06/04/2026
When people ask me where I’m from, I say Marchand.
Not Winnipeg, where I’ve lived for decades. Marchand, a small Franco-Manitoban community in Southeast Manitoba where my family settled when I was two years old, and where I grew up until I left home at 18.
Last weekend, the RM of La Broquerie officially opened Claude and Annette Tétrault Park in Marchand. Named after my parents. Built on land they donated, with pickleball courts they helped fund, in a community they chose to invest in long before anyone was watching.
My parents started this project nearly 40 years ago, when Marchand had less than 100 residents.
There were moments he wasn’t sure it would ever come together. Now the community is close to 1,000 people, and there’s a park where kids will learn pickleball and neighbours will stop and talk and share pieces of their lives with each other.
My mom said it best at the ceremony: “A community is about speaking to each other, telling your life story, and sharing it.”
That’s what Marchand gave me. A place small enough that everyone knew your name, and people invested enough to show up for each other.
I became who I am because of that community.
And now there’s a park that will shape who other kids become, because my parents decided to give something back to the place that raised our family.
My parents still have a place there. I take my kids out on weekends and something shifts the moment we arrive. Life slows down. It’s just us and nature and the kind of quiet you can’t find anywhere else.
I’m proud of my parents.
