well, this is a picture of the woman that gave birth to the man in the previous picture. or, stated differently, it's a picture of my father with his grandmother. &, i am in fact the youngest person in the shot, too.
i don't know a thing about this woman at all - i had to rely on the identification on the back of the picture. no memory whatsoever. but, judging solely from this one picture, that would be the most archetypal quebecois woman that ever lived, and i am going to deduce that she therefore must have smoked in church. i suppose she would have been born some time around 1910 or so.
i believe this was taken in my mom & dad's house, as i recognize the furniture.
the oral history i've received is that the surname parent actually comes from a female ancestor, and it may very well be this one. but, if this is what my paternal grandfather's mother looked like, it suggests that she must have eloped with a fairly dark skinned man, of some kind of complex ancestry.
it brings up the more salient point - race is not fixed, but fluid. you expected a gradient, didn't you? but, the truth is more jumbled up. and, after going through a dark-skinned father and an even darker-skinned grandfather, i do happen to get back to a white great-grandmother, which also indicates how dark skinned the great-grandfather must have been....