On Friday evening, the Pontiac Conference Centre in Fort-Coulonge was packed for the ninth Lumberjack Dinner.
The tradition was started by Jane Toller, herself a descendant of local lumber barons the Brysons, as a way to commemorate the region’s cultural history and to share stories and songs from the heyday of the area’s log drives.
Music for the evening was provided by Gail Gavan and Sherryl Fitzpatrick, as well as Louis Schryer, Timi Turmel and Erin Leahy. Dancers Aliyah Leahy and Hannah Donohue showed off their skills on the stage as well.
According to Toller, the evening’s silent auction in support of Centraide (United Way) raised $4,132.
Eighty-nine year-old Ian Hamilton was invited to share some of his stories about working in the local lumber camps when he was a teen in the early 1950s. His son Shawn prompted his father with questions about life back in those days.
“I’m thrilled to be here. I had no idea I’d last this long but here I am. G’day g’day!” Ian said as an introduction.
He recalled the working conditions back then, when he was paid 50 cents an hour, six hours a day, seven days a week, and living in a bunkhouse with the other men.
“I learned early that higher education paid off, because the foreman said to me, ‘Can you read and write?’ I said, ‘Yes,’ and he said, ‘Well you’re the clerk, we’ll give you an extra 25 cents a day.’ Because nobody else at the camp could read or write. I couldn’t believe it.”
He recalled making some money on the side running a taxi service down to the watering hole in Portage-du-Fort, driving his old 1928 Chrysler.
“We were coming back to the camp one night after a trip and you could get a lot of people in for 25 cents,” he said with a laugh. “And with all this weight in the back, one of the back wheels broke and only had the pegs left, the spokes. We figured, it’s still running so we’ll make our way, and we did . . . You looked back, we had to make pee stops, when you looked back, it looked like you could plant corn back there.”
Clayton Denault was also invited to share his stories from decades spent in the local forestry industry. He recalled his first rig, a 1956 International, with the old “five and three” transmission that some other truckers in the room could appreciate.
Mike Lamothe, a l’Île-du-Grand-Calumet resident, spoke about some of the potatoes that were on the menu that night, a variety called Early Rose, which is mentioned in the famous Pontiac tune “Chapeau Boys” with the line: “And the big early roses full six inches long”.
Lamothe said that he had tracked down the variety from a heritage breeder in New Brunswick so he could grow some of his own. He added that anyone who was interested in growing the variety could contact him to get started.
