The Rural Voice, 2006-08, Page 43Western farmers recruited eastern farm boys after harvest in Ontario was finished for the year.
house finished, we turned the old
shack into a bunkhouse. But always,
through all the years that we lived on
the farm, the men ate with us, and
usually sat with us too. Many and
many a time I longed for the luxury
of a 'home to myself', and for years I
dreamed of an up-to-date bunkhouse,
in which we could house and feed the
men comfortably and so enjoy the
privacy we longed for. Unfortunately
we were never able to afford this.
"Even the best of hired men
usually present a sort of picturesque
raggedness in their attire. Torn khaki
or blue denim shirts, loose khaki
pants or bibbed overalls, heavy
workboots, greasy sweaters, rakish
caps or soiled sombreros — these are
the customary habiliments of the
western hired man. And how
handsome some of the boys look in
this unconventional garb, to be sure.
"It was no uncommon sight to see
rips in pants precariously held
together with nails. Nails, in fact,
were at all times far more popular
than needles and thread and seemed
to serve the same purpose to an
astonishingly satisfactory degree. I
remember only one man who took the
time and energy to wash and mend
his own clothes. He was an elderly
man who had no use for my new-
fangled washing machine (run by
hand, by the way) and who was as
fastidious as a woman about a hole or
a rent. His socks and his underwear
were always neatly darned; every tear
was repaired at once and every hole
neatly patched. But he was a man in a
million.
"There were also another couple
who were interesting. They were
French-Canadians and were splendid
speciments of expert harvest workers.
How they ever came to team up
together was always a mystery to me.
Lawrence was the complete antithesis
of Philippe. Lawrence was short and
stocky whereas Philippe was tall and
lean. Philippe was silent almost to the
point of taciturnity, whereas
Lawrence talked a blue streak and
kept the rest of the crew in constant
gales of laughter with his stories, his
jokes and his songs. Fall after fall, for
many years, they appeared together,
worked for us and passed on. They
returned at the end of each season to
their own deep forests and frozen
streams of Quebec.
"Lawrence, as I have said, was of
diminutive stature, but he was hard as
nails and had the strength of an ox.
Once or twice in later years, as
sometimes happens, we got a 'bully'
among the crew, some chap who tried
to put it over the others. But no one
ever put it over Lawrence. In his own
inimitable fashion the little man was
more or less the boss of every crew
he ever worked with.
"I can see him yet, sitting outside
the shack of a summer evening,
whittling a piece of wood and singing
in his husky and not unpleasant tenor,
old French-Canadian folk songs,
some of which have only recently
been committed to the printed page.
The one I remember best of all is an
old lumber song, which runs as
follows:
"Quand nous partons des chantiers,
Mes amis, rous le coeur gai,
Pour alter voir taus nos parents,
Mes cher amis, le coeur content,
Envoyons d'l' avant
Nos gens
'Envoyons d'l' avant."
"Sent her along, along!0
AUGUST 2006 39