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