K.C. Jordan, LJI Journalist

Mike Lamothe doesn’t want the history of Calumet Island to get lost to time.

The 83-year-old, who has lived on the island for roughly a half-century of his life, remembers a time when everybody on the island farmed, and everyone came together in festive soirées to feast on the products of their hard work.

“Everybody would gather at one place and have these fantastic meals, because each farm woman would try to outdo the neighbour,” he said.

“And the camaraderie of all the young lads trying to show off their newfound strength, and on it would go.”
Lamothe said that 50 years later, things have changed. Not everyone farms anymore. Back when he was young, he knew nearly all of his neighbours, but this too is no longer the case.

Four years ago, Lamothe and other history-obsessed islanders set about to preserve this history while those who lived it first-hand are still alive.

Under the name Groupe l’Île-du-Grand-Calumet, a core of about five members began meeting four times a year to record local tales and fill in gaps in the group’s collective historical knowledge.

The most recent of these sessions was held in the municipal library on Wednesday, and, as usual, was recorded using Lamothe’s camcorder.

The sessions often have a gameplan, or an area of local history about which the group would like to recover some crucial details. This time, the meeting’s focus was finding out more about the locations of old schoolhouses, sawmills, and various stores on the island.

But, as often happens, people start telling stories, and the plan gets left by the wayside.

This time, island natives Lorenzo Lagarde and brother Ralph Lagarde came to fill in some details about the New Calumet Mine, which operated from the early 1940s until it was decommissioned in the 1970s.

The mine employed many people on the island, including Ralph’s wife’s grandfather, Arthur Presseau, who was a superintendent at the Sterling Mine in Nova Scotia before dismantling the mine and moving it to Calumet Island in 1943.

“After I retired I had a little bit of information but not a lot,” Lagarde said, adding that he began researching the history by looking through parish registers to uncover more information about his ancestors.

Lamothe said the content of the meetings differs every time, especially if someone happens to be passing through the island and stops in to share some of their own oral history.

Lagarde, who has a farm on the island and who has been coming to these meetings since the group started hosting them, said he enjoys hearing from different people as they share stories and research.

“It’s interesting. I learn a lot about the island that I didn’t know, I learn a lot about the history of the island,” he said.

Lamothe, who is also an amateur historian and has compiled small leaflets on a few different Calumet Island subjects, said the meetings are good for narrowing down specific historic details but also hearing stories because they both contribute to the history of the island.

He said there will come a time when the people with vivid memories of the past will no longer be around to share their stories.

“Myself, Jean-Marie [Ryan], Lagarde, we’re all over 80 [ . . . ] We’re getting long in the tooth,” he said.

“So we record whatever we can, and it’s just a place to chat and talk about things.”

Lamothe said he would like to find a way to properly archive the recordings, either by transcribing them or by making them accessible for others to listen to.

“If we get it recorded and then some young ambitious person that wants to do a master’s [ . . . ] project, some government grant or whatever, that they can take it and it’ll be there. It’ll be a resource for them,” he said.

Lamothe said the group is working on a comprehensive map of the island, complete with historic buildings, family homesteads, farms and other places of interest.

The group has a space in the library now, which allows them to display the map and various information about the group’s treasure hunt and fishing tournament.

He said they have even more stuff they would like to put in the space for visitors to see, including some things from the old office at the mine, a metre-tall model of the mine shafts and their access points, as well as a big book containing the mine employees’ pay sheets.

“We could fill near half of the library if we had the space, because a lot of people gave us some interesting things that would be fun to display,” he said.

But Lamothe said it would be hard to develop a proper archive on the island because of the lack of tourist infrastructure and volunteer interest.

He said the history of Calumet Island isn’t particularly important compared to any other place, but it’s a shared sense of place among some of the residents that spark interest in preserving local history.

“When you have a sense of place, that place is very important [ . . . ] and we decided to try and start recording that.”