Québec potato-farm origins; the dead mother, the binge-drinking father

texture · UNDATED (childhood/youth, B.S. era, L'Islet Province, Québec)

• When: UNDATED (Avril's childhood into her McGill years, B.S. era; mother died when Avril was 8; father's death timed two conflicting ways — see Dating notes)
• What: Avril grew up on a potato farm in the L'Islet Province of Nouveau Québec (her father's farm near St. Pamphile; her grandfather's larger one there too), her mother ethnic Québécois, her father Anglo-Canadian and a binge-drinker. Her mother died of an infarction when Avril was eight; her father — who "believed education was a waste for girls" and could feel emotion only when drunk (sitting reading the newspaper with ale until he fell out of his chair, which is how he died) — died either "when I was a girl," before university (Avril's own account, scene 154: "I'd never have gotten to go to University had he not died"), or "during her sophomore year at McGill" (Hal's account, scene 179) — cite both as written; his inheritance paid for Avril's and C.T.'s university. She tells Mario the grandfather's parable of choosing Delaware-brand Punch over an obscure cocaine-laced fizzy coffee substitute (Coca-Cola), then losing the farm to blight — her illustration of an inherited emotional "frozenness." The original L'Islet potato farm is now inside the Great Concavity, "forever lost."