Pretty Catty part five conclusion by John Fisher 1949

 

TOP OF THE FENCE

 Chapter one is over for Mr. Log… he’s prisoner now in a raft… and he has 60 miles to go  down Lake Nipigon… towed by tugs which must be “catty” too to run the rafts through the islands and shoals … through storm and wind on this junior Great Lake.  The Abitibi tug captains pull the giant rafts as trickily as a cat runs along the top of a board fence.  Mr. Log is still a long distance from the Sleeping Giant, whose shoulders protect the harbour of Thunder Bay Mill.

At the end of Lake Nipigon is Virgin Falls … a dam and the big, tumbling Nipigon River with canyon … now Mr. Log is turned free from the raft … spilled … let run over the dam, down, down, down stream … over more dams … through rapids … sometimes he is tamed and controlled by booms  across the face of the river … and all the way the lumberjacks bully him  … keep him moving until he reaches another storage pond in Helen Lake.  Again he must be nipped into a raft and caught in the tear-drop “O” shape of booms.  And here nibble footed “catty” Bob Matchett dances on his back and helps ready him for the biggest ride of all… across sometimes surly Lake Superior … and up to the Thunder Bay Mill where Abitibi employees look out at the Sleeping Giant. And in the office files of the Port Arthur Woodlands Division  are listed the tens … hundred … of thousands spent on improving his journey … money spent on  dams, booms, piers, dredging, cleaning banks , dynamiting.

And in the handsome brick building of the Abitibi Thunder Bay Mill in Port Arthur where I tried to see the Sleeping Giant … here in his last resting place, Mr. Log see stenographers … pretty ones  too … who would throw their ink wells at you if you called them “catty”.  Yet, such is the  romance of paper that their very jobs depend upon men … rough, tough men hundreds of miles away who boss the rivers and float their golden boom islands past the feet of the Sleeping Giant … men who are flattered when you say to them "Pretty Catty"!

The end

GUTS AND GRACE part four of PRETTY CATTY by John Fisher 1049

 

GUTS AND GRACE

As far as Port Arthur goes  this story starts in Lake Nipigon...that lovely lake

beloved by moose hunters and fishermen.  On one of its many feeding rivers… say on a frosty November day a cutter swings his axe against a tall spruce… bites into it with bucksaw… shouts “timber”… the tree crashes and then the great odyssey begins.  Teamsters and caterpillar tractors haul the logs to the Ombabika River.  Now the log sits quiet and patient upon the ice for month after month… until May arrives…  the sun breaks the grip of ice… Mr. Log is on his way.  Oh, he doesn’t move fast… he’s jostled and jammed with thousands of others like him… sometimes dynamite is used to free him from the Chinese puzzle of fellow logs.  This nature-given conveyor belt of the river has its own moods and twists and currents.  The winds help him too, blow panic upon the logs… and old man sun joins the circus… sucks up the water in summer… slows the conveyor belt and even brings in the long dry summer arms of the banks to arrest the merry sail of Mr. Log.

The lumberjack swats and sweats and swears and gives Canada a vocabulary that would put Webster and Hollywood Press agents to shame.  As Mr. Log on his colourful jaunt to the jaws of the mill flirts, stops and stares at obstacles,  his back is pricked and prodded with sharp pike poles.  His bark is scarred from the  catty dance of steel boots.  Drama;  Colour; Pulp and Paper is not only our biggest business… it is our most Canadian of shows.  Here is the ballet of brawn.  Here tough rugged men do the arabesque on a floor of rolling spruce.  Here is drama with the backdrop of white water,  and props taken from Nature’s burly and beautiful storehouse.

The stage is mighty and magnificent.  Man against nature.  The orchestral accompaniment comes from the strange company of the outdoors… a medley of the musical silence of the bush… the drone of the mosquito … the timpani of  rolling water… the throaty vengeance of the frog… the swish of trees… the call of the wilds… and thrown upon this scene are the dimensions of smell… the nostalgic smell of slow rot and quick growth… and the dimensions of colour… floral and faunal.  Sunset and sunrise peeking through the screen   of green.

And Canada cries for expression in its personality! And the newsboy calls “paper” on corners rancid with friction-mad rubber burnt gasoline and choked with crowds. And newspapers are the carriers of democracy.  True!  Liberty must march with newsprint or die. The purveyor of Liberty is born not amid the thundering thousands,  but deep within the kingdom of trees.  Drama?  Colour?  Story?  Where art thou, Mr. Canadian dramatist?  Point thy pen to the pageant of paper and thou will write pungent prose.

Mr. Log has come down the river.  With thousands he takes rest in the storage reserves of Lake Nipigon.  The tugs wait for the winds to blow him over and into the v-shaped mouth  of the booms which trails behind them.  When the winds blow and the logs follow, Catty men like Bob Matchett close the mouth of the V… turn it into an “O” and the logs are caught inside.

to be concluded in part five  TOP OF THE FENCE

Pretty Catty part three by John Fisher 1949

 LIKE A BALLET DANCER

That serves to introduce a former Maritimer Bob Matchett .  They say he is a “Pretty Catty”. He only weighs 160 pounds, but, if you could see him jumping  like a ballet dancer up there at Lake Helen at the mouth of the Nipigon River you’d see why he is “Catty” and strong a little bull. Lake Helen is a long way from Thunder Bay mill where I tried to see the Sleeping Giant … but, it’d that distance that gives colour to our story of being “Pretty Catty”. The Abitibi men of Thunder Bay use the familiar boom to move their logs.  A boom is a great enclosure made by chaining giant boomlogs together. Just like freight cars are coupled together.   The wood floats within this great frame of linked big timber….  The book is towed by a boat…. A boom is really a huge catwalk which bobs behind the boat …just like a cat that’s afraid of  getting wet… just like a cat… as sure footed, as agile,  with the miraculous control of muscle,  Bob Matchett came to this tremendous Superior country looking for work  in 1937.  Today, he is foreman down at Lake Helen.  Quick on their feet these men, and they do their job  just as quietly and as unobtrusively as the  famous Black Cat in the black room.  They are partners in the People’s Paper.

If you ever have the occasion to fly over Lake Superior in the summer, you can look down and see these floating giant golden islands of logs or rafts towed by tubby chubby tugs.

Continued in part four  Guts and Grace 

Pretty Catty part two John Fisher 1949

 ROUGH, BURLY, MAGNIFICENT

Now, a Maritimer may eat a lot of herring bones and codfish and so on…but, they also feed on pride… and I  was ready to defend my “homeland” when the papermaker softened the blow and sparked my curiosity.  “ Some pretty smart fellows  come out  of the Maritimes,” he said…” we’ve got  some PRETTY CATTY  guys up here.”  By this time I was about ready to rouse the Sleeping Giant and go to war… imagine anyone calling  a Maritimer “Catty”.  Why that’s a female term… and women hate it… if you say to a woman that’s she’s “catty” … that’s an invitation to get out  the back door  and stay out… but fast.  There are few words  in the English Language  that  arouseth a woman’s scorn as the the label “catty”. Imagine calling a man “catty” !  I soon learned that in this rough, burly magnificent  land of the lakes where men are men… I learned that  to call a man “catty” was to pay him  the highest compliment  in the roughest toughest of all games.  It  is a lumberjack’s word of respect and I would only call a lumberjack a “sissy” if I were in the other end of a transcontinental telephone line.

You see, that newspaper you read every day is born out of two parts.  It was processed in a great roaring mill where  the machines rumbling at breathless speed take the wood … make it into a porridgy mush … turn it into running liquid and then into dry shiny paper.  They call that the Mill side of operations.  At Thunder Bay Paper Mill in Port Arthur city limits they have one of the most modern streamlined operations in the world.  In fact their grinder room is the very newest thing in paper making.

They are proud of it in Port Arthur.  But, there would be no mill if it were not for wood.  So the other great partner in paper making is the Woodlands Division…the fellows who  are responsible  for bringing  rooted trees in the bush to the mills, in other words the fraternity of lumberjacks.   Canada itself owes so much  to the lumberjack group.

Continued in part three  Like a Ballet Dancer

Pretty Catty by John Fisher 1949 part one of five

 “PRETTY CATTY”

The People’s Paper

Canada

March 16, 1949

John Fisher Scans:

“Pretty Catty”

These men are rough and tough,  They Boss the rivers.  They run the rapids and shout defiance  at the world’s biggest fresh water lake.  They know the Sleeping Giant, too.  He-men these , and yet the finest compliment you can pay them is to say “Pretty Catty”.

ANNOUNCER’S INTRODUCTION: Extra!  The People’s Paper, a radio edition for  your entertainment .  The People’s Paper headlining John Fisher, your favourite story teller, with true tales about you and your friends.

Tonight John Fisher takes giant strides from Lake Nipigon to Port Arthur and has a story which will give the Sleeping Giant pleasant dreams…he talks about  men who are proud to be called “Catty”.

And these men are part of Canada’s largest family , the pulp and newsprint family …325,000 wage- earners in mill and bush. This great industry has an investment  of over a billion dollars in mills and power plants  that cannot be moved…they cannot operate without pulpwood…Therefore conservation of the forests is of vital interest to the industry.  Every Canadian pulp and paper mill is pledges to a 10 point plan of forest conservation to bring about perpetual harvests from our greatest natural asset…our forests.  Canada’s pulp and newsprint leaders jointly sponsor this program.  Abitibi Power and Paper,,, Great Lakes  Paper… Ontario Paper…Ontario-Minnesota Pulp and Paper and Spruce Falls Power and Paper.

Well in our bushlands John Fisher has found some mighty unusual men… Extra!! PRETTY CATTY!

JOH FISHER: We were peering out the window.  We looked straight into the silver fingertip of Lake Superior.  Through the haze of winter we sought the Sleeping Giant.  I had seen him from the air when the steel green waters slapped at his feet  in summer.  Now I wanted  to see him in winter dress.  But Jack Frost  beat me to it.  He had thrown  a protective haze around this sleeping giant… this great rock promontory … resembling a slumbering giant whose bulky frame guards the gateway to the boundless plains of the West.

In Port Arthur, Ontario, they scarcely ever sell a postcard without  this dormant guardian in the background.  He is a symbol of the majesty of Lake Superior. The silhouette  of this rock is the signal to water born commerce that the world’s greatest inland waterway is about to stop.  Here is a part of Canada where Nature went on a rampage  and scattered and tossed her rocky children …here the Sleeping Giant stands as the dean of mighty Superior.

It was from a window in Thunder Bay that I tried to see the Sleeping Giant… instead there in the spotless, modern mill of the Abitibi Power and Paper I heard these ancient tales and superstitions.  We  could not see him… for an hour though, I listened to these Thunder Bay  Papermakers rave about the beauties and legends of our Lakehead country.

I had been filled with the charm and bigness of Northwest Ontario.  I kept nodding approval … “yes, this is magnificent country , alright, “I commented on  the sunshine again which beats down  summer and winter on the twin cities of Fort William and Port Arthur, which both stand more than 600 feet above sea level.  All of a sudden as I was talking, one of the men from the Thunder Bay Paper Mill pulled me up short.  He said “ You’re a Maritimer, aren’t you…well you’ve got nothing like this down there"...

to be continued as Rough Burly Magnificent

Open Hours 2025

 Nipigon Historical Museum Open Hours 2025

Monday to Friday July August

9-5

Elsie Gagnon Interview 2006

 NIPIGON HISTORICAL MUSEUM            March 28, 2006

 

Elsie Gagnon

Resident of Nipigon

Parents names: Ida and Ed Oja ?

Siblings: Shirley, Donny,

 

 

I came to Nipigon in 1940 with my twin sister and my two brothers.  My sister lives in Dorion now and her son Kevin Maloine was the Reeve there for a while.  We came from Silver Mountain in Nolalu which is by the bridge at Kakabeka in Thunder Bay.  My mother’s family grew up there and she had fourteen in her family so I have a lot of cousins.  My dad worked in the bush camps and that was the reason why we moved here because we didn’t have a vehicle in those days and it was too far for him to come home so he moved us here.  He first worked in the bush camps and then he worked for Nick Salo and he was the truck driver for him and I worked there too.  My mother worked there for a while too and then I worked at Consumers-Co-Op in 1948 until it closed.  I was working there first and then worked for Nick Salo and from there I worked at the Hudson’s Bay Company.  At the Consumers Co-Op I worked with Archie Salo and he drove for them and used to do the deliveries for Pine Portage and Cameron Falls and I used to fill all of the orders for them and it was the truck drivers who would bring the groceries to them and would come back with a new list and I think they went twice a week.  We’d fill the orders and then they would haul out the groceries to them and you had to write out all the orders by hand in those days and even with those tiny little notepads and the same with Zechner’s until they got those tills that you just put everything for and everything is itemized.  I worked at Zechner’s for 20 years and I had to write everything out by hand you know all the fire orders and it was pages and pages of orders.  Then I worked for Alec Fraser too and he had a television repair shop and he sold licenses there too and I don’t know how long I worked there and then went over to work at Zechner’s.  I think when his wife came to work there was when I left Alec’s and his store was right beside Doc’s.  My father worked in Beardmore and my mother worked in the Bush too and they were both working in 1952 when I got married and worked there and then I think when that was all finished they ended up working for Nick Salo first for a while.  After working for Nick my father worked for the Department of Highways until he retired which was here in Nipigon.  I don’t really remember how many years it was he worked for the Department of Highways but he retired when he was 65.  I was 19 when I got married and he was 25 years older than I am so he must have been there for about thirty years and he drove truck for them.  He was there when they put the highway in and he did the shoveling at the gravel pits.  He also worked for Paju’s too and he used to crush rocks on the Cameron Falls road where they used to have just before where the old dump was and there was a gravel pit there.  Paju’s used to own that gravel pit there and my dad worked on the rock crusher for quite a while and he worked in many different places.  Back then you didn’t have to stick to just to one job, you could move around and do different jobs and I know he drove taxi also.  You didn’t have to worry about it if one job was finished because you could always move onto another job not like today which you don’t dare quit your job. 

 

When I was sixteen I can remember Nipigon was a pretty busy place and all the bars were going strong and the bowling alley and everything.  It was always busy on the main street not like now.  We had a really good Hockey team then too which was the Nipigon Flyers and I have pictures of them.  My husband played hockey too until he got water on his elbows and had to quit because he said it wasn’t worth it to play and get injured.  My husband and Marshall Borsk played defense and Marshall was really tall and was about 6'4" and my husband’s only 5'7".  I got engaged in the outdoor rink here when my husband was looking after it which was the one on first street.  If we wanted to go and skate on the rink we all had to go and clean the ice off before we could go on.  When they closed the place up we would go and sit where the players box was and would take our shoes off and would skate in the dark.  Berube’s lived next door to the rink and we used to dig tunnels and we had a tunnel underneath there us girls and when I stop to think about it now it was really dangerous and we’re lucky it never collapsed.  We had tunnel’s all over the place over there and we used to go under them and crawl all over the place.  I would never let my kids do that but that’s what we used to do back then but the snow was really hard but when you stop to think about it we could have suffocated underneath them if it would have collapsed.  We had heavy snow back then but now looking back it wasn’t the smartest idea we had going.  We used to go to dances which were called Teen Town and they used to have them at the school auditorium and we were young when we went to those and then they eventually closed them down.  Then I remember when they brought in a band which was playing all over Canada and they came one night to the school auditorium and that place was just packed and it was really nice.  I guess that would have been during the war when they came and I was about fourteen or sixteen.  I was nine when I came in 1940 and I went to the Nipigon Consolidated school and Miss Ryerdon was one of my teachers and I had her in grade eight.  I quit school in grade eight and didn’t quite finish the year but in those days you didn’t have much of a choice because you had to quit school and go to work.  Mrs. Swain was a teacher there but I never had her, Miss McDonald, I had Mary Meyers, and Miss Ryerdon, Miss Newton.  Miss Ryerdon taught grades 7 and 8.  I have an old newspaper here with some of the other teachers who taught there and it’s the Nipigon News and Sy Copps used to run the paper then and he came here to run the paper.  The Roxy Café was where the Library is now and Reliable Launders and Cleaners was a drycleaning company right next door to where the Nipigon Café is now.  A lot of the businesses like Hudson’s Bay Company, E.C. Everett and the Big 6 was Anabelle Lee’s place.  Mike Borsk used to own the International and then Nick Salo and there was the Corner Coffee Shop and then Kriff’s was where Jackie Oja has her tax office now.  Consumer’s Co-Op was where Zechner’s is now and Florian Zechner was where the drug store is now, Thompson’s Drugs was in this building here where the museum is now which was the L&L before that.  Frank Atwill had the bowling alley and the Pool Room which is where the China Gardens is now.  Then the Nipigon Inn and A.  Kriff had a jewelry shop beside that on the corner and the Municipal Office and Palm Dairies and the International Hotel.  William Bravo and Grant Willan had a business fixing small motors which is where the Silver Club is now.  The Bottling Works was where Zechner’s is now and it was in behind there where the trucks unload they used to make their own pop and it was really good pop too.  Then the Ovilio Hotel which is gone now too but then there was Fred and Jean’s Taxi Company which was owned by Fred Schwetz and Jean Choiselat.  Julia Marciski was a Schwetz and that was her father who owned that.  Crescent Taxi was owned by Charlie Choiselat, Whimpy’s taxi was over and across from the Nipigon Café and then Dr.  Jefferey had his office down in the basement of the museum building here.  I had Dr.  Davies when I had my first baby and I was shy because I was only nineteen and he said to me “well my wife never wears fancy panties like those”, well was I ever embarassed I could have dropped through the floor!  Then when I had my second child who in fact will be 50 in May, I went to Dr. Somerleigh and he was telling me about protection and he says “those condoms are no good you know because they store them up on top of buildings, and garages and roofs and everything else and they break when you go to use them”!.  I didn’t want to discuss it with him but he was so forward about it.  Then after that I couldn’t get pregnant anyways and it took me eleven years to get pregnant after that.  I always wanted six kids but we ended up having three and we lost the fourth child when he was two and a half.  I’ve got a daughter living in Manotick outside of Ottawa and then my son lives in St.  Paul, Minnesota and he married an American girl and they’ve been married now for eleven years. He was married once before when he was a young kid here in Nipigon and he was only 17 and she was 16 but she was pregnant and that marriage didn’t last.  I knew it wouldn’t last that first marriage because they were way too young but he has a nice daughter and now she got married last August and is expecting and that’ll make me a great grandmother.  When she was pregnant with my grandchild her father wanted her to get an abortion and I was against it and I told my son that I’d wonder for the rest of my life about the baby.  So anyways, she was lucky she had the baby because it was the only child she had and she started having problems and I think ended up having a partial hysterectomy on her.  If she would have gone through with the abortion she probably would have never had another child.  I always felt like when they lived here that we had our grandchild until she was about two years old and we had her it seemed every single week-end and sometimes my husband would tell me “we’re not going to take her this week-end”!  Come Friday night though he would tell me to phone and tell them we’d take her for the week-end.  She is really close to us though and I’ve always felt like she was my daughter.  My daughter has three kids too but she’s always lived away from us and they’ve lived in Thompson, Manitoba and then they moved to Terrace, B.C., and then to Yellowknife, then to White Rock and then to Manotick.  So I was there with her when she had the babies and I saw two of my grandchildren being born. 

 

My two kids grew up here and went to High School there in Red Rock and my daughter married Mike Zeleny from Red Rock.  They haven’t ever been close to Nipigon and her husband works for the R.C.M.P. and they just got back from a trip to France.  My daughter knew I was going to be worried about her going to France so she didn’t tell me about the trip because she knew I would worry and I shouldn’t worry but ever since we lost our child I always worry.  For their 25^th wedding anniversary she won a cruise from the Royal Bank a few years ago. 

 

When I was young my friends were Verna Manilla who stood up for me when I got married and Anita Hanes.  They were the two I hung around with the most and in fact they worked at the Theater where I worked too which was the Plaza Theater.  One sold tickets and the other made popcorn and I was working at Consumers and would meet them after work and we would go in the evening to see a show there.  In fact, I remember one time we were in there and it was a midnight show and we went in at about ten o’clock that night to go and get things ready and there was a mouse in there.  Well you should have seen those two girls, one was on the counter and the other was on top of the chesterfield and I said “what’s wrong with you”? And they said “there’s a mouse” so I said “it won’t hurt you” so I grabbed the mouse by the tail but it curled up and bit me.  So I had to drop it but I ended up getting it but there were the two of them scared as anything!.  The Plaza was owned by the Airchuck’s then Nester was his first name and he came from Beardmore I think and they lived in the house where Roe and Hilja Skillen live.  I think they had three kids who are somewhere in Southern Ontario now because I had asked Verna Taisey if she heard that they were still living and she said as far as she knows they are.  Nester was in a partnership there with a short man but I can’t recall his name.  Bill Dwyer had it last and they bought it off of Airchuck’s and they ran it for quite a while and then Carol Zechner took it over and then Don Martin and his wife and I think there was someone before them even but nobody really kept it as long as Airchuck’s did.  In fact the guys who were building the Plaza at the time one of them was Johnny Poho’s brother and nephew worked on building the theater. 

 

We used to go to Pine Portage all the time too and I used to go there with Johnny Yuhl who used to drive the Imperial Oil truck and Verna Taisey and I used to go for a ride with him all the time down to Pine Portage to see what they were doing there with construction and everything.  That was on my day off because I was working at Consumers then and you couldn’t just go whenever you wanted to.  There used to be a lot of people living at Pine then and even at Cameron they had a little village there and my cousin used to work there too Ray Koitonen and his wife Helvi and they had three kids.  They lived there too and Mary and Joey Reno used to live there too and Bev Lynch and the Hill’s, there were quite a few that lived there in that little village and they used to come here on a Saturday night to go bowling and would go to the bar.  Lots of them would drink and then drive home on that road and that’s where John Sharp and Oville had that bad accident on that road they weren’t drinking because John never drank but he was more crippled up after that accident then he ever was.  John’s wife got injured too and I don’t think she ever completely recovered from her injuries and she had her ups and downs.  John was the book keeper at Zechner’s and he was a member at the United Church and then they moved to the Baptist Church.  A lot of people left the United Church when they started to bring in women ministers there and they were against it. 

 

There used to be a dance hall just at the beginning of the Cameron Falls road on the left hand side on the corner and Allan Hannula’s mother ran that place.  Kilborn’s live there now but we used to go there and there was another dance hall where Dr.  Somerleigh used to live which was Paju’s house on Hogan Road.  Mikko Lespi’s brother lives there now and there used to be a garage there and that’s where there was another dance hall.  Art Sjollander and his wife Marie owned it and Goesta Sjollander and his brother ran it and we used to go there to dance and they would have more or less like a hoe down and what not there.  Once you got married that was the end of going to those sorts of things.  Going with Buster, he was never a dancer but I loved to dance so we used to go to Hockey games before we were married.  He used to phone me at the Hudson’s Bay and say “you wanna go to the Hockey Game tonight?” and I’d say “yes” and he says “well be ready because I’ll be there a little after six to pick you up”.  So I’d run home like anything and get changed and away we’d go.  We used to go to Marathon, Terrace Bay, Geraldton and all over the place to watch the games and there were good games and it was good hockey.  My brother Donny played and he got a broken nose one time in Marathon from a guy hitting him with a stick and he finally ended up having to get operated on because he couldn’t breathe right. 

 

I still don’t watch hockey now because I can’t stand to see anybody getting hurt and it seems so rough today. We have a camp out at Polly which we’ve had for 38 years now. 

 

When I worked at Consumers I remember the manager was leaving and they held a party for him and so I drank wine that night and we were playing in one of the base ball tournaments up at the school the next day because we had a girls team.  I was hung over pretty good and wasn’t paying attention and someone called out my name and the ball came flying at me and I put my hand up to deflect the ball but I even surprised myself that I caught the ball and somebody got out.  We always held our games at the Public school and I played for about three years which was up until I met my husband and then I didn’t play anymore.  I used to skate a lot and I loved to skate and my husband and I used to both love going skating all the time.  I would love to skate now but I have Osteoporosis and I can’t take the chance of falling down. 

 

My husband Buster worked on the boats here at the water front on the Anisse Lee and he was the captain on that boat for a long time.  He worked in the bush camps too and then got transferred over to Red Rock when both of my kids got married.  So he asked if he could get transferred into Red Rock at that time because both of my kids got married in a three month span.  Then he retired from the mill there but he worked there from 1947 and was retired since he was 65.  He will be 84 in May and there is ten years difference between he and I.  When I was working in the Theater in 1951 I said to Buster “save me a seat” just for the fun of it and I don’t think he thought I meant it.  I think I had been taking tickets that night and when I was finished and the show started I was just lucky that there was a seat beside him.  So then he asked me if I wanted to go to Winfields where they played cards down the basement in the rumpus room.  So I said “sure” and I didn’t get home until by six o’clock in the morning and he took me home by taxi anyways.  We’ve been married  for 54 years since Feb. 20th.