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Village Squire, 1979-08, Page 24Revealing the fascinating tale of Narcisse Cantin Reviewed by Keith Roulston They're located all over rural Ontario: the little hamlets and crossroads that mark the lost dreams of the dreamers and schemers who hoped to build cities in the new soil of pioneer Canada. Many of these ghost towns are only marks on old maps today. Some have grown to the size of hamlets with a couple of stores to serve local farmers. Few are less impressive today than St. Joseph. Millions have driven past the two houses and a church that mark the village on their hurried way to Lake Huron's summer resorts and never realized it is the remnants of one of the most romantic dreams of Western Ontario, perhaps of all Canada. Only a plaque tells the story of the dreamer Narcisse Cantin who truly dreamed an impossible dream. Narcisse Cantin is getting new attention these days, however, thanks mostly to a new book A Drum To Beat Upon by Joseph L. Wooden. Mr. Wooden started out to explore the strange occurence of French- Canadian names among students attending his school South Huron District High School from the area along Lake Huron north of Grand Bend. What he ended up doing is not only exploring the origins of this strange little French-Canadian enclave among the settlers from England and Germany, but also discovering the fascinating story of Narcisse Cantin. the most famous product of that settlement. Hard times in Quebec drove some French Canadians whose family dated back 200 years in North America to seek new lives along the shores of Lake Huron. They found little improvement there for the next half century. They were poor in the first place and could little afford the capital improvements necessary to make their farms successful. They lived from hand to mouth many of them until the discovery of white bean growing and the high prices for the crop brought about by the First World War. Antoine Cantin was among the Quebec- ois to move to Ontario in the mid -eighteen hundreds. He came first to Goderich where he built boats to sell to the Hudson's Bay Company, then moved to the Lake Road south of Bayfield where his son Narcisse was born in 1870. Narcisse was not your ordinary farm boy. By age 17 he was in business for himself, trading cattle. He moved on to Buffalo where he continued in the cattle business 22 Village Squire, August 1979 but also was something of an inventor. His years in Buffalo planted the seed for his great dream. He saw the value of the Erie Canal to Buffalo and saw the importance of a deep -water canal system to link the Great Lakes to the Atlantic through the St. Lawrence River. From 1896 when he was only 26 years old, he devoted the rest of his life to his dream, a dream that was even grander than what was to become eventually the St. Lawrence Seaway. The importance of St. Joseph to his plans was as a terminus on Lake Huron to a canal that would link Lake Huron with Lake Erie at Port Stanley, cutting 24 hours off the normal travel time from the lake head iron mines at Duluth to the steel mills in Pittsburgh. Cantin saw a city growing by the Lake Huron shoreline at the end of the canal. But the canal was just part of his idea for a seaway which would allow ocean-going vessels to ply the Great Lakes waters. He also wanted to harness the power of the waters along the St. Lawrence to provide hydro electricity. St. Joseph was to be his "drum to beat upon", the physical evidence of his dream to show what could come. Like the rest of his dream his city on Lake Huron never materialized but it did come a little closer to reality than the rest of his dream. He foresaw for St. Joseph an industrial and tourist centre served not only by the canal but a government warf. and a railway The government warf was; built after a great deal of controversy but was washed away by the strong waves of Lake Huron. The railway never got past the dream stage. Some small industries did locate there around the turn of the century. To serve the tourist boom a huge hotel was built reported to have cost a quarter of a million dollars. It was a magnificent structure but it never opened. Mr. Wooden thoroughly explores the reasons Cantin didn't succeed in his dreams. He was an impressive man who sold many on his schemes but not the right people at the right time. He was, Wooden contends. a man 50 years ahead of his time. His vision of Lake Huron as a tourist mecca was too early. His idea of a seaway was too early for many to grasp and so was his idea of the potential of hydro electricity. Mr. Wooden also feels he may have been a victim of the ruthless big-time business tycoons of the time who didn't want anything important to happen unless they stood to make money from it. At any rate Cantin died in 1940 with few of his dreams realized. His grand hotel had already been torn down and the bricks salvaged. Today only a few buildings survive as a reminder. Mr. Wooden does a generally good job of bringing the fascinating story life. If there is a fault it is the fact that sometimes the character of this lively. exciting giant (he stood more than six feet tall and weighted 240 pounds) gets lost in the details of the dreams and the opposition to these dreams. The book is one of those self published efforts and the subject deserves better treatment than the typewritten, double- spaced pages and poor photo reproduction. Still. Mr. Wooden deserves great credit for bringing the story of this fascinating. almost forgotten part of the region's history to the attention of so many people. A DRUM TO BEAT UPON, by Joseph L. Wooden. Operation Liif¢itglle Did you know that to lose 450 grams (one pound) you must burn 3,500 calories? Use up 100 extra calories daily and you will have lost 4.5 kilograms (10 pounds) at the end of one year. Subscribers' Moving Notice Send correspondence to: Village Squire. RR 3, lil�th, flat. 7S0!11 1110. Name New Address City Postal Code Prov. ATTACH OLD ADDRESS LABEL HERE AND MAIL IMMEDIATELY' My moving date is: My old address label is attached. My new address is on this coupon. ❑ I wish to subscribe to Village Squire. Send me 12 issues for only $5.00.