History, Wonder Tales, Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends The Flemish | Page 264

Meerts, Jan Mirck, Claire Miron, and Raymonde and Léon Plonteux. In sculpture,
Marcel Braitstein, Yosef Gertrudis Drenters, Auguste Hammerechts, and Pierre
Hayvaert have been outstanding. Hayvaert is remembered especially for his work for
the Quebec pavilion at Expo 67.
In 1902 Alphonse Ghyssens laid the groundwork for an organization to bring his
compatriots in Montreal together. The result was the incorporation the following year
of the Union Belge, with a number of community personalities, including the Count de
Bellefroid and Baron Kerwyn de Lettenhoven, on its executive committee. It organized
such public festivities as the annual Belgian Independence Day parade through the
streets of Montreal each July and the distribution of gifts to children on St Nicholas
Day (6 December) and provided a meeting place for reunions, dances, card parties,
and Breugelian meals. During the 1930s the society suffered from declining
membership, since immigration had virtually ceased, and from financial problems, but
it was reorganized and given new vitality in 1939 as the Union Nationale Belge.
The Union Belge had from its inception brought together both Walloons and Flemings.
However, in 1915 each linguistic group founded its own association, the Flemings the
Société Moedertaal and the Walloons the Club Wallon de Montréal. They were both
short-lived, having disappeared by 1920. The idea of separate associations resurfaced
in 1964 in the Vlaamse Kring van Montreal, housed on the premises of the Union
Nationale Belge, and the Association Belge de Langue Française de Montréal,
creation of the ethnocentric Walloon “nationalist” François Charmanne. He promoted
both Walloon folklore and Québécois nationalism through his newspaper Le Coq
wallon (Montreal) and appears to have alienated some of his compatriots in so doing.
In Manitoba the Belgians organized few associations to preserve their language and
cultural herit vR