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

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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.

Nipigon narrrations 1-102 how to get the list

 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfq1420-j_BOtTiDCh7jvpBKk3te2lRYE

FIRST ANGLICAN RECTORY NIPIGON

 The corner of Second street and Riverview

First Anglican Rectory

The Hudson’s Bay Company sold this property to the Diocese of Algoma, Church of England in 1908 for the sum of two dollars so that a house could be built for the Anglican minister.  Using balloon construction with British Columbia  fir and nine –foot ceilings, it was  very modern for its time, boasting a full basement.

As well as being used as a residence for various clergymen and their families, between 1930 and 1938, the house was leased out as a detachment and barracks to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for $30 a month.  At that time, it was equipped with hydro and heated with three wood stoves.

A new rectory was built next to the Anglican Church, and this property was sold as a private home in 1956.  The house changed hands several times before the Horton family purchased it in 1975.  Nestled under the large trees, the house has retained its original charm while it has undergone modern improvements.

B. Satten 2003 A Historical Walk Through Nipigon

Red Rock Post

 

Red Rock House

The first permanent trading post  in the area was established by Claude Greysolon Dulhut  in 1678 near the location of the present railway bridge. Some 180 years later , the Hudson’s Bay Company  built Red Rock Post  to stop independent  fur traders from heading upstream.  Archaeological  evidence indicates  that this early post may have  consisted of three small log cabins.

In the early 1870’s, Chief Trader Robert Crawford, believing that red Rock Post would become  the terminus  of the Canadian Pacific Railway, set about an ambitious building program.  By 1872 he had overseen construction of a wharf 350 feet long by 52 feet wide.  Soon followed a farm with  house, stable and out buildings , a powder magazine, a men’s house, a trade store complex, boat houses, warehouse, machine sheds and a large eight-room officer’s living quarters.  The living quarters were built in Gothic Revival style with ornate gingerbread designs under  the eaves of the high peaked roof, complete with veranda,  attached kitchen, summer kitchen and wood shed.

Although Red Rock House did not become the railway terminus, it became increasingly important as a cargo trans-shipment point, with goods shipped by steamboat to be distributed throughout the Lake Nipigon hinterland.

B. Satten 2003.  A Historical Walk Through Nipigon

Why Forestry Matters

 

Just Naturally Speaking                 by Betty Jean Brill  Nipigon  July 5, 2010

 

Why Forestry Matters

 

“We, Canadians, acknowledging that we are depositories of diverse social, cultural and natural riches are resolved to build a country that safeguards its natural environment and USES IT rationally and responsibly to ensure prosperity for generations to come.”

 

The Preamble (I) to A Renewed Canada, the Report of the Special Joint Committee of the Senate and the House of Commons, February 28, 1992. pp. 126-127. (the capitals are mine)

 

Let us flash back to 1944 when the Canadian Legion Educational Service was creating vocational courses for Service Personnel. One course they chose was “Forestry”.

 

“It is noteworthy that in every forest region there persists a forest industry, even though the first logging may go back three centuries.”(End quote from p. 65.)

 

They stress that logging should be considered a permanent occupation for Canadians.  To back that up they point out there is a growing school of thought that considers “ forest crops as renewable and therefore perpetual and it is essential that forests be so treated.”

(page 63)

 

Seventy years ago they were not thinking of their life cycle deep carbon footprint but they were well aware of just what logging meant.  They expressed it this way:

 

“ Logging comprises all the technique of harvesting timber for commercial use.  In general, the word is used to include the job of opening up an area of timber by roads, the making of such other improvements or structures as are required, the cutting of the timber, its assembly from stump to first point of transport, loading and hauling and dumping, and very often its delivery to the mill or market by the most favourable method.”

(page 61)

 

Forest products constituted our first major export.  They supplied cheap housing materials and fuel.  They helped the development of railways into new areas by providing freight more quickly than agriculture could.

 

“Logging shaped the national character of Canadians by demanding industry and courage, self-reliance and ingenuity.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In 1945 the Woodlands Section of Canadian Pulp and Paper Association, Montreal, published a little booklet called “Pointers to Woods Workers”.  Their preface was:

 

“Forest Conservation means careful, wise use of forests.  A woods worker’s part in this is of great importance to all, as the forest benefits everybody.  Take care of it.   Avoid waste.”

 

“Your work depends on the forest.  Treated well, it will continue to give work for generations.  Abused, the forest will not renew itself properly; even if it does come back it will be poor.”

 

“You can do a lot for forest conservation by preserving young growth of valuable kinds,  by being very careful with fire and by avoiding waste of good wood.”

 

In 1940 the merchantable accessible timber in Canada was estimated at a total (softwoods and hardwoods) of 211,656,000,000 cubic feet.  They figured another 100,000,000,000 cubic feet was rated not commercially accessible.

 

Flash forward to 2006.  The National Timber Inventory total tree volume on forest land was 47,957.07 million cubic metres.

 

Converting that to cubic feet we get 1,693,555,969,980 cubic feet.  Even if you dropped off a few lower age classes of trees, it looks like we still have more wood after seventy years of cutting than we had to start with.

 

Flash back to 1999, Philadelphia, The PEW Charitable Trusts: PEW Environmental Group:  They began to craft a strategy for Canada’s great boreal wilderness as part of their campaign to conserve intact old-growth forests.  They found Canada’s far reaching expanse of publicly owned forest and taiga a “ particularly ripe opportunity.”  Their Goal – one hundred million acres by the year 2010.

 

From 1999 to 2006 the PEW ‘ invested’ $35.4 million dollars in Canada.

 

They had 60,000,000 acres ‘protected’ by 2006.

 

They got their Goal, 100,000,000 acres ‘protected’ in 2007- three years ahead of schedule.

 

Basking in their success they had their campaign evaluated.  The evaluators asked Steve Kallick, the director of the Boreal Conservation Campaign, “How did you know what areas were important to protect?” He couldn’t answer because he had no idea scientifically why they did it. Unfazed, he said the evaluation had shown they needed to support better science.

 

 

How did this ‘foreign power’ manipulate our governments and industries into signing away our rights to use our natural resources in one hundred million acres of our boreal?  They explain it all on their websites. They developed and consistently projected a clear and compelling message that created a sense of urgency regarding the need to protect specific tracts of wilderness and then continued to extend their reach.

 

PEW takes credit for prompting the Manitoba government to create the ten million acre, pristine boreal forest World Heritage Site.

 

The Ivey Foundation (London, Ontario) takes credit for the creation and passing of the Species At Risk Act last year.  Their boast is that the foundation has an excellent political reach which it is not afraid to use.

 

The Ivey Foundation is one of the ENGO signatories of the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement of May 18, 2010.

 

PEW is one of the nine Environmental Non-Governmental Organizations that signed the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement of May 18, 2010 – 29 million hectares and counting.

 

Counting- an additional 200 million acres of Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec are expected to be designated as parks and refuges pending the fulfillment of previously made commitments.

 

Two interesting covenants that charitable organizations have to sign in the U.S.A.:

4.a. The corporation shall not lobby, carry on propaganda or other wise attempt to influence legislation…

4.b. Cannot participate in any political campaign on behalf of or in opposition of any candidate for public office.

 

Maybe these covenants have no repercussions if used in a foreign land, but what about Ivey?  What about ForestEthics and their fomenting intolerance of resource industries?

 

Michael:

Was it really cooperation between the forest industries and the environmental groups when the ENGOs used language such as:

Leverage existing government legislation.

Influence upcoming regulations.

Transform attitudes and behaviour  to create conditions for positive government action.

Fiscal policy used as a strategic way to influence public and corporate decisions in support of conservation.

Act strategically to set legal precedents.

Discourage buyers.

National Focus to drive the process…ie., the FPAC to an agreement in exchange for supply certainty.