Herb Vezina shared 'short stories' about growing up and working in Chapleau area in its early years

When Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church was celebrating its centennial in the 1980s, Herb Vezina shared some anecdotes about his family and growing up and working  in Chapleau. 

In what he called "short stories, he relates that his mother was a waitress, adding more likely a maid at the Parliament buildings in Ottawa.

Apparently one day the cook took sick and no one was available to cook fish that Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald was going to have for dinner. 

His mother said: "I'll cook it but some of the girls will have to give me a hand. Don't forget I'm only eleven years old."

The prime minister told her that it was the best fish he had ever eaten and gave her a dollar that she had until their house in Chapleau burned down in the 1920s.

After his parents settled in Chapleau in 1905, they had a teacher living with them who could not drink green tea so she ordered black tea from North Bay. Soon thereafter Chapleau stores started selling black tea, and green tea was no longer available in the community.

Mr. Vezina started working when he was very young and went to lumber camps in the area with his father Benjamin.

He was 12 years old and working at Devon in 1918 when Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church burned down at Christmas time.

They stood on the roof of the camp  where they had a view of the flames as the church burned.

"The flames were shooting out into the sky -- was the fire ever going"

After the fire destroyed the church, it was rebuilt under the direction of the parish priest Father Romeo Gascon and the first mass in it was celebrated on Christmas Eve 1919,

Mr. Vezina wrote that over 100 men were working in the camp at Devon. A.L. Morse was in charge.

They slept in bunk house that had three decks of bunks and the top one was just about one foot from the ceiling. Four stoves were going all day to heat the bunk house. 

Later he worked at Bolkow on the Canadian Pacific Railway line which was the "best place" . One year there were more than 560,000 logs in Bolkow Lake.

Working at Whalen, they would knock off work at four p.m. on a Saturday and he would walk along the track home to Chapleau, and walk back on Sunday, roughly a distance of 50 CPR miles return.

When I first read this in his article in the Chapleau Sentinel, I said "wow" to myself, then recalled that my grandfather Harry Morris would walk to our camp at Healy, a distance of 17 CPR miles from Chapleau with a full pack on his back -- and of course back to Chapleau.

In the same article, his sister Olive who married F.A. 'Nick' Card, a member of another pioneer Chapleau family, noted that their parents Ben and Bridget Vezina arrived in Chapleau in 1905. She added that he father worked for the CPR and for lumber companies. There were 13 children in the family.

The article provides just a glimpse into life in Chapleau and area over 100 years ago. Please feel free to share any pioneer life stories. My email is mj.morris@live.ca