K.C. Jordan, LJI Journalist

On a nippy November afternoon, longtime Calumet Island resident Mike Lamothe pulled a small package out of a freshly dug hole in the garden behind his home. He unfurled the newspaper wrapping, revealing dozens of tiny potatoes inside.

The 82-year-old local history buff is keeping them underground over the winter for safe keeping. These aren’t just any potatoes — they’re a heritage variety, no longer widely grown, and one Lamothe only came to know after he heard its name mentioned in the local folk song, The Chapeau Boys.

“These are the Early Roses,” he said, plucking the spuds one by one out of the package to examine them. He explained this variety of potato was once grown in the Ottawa Valley at the height of the logging industry, known at the time for its robust flavour, hardiness and versatility, but has since fallen into relative obscurity.

After some work, Lamothe was able to procure himself some of these potatoes. Now, he is trying to revive a crop of these traditional tubers for future generations to enjoy.

The Chapeau Boys connection

Inside his house, Lamothe cracked open a book containing the lyrics to the song The Chapeau Boys, which follows a group of loggers as they embark on their yearly trek up-river toward their winter camp in the Upper Pontiac.

As an avid outdoorsman and former owner of an adventure tour business, Lamothe was familiar with many of the locations called out in the song: Chapeau, Fort William, the Black River.

“The song spoke to me,” Lamothe said, noting he began to read the lyrics more closely a few years ago.

In the song, the men arrive at their winter abode — the Caldwell farm — and spend several verses describing the many foods they feasted on at the camp. Delights like cabbage, custard, rice pudding and pies are all mentioned in delectable detail. Arriving at the end of the seventh verse, Lamothe encountered the spud for the first time.

The board at the farm, the truth for to tell,
Could not be surpassed in the Russell Hotel.
We had roast beef and mutton, Our tea sweet and strong,
And the good early roses, full six inches long.

Lamothe had never heard of the variety before. After some research, he came to learn more about its origins in New England and its lineage. As it turns out, the Early Rose was one of the parent potatoes of the Russet Burbank, a variety long favoured by fast-food restaurants such as McDonald’s for french fry use.

Wanting to find out more about the variety — and maybe grow some himself — Lamothe consulted local friends and seed savants, but it seemed nobody in the Pontiac was still growing them.

He put the project aside for a while, thinking he had hit a dead end. One day he hit the jackpot: he found a government seed bank in Fredericton growing heritage varieties of potatoes, including the exact ones he was looking for. Within a few weeks, he had a package containing about 50 Early Rose buds on his doorstep.

An enthusiast of local history, Lamothe is always knee-deep in a research project. If he’s not dressing up as legendary Calumet Island figure Jean Cadieux, he is researching his family roots, or the history of the island. He said he wanted to embark on the potato project because with it he is keeping alive a part of the Pontiac’s past.

“What’s the value of saving heritage things? In the end it’s not earth-shattering, but [ . . . ] it’s kind of neat to say ‘Oh, here’s a potato that faded from view and now we’ve saved it,’ and maybe hundreds of years from now you won’t see any anymore, but in the meantime people will enjoy it.”

Beyond the history of it all, Lamothe is mostly curious to see if it lives up to its reputation. “What really got me interested in it, is that it’s a far superior potato. For people who have fine culinary taste, instead of the russet or Yukon Gold or whatever, this will be far superior,” he said.

According to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, the Early Rose potato originated in Vermont in 1861, and was made commercially available in the United States for the first time in 1868 in the B.K. Bliss & Sons company’s gardening catalogue.

Its exact journey to the Ottawa Valley is unclear, but according to research conducted by THE EQUITY and the Upper Ottawa Valley Heritage Centre (UOVHC), the earliest available record of the potato in the Pembroke Observer and Upper Ottawa Advertiser was in 1872, where an advertisement read:

“These are the best early potatoes ever introduced into this section of the country, appearing two weeks earlier than any other potato.”

In an email to THE EQUITY, Julia Klimack of the UOVHC wrote that this means the potatoes were in Pembroke in at least 1871. “From this we can glean that they were becoming more widely available,” she said. 

A gardening book published that same year, Money in the Garden by P.T. Quinn, describes the potato as, “a large-sized tuber, smooth skin, few eyes, flesh white and steams and boils mealy.”

Eventually the potato, which was not uniform enough in size, did not survive the industrialization of agriculture, and is no longer listed as a registered variety on Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s online database.

Local gardeners keen for the special spud

Lamothe has been putting out feelers to other Pontiac gardeners to gauge interest in growing this heritage variety of potato.

Julie Anglehart has a small garden plot in Clarendon, where next year she’ll make room for Lamothe’s spuds. As a grower of heirloom varieties, including a variety of tomato she said started with 13 viable seeds found in an attic in Beauce, Que., in the 1960s, Anglehart said it’s exciting to possibly play a role in the survival of the Early Rose.

“If I could contribute to the survival of this food staple long into the future and make its access easy to keep good, nutrient-rich, unadulterated sustainable food for the future, it would be a proud legacy,” she said, noting she often finds heritage varieties to be tastier and more nutritious.

She added that heritage seeds are an important window into our history. “[Heritage seeds are] a history lesson of the food that shaped our culture and history [ . . . ] and the knowledge that some of these unadulterated varieties still exist and are worth popularizing and saving,” she said.

Joan LaCroix will also be making room for the Early Rose seeds in her garden next year, and she is excited to have a new variety.

“Anything heritage, that is passed down from seed, is superior to genetically modified,” she said, adding that it’s unfair that the DNA of genetically modified seeds such as Monsanto’s limit the grower to one growing season.

She said growing her own seeds is her way of combating a rising cost of living and a changing planet.

“With food insecurities growing, whether by skyrocketing costs, the decline of bees, birds and insects, or climate change, growing your own organic food becomes a more reliable and healthy option.”

Denis Blaedow, who works for Esprit Rafting and is a board member for the Chutes Coulonge, has known Lamothe since the mid-90s. He heard about the potato project and wants to start a small crop of the spuds at the Chutes for culinary use at special events.

“We had a couple of bus tour companies come up [ . . . ] and we serve them sea pie for a dinner there. It would be neat if we could put back in those potatoes as another part of the authenticity of serving something like that,” he said, noting how meaningful it would be to serve a sea pie containing possibly the very variety of potato that was once used to make the dish.

Back to the Caldwell camp

Lamothe said he is excited to begin growing these potatoes and to share them with others who are as passionate about local history — and food — as he is.

The spuds are still seed potatoes, too small to plant, so he’s keeping them buried deep underground until next year, at which point they will be ready to distribute to other interested growers.

Once the plants are ready, he said he plans to give some to all who expressed interest. But he has a special mission that he wants to accomplish: trek up the Black River to plant the spuds on the Caldwell farm, in the very same soil as the loggers might have done in The Chapeau Boys.

“It’s just as a tribute to the song,” he said, adding that the song reflects a part of our unique regional culture that is worth preserving.

“To some people, Chapeau Boys is like the national anthem of the Pontiac. It’s part of our culture.”