Vermont: Conversations of Green Mountain Kingdoms

Most of us can name the town our parents grew up in. Maybe we've even visited. But what if your family's connection to a place ran so deep that there's a mountain bearing your name? That's not a metaphor. That's the Brousseau family of Vermont.

In this week's episode of Stories That Live In Us, I sit down with Mike Brousseau — someone I’ve never personally met but whose family I've crossed paths with in the most unexpected ways over the past thirty years. Mike shares delightful stories about the Northeast Kingdom, French-Canadian heritage, Dairy Queen meet-cutes, and what it actually means to carry a place in your blood long after you've left it.

Grab a cup of something warm. This one is a gem.

From a Mountain to a Hallmark Movie Set

I'll be honest with you: I love a good Hallmark movie. Totally formulaic, completely predictable, and I am here for it. (My mom and I share this obsession, which I love. My dad, too, even though my brothers roll their eyes at him.) There's always a charming small town, a cozy setting, and people who seem genuinely rooted in where they come from.

Vermont looks exactly like you think it should. When I was a young adult living just outside New York City, I used to take little road trips to small places, dreaming about what I might find. Vermont was one of those places. The towns. The mountains. The feeling of community so thick you could almost touch it.

So when I thought about who I wanted to talk to for the Vermont episode of Season Two, I immediately thought of Joe Brousseau, a man I had the most delightful conversation with more than thirty years ago in a Vermont church, and then spotted again years later at a high school ball game in Utah County. Some people just leave an impression.

When I tried to track him down, I learned that he died a few years ago.  But Mike was willing to come into the podcast studio and represent his family and his home state. And the stories he brought to this episode are the kind that make you want to call your grandmother immediately.

"It's hard to get Vermont out of your blood." — Mike Brousseau

The Whole Story

If you haven't listened to this episode yet, here's your invitation:

Prefer audio? Click here to listen on your favorite podcast app.

🎧 Listen to the full episode to discover:

• The lumberjack-turned-fishing-guide grandfather who couldn't read or write but could build a perfect spiral staircase, and whose handiwork still stands at Quimby's Resort
• The French-Canadian grandmother who could tear a refrigerator apart and put it back together again all without YouTube, taught herself to play the organ, and had opinions about hockey players who "don't ustle on the hice"
• The Dairy Queen meet-cute that almost didn't happen — and the moment his dad finally remembered where he'd met his mom
• What really happened the day the Air Force informed Mike's dad that his name wasn't what he'd thought it was for his entire life
• Why Grandma Hilda's Sunday dinners were the secret ingredient holding an entire extended family together
• What Mike wants his grandkids to know about Vermont — and why place matters in the stories we pass down

The Power of One Story

There's a moment in this episode where Mike describes his paternal grandmother — a widowed French-Canadian woman with a thick accent, a quick wit, and a level of self-sufficiency that would make most of us feel deeply inadequate. She fixed appliances without instructions. She taught herself to play the organ. She ran a convenience store and tried to order "oranges with no bones in them" because she was translating everything from French in real time. And when her son teased her about it? She didn't miss a beat.

She is delightful. And she is so alive in Mike's telling that you feel like you almost know her.

That's the thing about stories like this. They don't just preserve facts — they preserve personality. The humor. The accent. The specific way someone moved through the world. And because Mike is keeping these stories alive, somewhere a grandson is going to grow up knowing that their great-great-grandmother once asked a traveling salesman for oranges with no bones in them.

That's how it works. That's what we're doing when we sit down and ask the questions and listen and remember.

Mike's great-grandfather, Joseph Philias Brousseau, immigrated from Quebec and raised eleven children on a mountain so remote that you could "walk in a straight line for days and never come across a road or house." That mountain is now called Brousseau Mountain.

Eleven children. On a mountain. Named after them.

What stories like that are hiding in your family tree just waiting to be told?

Your Story

Think about the places in your family tree that show up over and over again. The counties. The small towns. The farms or neighborhoods that multiple generations called home.

Now ask yourself: do you know why they stayed? Or why they finally left?

Mike's family stayed in Vermont for generations, tied to the land, the French-Canadian border culture, the rhythm of dairy farms and logging and resort seasons. And then, one by one, they followed each other west to Utah. Not because Vermont stopped mattering, but because family mattered more.

That tension between the place that made you and the people who call you forward is one of the most human stories there is. And it's almost certainly somewhere in your family tree, too.

Story Seeds 🌱

Plant these conversation starters and watch your family stories grow.

1. For Parents/Grandparents: "What's one place from your childhood that you wish I could have seen? What did it look like — and what did it feel like to grow up there?"
2. For Aunts/Uncles: "Do you remember any stories about why our family first settled where they did? Was it work? Family? Land? Do you know if it was a hard decision to leave?"
3. For Older Cousins or Siblings: "Which family member do you think was most shaped by where they grew up? How do you think our family would be different if they had grown up somewhere else?"
4. For Anyone: "Is there a place in our family's history you've always been curious about but never visited? What would you want to know about it?"

Story Sparks 🔑

Unlock your family's hidden stories with these research techniques.

1. Search for your surname as a place name. Mike's family has a literal mountain named after them. Yours might have a road, a township, a cemetery, or a church. Do a Google search with your surname and the names of places your family has lived. You might be surprised what you find named after them.
2. Track name changes across documents. Mike's dad spent years thinking his name was Norman Joseph Brousseau until the Air Force handed him his actual birth certificate. Catholic hospitals in particular sometimes added saints' names without the family's knowledge. Pull your ancestors' birth records, military enlistment papers, and census records side by side and look for name variations. They're not errors. They're clues.
3. Use the Ancestry Card Catalog to find records tied to specific religious institutions. If your ancestors were Catholic, there may be baptismal records, confirmation records, or parish histories that predate official vital records. Search the card catalog for “Catholic” or “Quaker” or “Lutheran” and see what collections come up that might be worth exploring.
4. Look for foreign language influences in your DNA matches. Mike's family has deep French-Canadian roots, and the Vermont-Quebec border was historically very porous. And, due to the Catholic influence, many of those family histories are very well researched.  If you have Brousseau, Bouchard, Tremblay, or other French-Canadian surnames in your match list, try filtering your DNA matches by those surnames in the search bar. You may find cousins who have family tree that lead you to significant research already done on your shared lines.

Near the end of our conversation, I found myself saying something out loud that I hadn't quite formed into words before:

"Maybe the Northeast Kingdom isn't just a place in Vermont. Maybe it has something to do with the people from there."

Mike just smiled and said, "I like that."

And I meant it. But I also think it's true of wherever your family comes from. The places that shaped your people — the mountains, the small towns, the farms, the parishes — they matter because of the people who lived and loved and struggled there. The stories are what make the geography sacred.

Go find yours.

Loved this episode? Subscribe to Stories That Live In Us wherever you listen to podcasts. And if it made you think of your own family's stories, please leave us a rating and review — it helps other story-seekers find us. 🎙️

 © 2026 Crista Cowan. All rights reserved.