A Message from Our President

To all members of La Société des Filles du roi et soldats du Carignan, Corp. (SFRSC)

Welcome to 2026! I am Brian Montpellier, the new President of your Société. This year started off with a shortage of volunteers as several long-serving Officers and Directors retired early in the year after having provided excellent service to the Société. I thank all of them for the hard work they have provided the Société over the last 4 years, and some for much longer: Susan McNelley, Michele Nadeau Hartmann, Christine Racine, Rick Hudon, and Lisa Elvin-Staltari. In addition, newly-elected President, Mark Barie, resigned for personal reasons, and we wish him well.

This significant turnover meant we needed help to replenish our volunteer work force. An email call to members filled a variety of positions. The Genealogy chairperson position was filled by Raymond Cyr, who is a certified genealogist via the International Institute of Genealogical Studies. His family tree has over 22,000 (not a typo) people in it. Our Board of Directors now consists of myself, Dave Toupin, long-time President and one of the founders of our Société, Diane Hill, who manages and reinvented the Société’s website (with journal technical editor Pam Rawson), and Joyce Adams, who is also our Secretary and producer of Certificates. Our new Post Office mail box has been set up by new volunteer, Tracy Allison Howard, in sunny California, our new Correspondence Secretary for snail mail. Please note this new address, which is listed on the Inside Cover of this issue of the journal. Our new Florida corporate address is now provided by new volunteer, Shaye Bureau. And our new Treasurer is long-time member Jacques Toupin. So we appear to be in good shape for the foreseeable future.

But we still have several volunteer positions to fill, given this turnover. Can you help us with one of these tasks? We require:

• ·        a volunteer to manage data entry for our membership database and social media (YouTube and Facebook)
• ·        a volunteer to manage our incoming emails (and forward them to other volunteers for responses)
• ·        a volunteer to help recruit new members, help retain current members, and develop new ideas about our services
• ·        a volunteer to help edit our journal and search for new articles
• ·        volunteers to write articles for the journal
• ·        a volunteer to oversee our membership committee – we have a job description if you are interested
• ·        an assistant genealogist to help Raymond Cyr with the review of membership applications
• ·        a Vice-president to facilitate meetings if I am absent

Please consider volunteering so that the Société can resume functioning in the manner to which we have been accustomed. If you are interested in assisting with one of these positions, or you have a question, please contact me at: info@fillesduroi.org.

As our welcome letter to new members states:

“This is your Société and we hope that you will participate fully. We invite your input, ideas, questions, and suggestions along with any articles or research that you would like to share with the members.”

Thank you.

Brian Montpellier, F-661

President