the 1950s, French was a primary spoken
2		language in Bourbonnais; French-Canadian family names still
3		abound in the telephone book, and the fleur-de-lis is the
4		symbol of Bourbonnais - as the village symbol and all street
5		signs testify; therefore, be it
6		RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE
7		NINETY-NINTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we
8		designate a section of Interstate 57 as the "French-Canadian
9		Heritage Corridor" with one sign located on 1-57 for southbound
10		traffic just north of the Manteno exit 322 and another sign
11		located on 1-57 for northbound traffic just south of Ashkum
12		exit 293; and be it further
13		RESOLVED, That the Illinois Department of Transportation
14		is requested to erect 2 signs on a section of Interstate 57,
15		consistent with State and federal regulations, giving notice of
16		the name, "French-Canadian Heritage Corridor", with one sign
17		located on I-57 for southbound traffic just north of the
18		Manteno exit 322 and another sign located on I-57 for
19		northbound traffic just south of Ashkum exit 293 by July 15,
20		2015.