Remi Bertrand has spent most of his life in Fort Colounge, though you wouldn’t know it based on his resume. 

After going to college and receiving a degree in business administration, he spent the early part of his career working at the pulp and paper mill in Portage du Fort. He started as a labourer and “worked his way up the ladder” to health and safety manager and then eventually to division auditor for the mill’s parent company Smurfit-Stone Container. Division auditor was a huge responsibility that would take him all over North America. He was in charge of auditing 237 facilities across the continent, flying in and out of cities auditing operations for safety, efficiency and procedure. He had a young family at the time, so Portage du Fort became his home base where he worked between trips to different cities.

Even when he was young, his aspirations always included staying in Fort Colounge. He originally wanted to teach physics at the high school. “Back then I wasn’t overly interested in moving into the city. My dad was one of the old lumberjacks that did the log-drive. He’s [still] a hunter, fisher and trapper at 82,” he said.

Bertrand, like his father, maintains a trapline in a 20 square kilometre patch of the Pontiac. 

That type of life, “was really in my DNA,” he added. So becoming a local teacher would be perfect.

That first year away at school, he discovered that he was better at chemistry than physics so he gave up on being a teacher. “Chemistry wasn’t my passion.” So he went on to business administration. His initial interest in physics was about numbers, so finance and business administration was a practical way to apply his passion for math.

To pay for school, Bertrand played music with his brother René Bertrand. 

His attraction to music, however, wasn’t immediate.

René is six years older than him and used to play in bands. “Before getting to high school, he (René) had me sit behind a drum set and just keep a beat. So he could rehearse piano or whatever other instrument, and it was dreadful. I hated it,” he said.

But it grew on him. He started learning musical theory. “I’m more a science and math guy and music is actually all a math mathematical equations.”

Music brought him back to the Pontiac, where he and his brother would tour playing hotel bars and any place that would have him. 

While working as an auditor, there were many more opportunities to move for work. The pulp mill’s head office was in Chicago. He was asked many times, but the move wasn’t something he wanted to do.

“For me, it was extremely important to raise my children [not only to be close to their] parents, but so they could see their grandparents, their uncles, their cousins or nieces and their culture.” When they got older they could decide for themselves, he said.

The offers to move kept coming, but he kept turning them down. 

His work and skills got the attention of the MRC Pontiac which hired him as Director General.  A period of his life that he is particularly proud of. He worked there for eight years. 

Working with councils, mayors, and community stakeholders “Was just awesome. It was an awesome experience, and probably the best professional experience I’ve had so far,” he said.

For the next stage of his career, he was hired by Wakefield Kennedy LLC, a real estate and private equity firm based out of Seattle, WA. The firm also had a music branch which lead to managing that aspect of the business. He worked there for three and half years until COVID hit. 

At a music convention in Anaheim, California in late February of 2020, rumblings about the corona virus had begun. He flew back home and “I never flew back,” he said.

Home-bound, he decided to try something new, which leads us to his present venture, Café Downtown, in the heart of Fort Colounge.

The owners were willing to give him a great deal on the building, because they knew whatever he would do it would be a positive for the community. He hired local interior designer Amelie Belair and gave her complete control. “I wanted a lot of wood, a lot of metal and brick. The building had no charisma at all or character.”

He also wanted Fort Colounge to contribute to his vision, so he canvased citizens on social media.

“So the interactions on social media were amazing, but a lot of residents also contributed time, ideas and energy,” he said.

“The café is a representation of my four passions: coffee, beer, wine and music. That was the core idea that everything was developed around.”

While he has worked all over the continent and still spends 60 per cent of his time managing the music division for Wakefield Kennedy, Fort Colounge is a part of his psyche and he can’t imagine ever leaving. “My driver’s license has always been a Quebec issued drivers license,” he said.