Liberty Statue in Gourin

A little history

Gourin, a small town of 4000 inhabitants on the borders of Morbihan,
Finistere and Côtes-d’Armor is known worldwide, because here each family
has an « uncle of America ».
At the end of the 19th century, the region of Gourin experienced a great
wave of emigration to the Americas. The tailor Nicolas Le Grand is
credited with the first wave of so-called « mass » emigration to the
United States. Another large emigration of Bretons was organized by the
church towards the « Far west » Canadian in the early twentieth century.
Then, after the first world war, a second wave of emigration took place:
many of the Bretons currently living in the United States come from the
region of Gourin. As early as 1928, there were some 3,000 inhabitants of
Gourin in New York, 400 of whom were directly employed by Michelin
(created in 1901 in the south of NJ at Miltown and which recruited Bretons).
There was a third wave of emigration from Central Brittany and in
particular from Gourin and Roudouallec in the 1950s following the visit
of Canadian recruiters. Between 1946 and 1955 alone, 747 emigrants left
Gourin (13.4% of the population) and most of them went to the United
States. Three agencies including the « Cunard Line » and « The
Transatlantic General Company » at the time have their headquarters in
Gourin to organize flights to the United States and Canada.

Why a statue of Liberty in Gourin ?

Gourin is the capital of Breton emigration in North America. Today, it
is estimated that 6,000 to 7,000 Bretons of Central Brittany settled in
the United States. A replica composite resin, was offered to the
association Bretagne TransAmérica in 1986 by Air France, to thank the
many emigrants who made the trip across the Atlantic with the Air France
office located in Roudouallec until 1985.

Why a new statue ?

The new statue, 2.90 m high, in chiseled bronze and patinated according
to traditional methods, will be a reproduction of the model made by the
sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi exhibited at the Jardin du
Luxembourg, on the basis of an elastomer mold made by the Réunion des
Musées Nationaux (NMR). The realization of the statue will be supervised
also by the NMR.

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