MONSIEUR GASTON'S SOUVENIRS

"MONSIEUR CHARETTE*"

That summer, during the vacation, I wanted to work in the forest. I had tried about all the outlets that I could think of, paper companies, forest protection, roads construction, impossible for me to find something. I was either too young, or had not enough experience. In short, all the doors are closed to me.

I decide to talk to my father about it and explains that I do not want to work in the kitchen anymore. One summer was enough for me. I had spent the previous summer, washing dishes and peeling potatoes for three hundred persons at each meal.

And there were six meals a day.

The workers were on eight hour shifts (3 per day). He tells me that he is going to see what he can do. One month goes by and we are dangerously close to the end of the school year and I still do not have a solution.

There are three, two, one week to go before June the 22nd, end of the school year, when he tells me that he has found something for me:

The Brown Corporation.

«Office clerk.»

It is in Sanmaur, a small village of lumberjacks and other forest workers. On the other side of the river, there is also an Indian reserve, occupied during the summer, where Indians are waiting for the hunting season.

A few houses, a general store where they sell cigarettes, soft drinks and a little of everything.

At night, it was the rendez-vous for all the village when there was no bingo organized by the priest at the parish hall.

I was supposed to work as an office clerk to look after the company inventory.

On the night of June the 23rd, I board a train that takes me to Sanmaur, going through La Tuque, because there was no road or the existing one was almost unusable.

From what I can remember, we arrived early in the morning, around five o'clock, and the temperature was very humid. A foggy drizzle was falling, piercing your clothes down to the bones.

I had lived the isolation of a lumberjack forest camp before, but there,

it was desolation.

Total loneliness and you could really feel the isolation from the rest of the world.

And I am there for two months,

until the beginning of school.

But, it is what I have wish for.

I have to wait in front of the company's office, till the doors are opened at eight o'clock. I ask for Monsieur Dan Thibeault. He is the big boss. It is through his influence that my father found me this job.

I introduce myself.

He welcomes me and tells me that the clerk job is not ready yet, but it is only a question of a few days. In the meantime,

he has assigned me to the kitchen for a few days...

I have to accept, not very happily, I must confess, but I do not have much choice, and I am far away from my home.

During four weeks, I washed dished and peeled potatoes to almost get sick.

I was trying to meet Mr. Thibeault, but he was on a trip, away from his office and I have to be patient until he returns.

Finally, he is back and I can see him.

I explain that I have been engaged as an office clerk but that for the last month, I have worked in the kitchen as a chore boy and that if I do not get the job promised,

«I jump the job,»

like we say in the bush, and I do not believe that my father will be happy when he learns what has happened.

He makes excuses and tells me that he is going to see to it.

A couple of days later, he calls me back and tells me that the job is waiting for me. I can start immediately. I must prepare my belongings and be ready next morning at six o'clock.

I will have to take the company's truck that will take me to my assignment at the La Loutre Dam, on the Gouin reservoir, about fifty miles farther.

Next morning, I am ready at six o'clock and I am sitting in the Jeep that travels between company's depots.

Really almost an impossible road.

We take three hours to cover the fifty miles.

When we are there, I go to the company's store.

They show me my living quarters, and we go back to the store where I am going to work. They introduce me to the man who is going to train me and, here I am, taking inventory of the plumbing goods, nipples, tees and pieces of pipe, up to my neck.

After dishes and potatoes, it certainly was a change.

I still have another month to go, but at least, I am going to do something I like.

There are six rooms in the camp assigned to me. It is also a change from the dormitories from my chore boy days.

Now, I have a whole room to myself.

There is a veranda, surrounded by screens for the bugs, and on the floor, I find a set of weight with all kinds of sizes.

I will be able to do some training.

When meal time comes, instead of me, serving the starving,

I will be served.

Finally, the good life.

I do not have too many souvenirs of that period, except that on evenings and weekends, I was going fishing very often, either for trout at a small lake located about half a mile behind the camp, or for walleyes, that I was catching with a rope, used to tie whole ham, on which I was tying a fishing spoon, that I was throwing from the river shore, to bring back about every time, a walleye of eight to ten pounds.

I was supplying the kitchen with fish.

This is where I met with Monsieur Charette.

He was about fifty years old, and, he was missing three fingers on his left hand, result of a stupid accident. He told me that he was playing with a metal dynamite cap, getting the powder out of the cap with a fork and getting the powder to fall in the fire of the wood stove.

It was giving a nice color, falling into the fire.

The cap exploded in his hand, taking three of his fingers.

«A youngster's mistake,» he said.

When I met him, he had just come back from a three month stay in the bush. He had left with Indian guides, taking food with them for the time they were to be in the forest.

A hundred pounds bag of beans, a hundred pounds of flour, salt pork, sugar, tea, salt and the minimum they needed to survive for three months. His Indians would fish and hunt to help vary the menu.

They had left in a huge canoe and they were to come back three of four months later.

He was what we call in French:

"a colleur".

His work consisted of measuring the quantify of wood that could be cut in a certain territory, and he could say with assurance, how many cords could be cut by the acre.

Many of the company's decisions to exploit the forest were taken from his reports.

But it was a tedious, exhausting work, because, he very often had to portage with his Indians. Their provision, their canoe and all the instruments that he needed to do his work.

He was really earning his salary.

He must have been back for three or four days, when he decided to go down to Montreal,

To at least see civilization for a few days...

He took the Jeep to Sanmaur and there, the train to Trois-Rivières.

While there, he decided to buy a car. If I remember, an Oldsmobile, and pays cash. Thirty-five hundred dollars.

He then goes to the nearest tavern and starts drinking beer.

Then, he goes to the defunct Commission des Liqueurs, now La Société des Alcools du Québec and buys a few bottles.

After a few drinks, he decided to go to Montréal,

«to try his luck» as he says.

When in Montréal, he rents a room at a third class hotel and goes out, looking for happiness . . .

He finds it easily in a low dive in the eastern part of the city and offers her a drink, and, they are in love, inseparable,

for a few dollars for the night.

They go to his hotel room, have a few drinks, fornicate a little, and tired by the alcohol, the driving and the other excesses, he falls asleep.

When he wakes up, gone is his love story of one evening and gone also his money . . .

About four thousands dollars that was left of his nest egg.

Police report and inquiry, nothing doing.

He then decided to go back to Sanmaur.

The lady left him enough money for his return trip.

He buys a couple of bottles, some beer and starts driving towards La Tuque, where he is to store his car until the next trip.

He never made it to La Tuque.

He missed a curve and found himself in the scenery.

His car was a total loss and he had no insurance.

He was lucky he had only minor cuts.

The policemen that covered the accident, took him to La Tuque so he could board a train to Sanmaur.

He had been gone only three days.

Total cost of the trip :

"EIGHT THOUSANDS DOLLARS . . ."

in 1946 dollars...

Two days later, he was going back to the bush with his Indians for a trip that was to bring him back with the first snow.