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Under the Canopy
On Outdoor Journal Radio's Under the Canopy podcast, former Minister of Natural Resources, Jerry Ouellette takes you along on the journey to see the places and meet the people that will help you find your outdoor passion and help you live a life close to nature and Under The Canopy.
Under the Canopy
Episode 93: Northern Ontario Faces Rising Waters
The natural world offers powerful reminders of its force as Northern Ontario faces rising floodwaters that threaten roads, homes, and infrastructure. Pierre Gagnon joins Jerry Ouellette for a captivating conversation about rural resilience across Canada, sharing firsthand accounts of a region underwater and the delicate balance between community safety and water management.
Pierre paints a vivid picture of his community west of Timmins, where roads normally protected from flooding now sit six inches underwater. With snow still lingering in forest shadows and a sinkhole already claiming a section of highway, locals worry this flood could rival the devastating 1996 event that completely washed out roads. The Ministry of Natural Resources faces tough decisions—open the dams and flood towns, or close them and submerge lakeside properties.
The conversation shifts to Pierre's recent month-long journey to British Columbia's Cortez Island, revealing a fascinating glimpse into another face of rural Canadian life. This coastal community presents striking contrasts: million-dollar vacation homes sit near modest trailers, while residents joke about "shoveling fog off docks." Pierre shares experiences helping his half-brother build a house foundation using massive Pacific Coast timber and repurposed construction materials, demonstrating the resourcefulness that defines life in remote communities.
Throughout their discussion, Jerry and Pierre explore evolving rural industries—from automated logging operations that have consolidated forestry jobs to community-based initiatives that could revitalize small northern towns. They also touch on drone technology for woodlot management, garden planning despite challenging weather, and the continued importance of mining exploration with gold prices exceeding $3,000 per ounce.
Subscribe now to hear more authentic conversations that capture the spirit, challenges, and unexpected joys of life under the canopy. Leave a review to share how these stories of rural resilience have inspired your connection to nature and community.
Hi everybody. I'm Angelo Viola and I'm Pete Bowman. Now you might know us as the hosts of Canada's Favorite Fishing Show, but now we're hosting a podcast. That's right. Every Thursday, Ang and I will be right here in your ears bringing you a brand new episode of Outdoor Journal Radio. Now, what are we going to talk about for two hours every week? Well, you know there's going to be a lot of fishing.
Speaker 3:I knew exactly where those fish were going to be and how to catch them, and they were easy to catch.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it's not just a fishing show. We're going to be talking to people from all facets of the outdoors From athletes.
Speaker 2:All the other guys would go golfing Me and Garth and Turk and all the Russians would go fishing To scientists.
Speaker 3:But now that we're reforesting- and all that, it's the perfect transmission environment for life To chefs, If any game isn't cooked properly marinated, you will taste it.
Speaker 1:And whoever else will pick up the phone Wherever you are. Outdoor Journal Radio seeks to answer the questions and tell the stories of all those who enjoy being outside. Find us on Spotify, apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 5:As the world gets louder and louder, the lessons of our natural world become harder and harder to hear, but they are still available to those who know where to listen. I'm Jerry Ouellette and I was honoured to serve as Ontario's Minister of Natural Resources. However, my journey into the woods didn't come from politics. Rather, it came from my time in the bush and a mushroom. In 2015, I was introduced to the birch-hungry fungus known as chaga, a tree conch with centuries of medicinal applications used by Indigenous peoples all over the globe. After nearly a decade of harvest use, testimonials and research, my skepticism has faded to obsession and I now spend my life dedicated to improving the lives of others through natural means. But that's not what the show is about. My pursuit of the strange mushroom and my passion for the outdoors has brought me to the places and around the people that are shaped by our natural world world. On Outdoor Journal Radio's Under the Canopy podcast, I'm going to take you along with me to see the places, meet the people that will help you find your outdoor passion and help you live a life close to nature and under the canopy. So join me today for another great episode and hopefully we can inspire a few more people to live their lives under the canopy. Well, welcome everybody to the Provo podcast. As always, great day out there.
Speaker 5:Normal morning I was out running my chocolate lab Ensign Gunner, checking a bunch of my patches. Now the stinging nettles coming up. Good, haven't seen much from my peppermint plants out in my wild living apothecary that I have out there and I've transplanted a few patches of leeks of ramps and two of them are doing spectacular One's kind of look like it's going to make it as well, but these patches probably won't be able to be harvested. But these patches probably won't be able to be harvested or take some of the outer there until maybe as much as three, four years from now before I even start looking at taking anything out of those transplanted plants. But kind of a wet, miserable, poured rain the other day and it's that time of year you know April showers bring May flowers, but we got a bunch of rain in May. Now we have a returning guest who's becoming regular, which I very much enjoy. Welcome to the program, pierre. Good morning Jerry. Good morning Pierre, pierre Gagnon. How are things up west of Timmins?
Speaker 6:We're inundated with water.
Speaker 5:What do you mean by that? You mean the creeks are running high, or what? Talk? Tell us about this.
Speaker 6:Everything's well. Our little road here, which usually never floods, is about six inches underwater. The dam's wide open at Ivano Lake. Snow loads fill in the bush so it hasn't crested yet. The highway's about six inches away from being flooded. The road is about six inches away from being flooded. The road was closed to Shaplow for about five days because of a sinkhole from the water. Really, the roads open again now this morning, so the trucks are gone through. But yeah, I don't know what's going to happen the next couple days. I'm not going to say biblical, oh I just did. Anyway, I got did. But anyway I got the mill going there. We're going to start on the arc there if it doesn't slow down.
Speaker 5:The, so there was a big flood where it washed out part of the highway between Chapleau and Timmins.
Speaker 6:Yeah, just a sinkhole developed. I guess it was a culvert there that was compromised a bit. So it developed a sinkhole right and just made a big hole in the middle of the road. So they had to fix that up now. The last time we had a flood like this we're still not there yet, but it was 1996, so 29, 30 years and it washed the highway right out. The pavement was just hanging there with nothing underneath it and it washed out a couple other creeks on the 101. So we're not there yet, but it's not looking good, jerry.
Speaker 5:So you said the dam's wide open. Are they generating any hydro off this dam?
Speaker 6:No, what happens is there's dams on all the lakes up here, like Ivano Lake, horwood Lake, and they're like a big basket for the hydropower down below the streams, because all these streams flow into the metogamy and then I think there's a dam on there, so they use this as a basket to control the water. It was done like in I don't know, 19 something, 19, 15, 20 maybe. So yeah, they've updated the dam here a couple years ago, like put new piers in and stuff, so it's. But it's wide open right now and they're just hoping that they can let enough water through so it doesn't create a problem. But the little issue is that there's a whole bunch of nice cottages at the lake and it's always a battle between the lake and the town here. If they open the dam, the town gets flooded. If they close the dam, the lake gets flooded. Right, but right now they have no choice. They just got to let it go.
Speaker 5:Yeah, who makes that decision, pierre the?
Speaker 6:ministry, the ministry, the ministry. Yeah, they have people that look after that sort of thing, like the MNR Ministry of Natural Resources. So they have a guy there that monitors all that stuff and he looks at snow load, the retention of water in the forest, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 5:Right. So and when you say now, we're into May now and you still got snow in the bush?
Speaker 6:Yeah, we can't even start the mill up, jerry, because when all the snow came off the roof, like in March, we just got inundated with those storms and there's still snow around the mill. And I just went and fixed a road yesterday, a cottage road that washed out with a piece of equipment and I had to remove the snow bank and there was still ice under the snow bank, so they were not done yet.
Speaker 5:Oh yeah, I can recall back when I lived in Crooked Creek, you know, just south of Starkville you know, kind of east of Brownsville, north of Newtonville. Anyways, seeing snow in the bush in June.
Speaker 6:Yeah, well, that's what happens. Everybody thinks. You know. They look around their yard, Of course it's exposed to the sun and the rain, and they say, oh, there's no snow. But when you go into the deep forest and the cedar swamps like there's still snow and ice there. You know, sometimes, sometimes, like you say, right until early June, you know.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and I recall well, that's what happens. You get the big rains and washes in, and if it washes right into the stream, then it causes, or the creeks and the rivers and all that. Then it causes what you're dealing with right now.
Speaker 6:Right. Well, there's a few people in town. Their toilets are bubbling, Like they got to keep the lid closed because every once in a while the toilet bubbles and it splashes out of the toilet.
Speaker 5:that's how the system's a little backed up, we'll say yeah, but you've got uh central water, you've got uh water plants in and water pipes connecting in where you are right?
Speaker 6:yeah, well, christine's on the local services board and they're putting out a memo right now to try to get people to stop dumping their sump pumps into the source system, which we recommend they do when it's normal times but now they're going to try to get them to redirect that water flow, like just into the street, you know, okay, because we're just flooding the system.
Speaker 5:I recall when we were in there and Pierre worked with me when I was Minister of Natural Resources, he handled the forestry file for the province and one of the things that I found very interesting was that the Ministry of Natural Resources had about 2,800 dams in the province of Ontario that they had control over, which were all basically well, not basically, they were all for just flood and water control and no hydro generation intention there at all.
Speaker 6:Right, but I think like this water basket here does create power at some point downstream.
Speaker 5:Yeah, but places like the dam right there in Folliet. If they had a water generation, hydro generation stand I mean they've got the infrastructure there they could probably generate enough hydro for Folliette in the area.
Speaker 6:Oh, yeah, well, remember we took a tour of Chapelleau and they were. They generated their own power. I think they said until 1967 or something with that dam that they have there which is not functioning anymore. But I guess Hydro One and the government-to-be decided that it was more cost-efficient just to run that grid system.
Speaker 5:Well, what happens, though so people understand is the way the grid works is so they're generating hydro, like you said, quite a ways down. They have to run it through the lines to get it to where you are in Folliet, right, and then so you're charging all those lines to get there. But if you have something produced at Lake Ivanhoe, where you are, then you don't lose all that line loss getting up there, and it really helps boost a lot of the grid system as a whole so that you don't have to run long distance of hydro lines.
Speaker 6:Yeah, the maintenance is crazy. I mean, we get our delivery charges through the roof Like we might burn. You know $50 worth of power and our delivery charge is $120. Yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5:Well, they all put that on there. That's to me it's kind of like a scam. It's just okay, the flat rate is this, but they try to break it down. And now I know, when I ship parcels out they have postage and then a fuel charge. Well, it should be all included, in my opinion, but it's just more ways to generate more revenue. Rather than say it's the cost of hydro, it's the other things that add to it.
Speaker 6:Right, well, yeah, anyway, it's just a call part, I guess, an easy way to charge somebody more.
Speaker 5:Yeah. So, hey morning glory. Are you enjoying that tea? Does Christine still like it? Oh the tea.
Speaker 6:Yeah yeah, she really liked your last batch of chaga too, your chaga syrup. Yeah oh yeah. Good yeah, I'm drinking my chaga there this morning. Good Christine's been trying to get into the garden, so I told her the only thing she should be planting right now are snow peas, but anyway, so what do you plan to plant in the garden this year, Pierre?
Speaker 6:Well, last year, jerry, we grew corn, which is not normal up here, but we had a nice corn crop, so we had corn. So she's got seedlings started in the front of the house there, good Corn, all kinds of stuff, potatoes, carrots, anyway, squash. Christine likes to have cucumbers. Yep, she's transplanting the asparagus right now, redoing that, and strawberries. So yeah, asparagus right now, redoing that, and the strawberries so. So yeah, she'll be working there this afternoon if it don't rain too hard. The the ground never really froze in the garden because it was so much snow oh, that's not a bad sign.
Speaker 5:No, that's kind of good, that's kind of yeah, because then the, then the, as it melts, it seeps into the ground, as opposed to just once the ground's frozen, it runs off and right into the stream. Right, right but that adds to your problem.
Speaker 6:Yeah, I think it's just so wet right now that anyway, it does help that the ground's not frozen for sure.
Speaker 5:Hey, do you get wild leeks up your way?
Speaker 6:I don't know Jerry.
Speaker 5:Okay.
Speaker 6:Yeah, I never really paid attention. I think so.
Speaker 5:You get those wild hazelnuts which are spectacular.
Speaker 6:Yeah, they're so small, though, but the taste is crazy, eh, oh I just hate them.
Speaker 5:I've told the story before so I went to pick up a bunch. We went up to the Chaga pick and camp up my uncle's up, you know Ranger Lakeway.
Speaker 6:Right.
Speaker 5:And Diane and I found all kinds of hazelnut bushes, marked them out, looked for them. It's at the end of August and September when they're ripe. We went up to pick them. We figured we had enough to get a bushel basket of these little hazelnuts. We're going to try a new Chaga Hazel blend as a specialty, one kind of once a year, like when Timmy's comes out with their Pumpkin Spice Blend, do the same kind of thing. But we get up there and no hazelnuts. I didn't tell you this before. I think you told me the bears ate them all. Yeah, we come around the corner. We're wondering what the heck happened. I asked my cousins did you pick all the hazelnuts? They said what hazelnuts? I said that's a hazelnut bush right there. That's one there Really. I said oh, I guess you didn't pick them. So we go out and we them all off the bush.
Speaker 6:So the bears were eating. They must have quite the acid in their stomach to be able to break down this pretty hard shell on there.
Speaker 5:Well, not only that, but they kind of got like that prickly shell Right. I'm sure they're not taking that off, they're eating that whole thing.
Speaker 6:Yeah, no, no, they're not peeling them, for sure.
Speaker 5:Yeah, so it must be pretty good, and so I got that drone. We're good, and so I got that drone. I were out with the boys using. I got a new drone, just the same one as you got, and we're we're learning more and more about it.
Speaker 6:Now tell everybody what you use your drone for well, I kind of use it for laying out roads on our private land and for to look at my trees, like to see where I'm going to go harvest some of the bigger trees, because really, like you know, like I was saying, we we like to leave the smaller ones, so I go find some of the bigger white spruce that we can cut for the mill and I use a drone to find those, which saves a lot of foot footwork.
Speaker 5:Yeah, yeah, well, I'm hoping to be able to try and find chaga with it. Uh, during the chaga picking season.
Speaker 6:Hopefully take a look with that it'd be great now, jerry, before the leaves are out yes, exactly right right.
Speaker 5:So how did the?
Speaker 6:kids like flying that.
Speaker 5:Oh yeah, it was great. It's a big toy. It's a big, expensive toy.
Speaker 6:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5:It's just like you, though, pierre. It took you how long before you felt comfortable in using it. It was the same with me. It's just like do I use this? Is it going to fall? Am I going to wreck it? Am I going to fly it into something?
Speaker 6:Well, that's what I'm like. Yeah, what if I crash it? There goes my money, you know.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 6:But once you start to fly it you get comfy and there's lots on the internet of what to do and what not to do and how far to go and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 5:Yeah, when I went on, like Christine said, to check the YouTube videos on it, that's what we did and wow, there was a lot about utilizing it and it goes right to your model, if you're looking for that Right, we got an expert in here Volvo. He's an Ukrainian guy at the recording studio and he's expertise in drones. So he showed me all kind of stuff and set it all up just perfectly for us. Oh, that's cool. That's cool. So, yeah, so he's got the avoidance setting on it. So when you're flying it, there's two settings. He said don't use the avoidance, because sometimes it doesn't work. Use the stop, it's a lot better. Okay, so, anyway, so he set it all up and I'm gaining more confidence as time goes on.
Speaker 6:Yeah Well, I tend to fly mine a little too high, Like you're always scared to hit something. So you know, but then you can't see as well. So anyway, I'm learning, you know.
Speaker 5:Well, there's some differences with the fly zones. I know where I am. I can't fly it at my house because I'm too close to the local airport, right, and then when you get outside that they have height limits, which is 120 meters. Oh, that's yeah, so that's not bad, but that's a height limit for it because of the fly zone in the area. Okay, and it was kind of neat. I was out there and somehow I'm reading the drone and it says oh, there's a plane coming in, it's going to land in 81 seconds, and gives you a countdown for the time the plane's coming in, which I found very interesting because I'm that close to the airport.
Speaker 6:Right, right, we don't have those issues here, jerry.
Speaker 5:What? Mike doesn't have his plane up there anymore.
Speaker 6:No, no, mike's, his plane's in the barn, I think.
Speaker 5:Yeah, we talked about that, where you're water skiing behind it on boards and all kind of stuff, right?
Speaker 6:Right, right Huh.
Speaker 3:Cool. Back in 2016, Frank and I had a vision To amass the single largest database of muskie angling education material anywhere in the world.
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Speaker 5:Apple Podcasts or wherever else you get your podcasts. And now it's time for another testimonial, for Chaga Health and Wellness. Okay, here we are in Lindsay with Bill, who's actually. This gentleman has given blood over 230 times 233. 233, and that's amazing, and you've had some success with Chaga. Tell us what you're dealing with and what you did and how you what you used.
Speaker 7:Well, I had mild high blood pressure. It wasn't really high, but I was on medication for a few years. And then I quit drinking coffee and started drinking this tea, the combination tea, the green and the shaga Right, and my medication was gone.
Speaker 5:Your medication's gone, gone and you couldn't give blood during the other times.
Speaker 7:Yeah, I could, oh, you could I could. Yeah, yeah, so, but a few times the machine kicked me out. Oh, yeah, so, but now it doesn't anymore.
Speaker 5:So you think the green tea and the chaga helped normalize your blood pressures?
Speaker 7:Oh yeah, oh very good, because it wouldn't be just stopping coffee, it would have to be something else.
Speaker 5:And that's the only thing. You did different Yep.
Speaker 7:Well, thank you very much for that my blood pressure is probably that of a 40-year-old man, and I'm 71.
Speaker 5:Oh, very good. Well, that's good to hear. Thank you very much for that, no problem. Okay, we interrupt this program to bring you a special offer from Chaga Health and Wellness. If you've listened this far and you're still wondering about this strange mushroom that I keep talking about and whether you would benefit from it or not, I may have something of interest to you. To thank you for listening to the show, I'm going to make trying Chaga that much easier by giving you a dollar off all our Chaga products at checkout. All you have to do is head over to our website, chagahealthandwellnesscom, place a few items in the cart and check out with the code CANOPY, c-a-n-o-p-y. If you're new to Chaga, I'd highly recommend the regular Chaga tea. This comes with 15 tea bags per package and each bag gives you around five or six cups of tea.
Speaker 6:Hey, thanks for listening Back to the episode yeah, I was out west for a whole month. Jerry, it was pretty nice out there.
Speaker 5:Oh, that's what I wanted to talk to you about, the main thing. Now tell us about your trip. Where'd you go?
Speaker 6:first of all, Well, I left here. I flew from Toronto to Comox and then Nicholas picked me up there. We went to Campbell River, got on the ferry to Quadra Island, crossed that island, got on another ferry to Cortez Island, which is where they are. So the big ferry ride was about. The first one was about eight, ten minutes, not very far, and then the second one was about a 40-minute ferry ride.
Speaker 5:That's not bad.
Speaker 6:No, that's not bad, it was just fine. It was a bit rough. Some of the cars were getting sprayed in the front of the ferry there, but the ferry holds. I think it was 26 cars, it was a fairly big boat, yeah.
Speaker 5:But you didn't land in Vancouver.
Speaker 6:No, comox is an international airport so it was easy for me to go to fly there. It's small, almost like the Timmins one. Oh, there, it's small almost like the Timmins one.
Speaker 5:Oh really, Whereabouts is that? I didn't even know where that is in British Columbia.
Speaker 6:It's maybe about a 40-minute drive from where Campbell River is.
Speaker 5:Okay.
Speaker 6:So it's very easy to fly into there. So I landed in Vancouver, then I took a small plane called Intercoastal Airways, I think, which held about 15, folks, a little prop plane, and then they, they fly up there and you know, it's just great that's where every seat's a window seat and every seat's an aisle seat that's right, that's right yeah yeah, like a beach 19 or something like that.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 6:I don't remember the plane, but it was not a big plane. There was a lady sitting next to me. She was kind of a little antsy anyway, yeah. Yeah, she wasn't too comfy and it went well.
Speaker 5:Well with you, with Mike and others, flying your trap line when you were trapping quite a few decades ago.
Speaker 6:You're used to that kind of bush pilot flying right oh yeah, I mean Mike and I had a few, a few fun experience. I always do when the situation was getting a little hairy when Mike would start grabbing his hat, I'm like, oh, we in trouble, mike. No, no, it's all good. And then you see him grab his hat a couple of times.
Speaker 5:I'm like he's. Like we got to find a place to land. I could tell you one trip with me. I was heading to Kenora and I had to take Bearskin Airlines out of Thunder Bay and it was late October. Well, for me, down where we were, it was still shorts weather. So I get to Thunder Bay and they tell me my luggage hasn't arrived and they don't know where it is. But don't worry, it could be there already. Anyway, so I'm now, I've got virtually like shorts on and easy nice shoes and easy nice shoes.
Speaker 5:So I jump in the plane and we had to go to Fort Francis first. Well, we're flying out of Fort Francis. After we landed there, picked up, dropped off two people and then it was a beach 19. Like, like you said, every seat's an aisle seat, every seat's a window seat and there's one other person on the plane with me. Anyways, we get out of Fort Francis and we hit the front and the plane turns sideways, completely sideways, and I'm looking straight down at the woman beside me and she's white, knuckling it in complete panic, and I know the feeling. It's a little exciting, it's a little exciting.
Speaker 6:Well, that's like they say if you've got time to spare, fly small air.
Speaker 5:So tell us a bit about the trip. So what were you doing out in Cortez Island?
Speaker 6:Well, nicky bought a property out there he's in a rental right now and so he started to develop his land and he wanted to start building a house out there. So we went out there and leveled off a piece of ground and poured a footing, and then we uh, built a pony wall and we were just starting to lay the floor when I left. So, uh, he's got a small mill out there. Of course, the problem was trying to find small enough trees to fit on his little mill, because it's a manual mill.
Speaker 5:How big of logs will it hold?
Speaker 6:Well, you want to stick to the 20, 22-inch max, 24 max. You know some of the trees on his land, the BC fir, are like five, six feet on the stump. So we're like, no, we're not taking those trees, but he doesn't want to cut those anyway.
Speaker 5:Well, how do you, even how do you handle them with that, unless you've got equipment?
Speaker 6:no, you don't, he's not like we. We ended up cutting like 20 inch trees. Actually, we cut only two trees and we had enough to do the whole floor. Really, yeah, because the trees are so long, like we're, we're getting five, six logs per tree, 16-foot logs, five six 16-foot logs.
Speaker 6:Out of a 20-inch on the butt tree. So it was like crazy. Anyway. Wow, what kind of trees were you cutting? We cut a hemlock and then a BC fir, so the fir is heavy. It's not like here, like it's really dense, heavy wood, like a hemlock. Yeah, even denser, I think. I'm not sure. I guess they're probably about the same density, I'm not too sure. But yeah, we were just trying to find trees small enough to get on his mill.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I know when I'm cutting hemlock with my 038 still, that if you don't get the bar just right, you're seeing sparks coming off the bar with Hemlock when I'm cutting it up Right right.
Speaker 6:Anyway, it was special he's putting the floor on now we got a whole bunch of free wood.
Speaker 6:They were building a cottage on the island. They call it that. A lot of people with some money out there, jerry. They had a team of builders in there. This is their second year and they're still not done and this is a cottage for the daughter who might show up for a month, a month and a half this summer.
Speaker 6:You know, really they spent I think nikki said they spent over five hundred thousand dollars just on the landscaping. Well, like you said, some got money right. Oh no, it's crazy. Well500,000 just on the landscaping. Well, like you said, some got money right. Oh no, it's crazy. Well, there's people that are on the island that only show up for like three weeks a month per year from the States and stuff. So Ashley does all the gardening. Nikki's wife has a gardening thing who two, three girls work for and they just do gardens for these folks that when they show up, their gardens are done, their fruit trees are pruned, the yard looks good, they can eat vegetables, you know, and then they leave and then Nicky and Ashley get to pick all the vegetables that are left over, like carrots, potatoes, whatever you know and fruit from the trees.
Speaker 5:So let everybody know who Nicky is to you, so people understand who Nicky is.
Speaker 6:Nicky is technically my half-brother and then Jose's out there as well. I got a half-sister out there. She does a radio show on Cortez Island radio station every Saturday night. It plays Monday morning and so I went out. I didn't help her, but I went and watched her do her show, which was kind of fun, saturday night from 9 to 1. And lots of people show up on the island to help her out, you know, or to keep her company. Let's say they don't help much but bring a few beers maybe, I don't know.
Speaker 5:Okay.
Speaker 6:So that was kind of fun. So, is it an organized community or unorganized out?
Speaker 5:there unorganized.
Speaker 6:You got some people that live in like abandoned trailers or trailers, and then you know you got one extreme to the other. You got houses that are worth millions of dollars and you've got people living in shacks, you know. So, yeah, but yeah, it's kind of nice, like the island. Maybe there's a in the winter time, maybe what they call a winter a couple thousand folks here, but in the summer it triples, like you know, and then lots of people boat up there, sailboats and you know all kinds of boats. So how?
Speaker 5:big? How big is the island?
Speaker 6:maybe 20 miles long, I don't know 15, 20 miles long, I don't know 15, 20 miles long, four or five miles wide maybe.
Speaker 7:Fairly big.
Speaker 6:Yeah, they've done some logging on the island, like in the old days.
Speaker 5:Yeah, yeah. So what else do people do for employment up there?
Speaker 6:Good, question A lot of. There's an oyster farm kind of thing, like when they put strings into the water. There's like an oyster place, there's fishing, a lot of guys fish, a lot of construction on the Island, like uh, that kind of stuff. There's stores on the Island, oh there's all. There's all kinds of work. A lot of people are pretty laid back there. So if you're a worker it's not too hard to get work, yeah. But yeah, it's kind of different. There's a lot of pensioned out folks there too that just don't do too much. I was talking to one old guy. I said what's your job? He says oh, I was just out on one of the docks shoveling the fog off the dock.
Speaker 5:he says so the wintertime there, is there any snow there?
Speaker 6:They might get snow occasionally, like you know, like a minus five is kind of a big deal, a minus 10. There is like whoa water. You know, people's water starts to freeze and stuff, yeah, so they don't usually get too much. But it's weird because, like I was there just at the end of the rainy time and, like the thermostat, the thermometer is kind of stuck on seven. You know, like you wake up it might be a plus four, then during the day it goes to seven or nine, then back, you know, it just stays like, it just looks like it's stuck there, like it's not. It doesn't even work. You know, oh yeah, but then after that it dries out, like Nicky said, it's going to get really dry.
Speaker 5:So once that rainy season's over, right, yeah, so when you poured the, when you pour it, so it's just a slab, it's not a basement that you poured there.
Speaker 6:No, we just did a footing, jerry. Okay, yeah, so he's just building like a smaller house for now. Then he'll build a bigger house when he you know later on, if he ever gets to it.
Speaker 5:So yeah, so they put rebar in all the pourings and stuff like that as well.
Speaker 6:He bought a bunch of that for like a hundred bucks and then that build. I was telling you about the guy. Nicky knows the builder, so he says well, I got a whole bunch of wood there, that I don't need anymore, we're done with this wood.
Speaker 6:So he says you can come and sort through it. So Nicky's got a pretty big truck like a 12 foot deck. It took us three hours to load all that free wood Like laminate beams and plywood and he had enough plywood to do the pony wall and the floor and we had enough two by eights to do the pony wall. Like we just so much free free wood Right, and that they didn't need right, it was just done this to them, it was just like you know, they had to hire somebody to pick it up, right, so?
Speaker 5:so how did they get all the material in the woods and all that kind of stuff to the island and the rebar and stuff, ferry, ferry. Everything comes in by ferry, yeah.
Speaker 6:Well, you can hire a barge too, Like if you've got a big load, like a construction company might hire an off-island barge, Right, and they'll come in with a whole load of stuff, you know. But like everything comes in on the ferry, there's one day, a week or one ferry run that's for dangerous goods, Like if they've got to haul gas or, you know, propane.
Speaker 6:But yeah, the ferry runs I think there's four ferries a day, so you know, it's not too hard to get back and forth. And they're going to expand the ferry this summer, according to Jose's partner, to a larger ferry. So yeah, so we'll see what happens there.
Speaker 5:So is this kind of like that old TV show with Bruno Gerossi and Relic Beachcombers? Yeah well, I didn't see Relic.
Speaker 6:Is that the kind of community? It's kind of like that Yep, Yep, there's lots of you know, yeah, okay, If you snoop around the island there's the gas station that's right on. You know, like for the boats, and you know there's boats all over. Some people live on boats out there, like in a small sailboat.
Speaker 5:They'll just live on their boat, right? Yeah, I remember John O'Toole. His son was living in Hong Kong and he couldn't get a place, so that's what they did. They bought a big boat it was like, from what I recall, quite large, like a 86-footer or something like that that they never took out and they just lived on the boat, right? Wow, yeah, so how did the price of gas compare on the island compared to the mainland?
Speaker 6:About 20 cents more per liter. Yeah, yeah, I guess it's 15, 20 cents, I think, Right. So there's a bit of a charge there. For sure Most guys when they go off island they'll load their cans up. You know, Right, there's a bit of a charge there. For sure Most guys when they go off island they'll load their cans up.
Speaker 5:you know Right. And what about electricity? How do they get electricity to the island? They generate it on their own with solar and wind.
Speaker 6:There's cables that run under the ocean there, I guess, to feed the island. I'm not positive about that, but I think that's the way it works.
Speaker 5:Okay.
Speaker 6:So that works pretty good. Other than that, not too much news, Jerry. I'm just waiting to get the mill going here. This weather clears up, so when do you figure that'll be? I hope to get it going by the middle of next week. I'm working on equipment right now, just doing the maintenance on everything.
Speaker 5:so Right, and when are you coming to get that new truck of yours? I already got it. Well, you didn't tell me that. How'd you get that?
Speaker 6:Well, pat and Tanya were going down Easter weekend, so I went down with them on Friday and I drove back home on Sunday. Oh, okay, so I bought that used truck and it did really well on the drive home.
Speaker 5:Oh good, because I was going to see if you could load it up with some cedar logs to square out for me.
Speaker 6:Oh no, you missed the boat, jerry. Mm-hmm. Again, jeepers.
Speaker 5:Yes, yeah Well, I'm just going to have to use my Alaskan chainsaw mill and cut them all off. That's it. That's it Is Garrett still out west.
Speaker 5:Yeah, yeah, he's Calgary. He's working in Calgary now. He'll be there for the summer. So well, I don't think. I think the camp jobs haven't quite opened up yet in Saskatchewan, and as soon as they do there, he'll head out to Saskatchewan. So he can get two weeks 10 to 12. Well, I think they got rules out there. You can't work more than 10 hours a day. So he'll work two weeks 10 hours a day and then get a week off and then back and forth. Oh yeah, cool.
Speaker 6:That's good.
Speaker 5:So, yeah, he's kind of looking forward to that. He likes those camp jobs at his age and Garrett, as you know, he likes to keep busy working Right. That's good which is not a bad thing. I'm sure the money is good. Yeah, yeah. So he'll keep going, and you got a lot of orders for your mill already.
Speaker 6:Yeah, there's a bunch of people waiting to build in town here, but there's just too much. You know there's still water and stuff, but it's all going to start up. I'm just worried. They're middle of May. There's about three garages going up. I think there's a house. So yeah, we'll be busy once we get going and you've got logs cut already. I have a load of logs right now. But my bush road washed out the other day because Interfor was up there. The company what's Interfor? That's the local company out of Timmins. So they were logging up my road and they kind of crushed a culvert near the back end, about maybe half a kilometer from where my gate is. They crushed the culvert, they tore it out, put another one in and I was there the other day and the culvert's sticking up in the air and the water's flowing over the road. So I in touch with them and they said, oh, no, we're gonna fix it, we're gonna fix it. So I said, well, uh, there's no use going up there right now because there's just water everywhere.
Speaker 5:So but uh, so what's Inter4 cutting?
Speaker 6:uh, they were just cutting regular SPF like spruce pine fir. But they were up there years ago and uh it was. They were too late in the year to cut the swamps, so they went back this winter to cut the swamps that they had left. So I'm anxious to go see if they cut up to my property line or not. Right, they're back to the drone. I'll go fly the drone around.
Speaker 5:So what mill do they supply? They supply the Timmons mill with that wood. And what are they making at the Timmons mill?
Speaker 6:Regular dimensional wood Jerry, 2x4, 2x6, 2x8, you know.
Speaker 5:Yeah, so SPS, spruce, pine, fir, dimensional stuff.
Speaker 6:Right nothing special Volume stuff.
Speaker 5:What other mills they got in Timmons. Is there any veneer mills or not in timmons directly.
Speaker 6:There's one in cochrane that does poplar plywood I don't know how they're doing. And then there's a smaller mill in timmons as well, called little john um. We toured that years ago so, uh, he passed away.
Speaker 5:Now somebody else took that over and he does a lot of specialty stuff to ship down south, like, uh, crane decking, all that, all that kind of stuff right, so that's what you say down south, you mean south part ontario or down south of the states no, down south to like toronto all right, so I don't know what that crane decking is used for.
Speaker 6:I don't really get it, but uh, I think like a lot of those big cranes and stuff need decks, or a lot of the equipment has to walk on decks and stuff.
Speaker 5:So yes, well, I know that. I spoke with the policy advisor, rebecca for the minister of forestry and they're having the big concerns with this tariffs coming in, because what's happening now is a lot of the stuff that would head to the states are coming into ontario, are going to be heavily taxed, oh wow. And so, yeah, that's going to is a lot of the stuff that would head to the.
Speaker 5:States or coming into Ontario are going to be heavily taxed and so, yeah, that's going to have a big impact. But I tried to. My suggestion to them was look, we've got a lot of places like your mill, and you mentioned a bunch of these other mills out there that a lot of retailers don't even know of their existence. So if we could develop a buyer-seller network so people know where to get wood, and same thing with people looking mills, looking for wood Like you mentioned, you were selling the Mennonites as well.
Speaker 6:Yeah, last year we did cedar to them. So I don't know. I didn't sell them any cedar this year because I was busy with the ice roads and then going out west. But yeah, well, gaetan just got in up here, you know him. Yeah, gaetan just got in up here, you know him. Yeah, gaetan Mallette yeah, so he was a forestry guy and Peary's taken over the Northern Mines and Development, so I might throw a few things at them just to make people mad a little bit. Yeah, there's a nice area of oversized spruce on the highway there. I was going to go and maybe apply for a permit to do a selective cut there.
Speaker 6:I know Interfor is not going to be too keen on that, but too bad for them, right? It's just good to let them know that there's other people still alive in the province. There's no more small guys left up here. We're the only little guys left, so they got rid of everybody.
Speaker 5:Well, we tried to do something rather unique that the industry didn't really like and the ministry as a bureaucracy didn't really understand. We tried to bring in the horse logging, remember.
Speaker 6:Right.
Speaker 5:Yeah, because horse logging essentially it's very soft-touch logging and very specific logs.
Speaker 6:Right.
Speaker 5:Yeah, so yeah, some of the the small opportunities, because that used to be the number one employer in Folliette where you were. Was the forest industry just small players at one time, right?
Speaker 6:Yeah, well, when automation came in, like you know, like the buncher and the, the whole thing, kind of, yeah, no more hand crews, like no more cut and skid crews, that all went by the wayside. So you know the way, there used to be 20 crews. Now there's only maybe two, you know. So it really affected everything. But there there was never really was a lot of. There was a lot of small guys doing small cuts, like Unpoplar and Birch and stuff. So that's all gone. And there was a few small mills around, like us, but they're all gone as well. So the only reason we're doing what we're doing is because we have our own private land.
Speaker 5:Well, and part of it, Pierre, was a lot of the big industries. They're in there for profit reasons industries. They're in there for profit reasons, so their focus is their business aspect, where a lot of the communities like yours and other communities around are more about a community aspect, and that's where we brought forward, remember, the community forest program.
Speaker 6:We planted that seed in Tomogami.
Speaker 5:Tell us about it.
Speaker 6:Pierre, well, yeah, we went and met with the Native group and suggested that they put together a community-based forestry system, which they had in Bancroft at the time, and we didn't tell anybody where we were going and the bureaucrats or the ministry was not too impressed with us. And I just heard about a year ago that that community-based forestry system in Tomagami got put in place. So we planted the seed and it took 20 years for it to prosper.
Speaker 5:Now, essentially what happened, just so people understand, is that the community now has some say in who gets to cut and how much and how the allocation goes, so that they can generate employment in that community. That was the design right.
Speaker 6:Right, yeah, it's a better system. And then, if somebody comes up with a good idea to build a factory creating chairs, and they need, you know, 200 cubic meters over the year, or a thousand. Well, the town can get together and say, no, we want those people there, whereas right now there is no system to implement that, you know.
Speaker 5:Whereas right now there is no system to implement that. You know, yeah, and quite frankly, possibly this could be potentially one of the ways that could generate employment in small communities which, as I've said for decades, pierre, you know, the forest and the mining industry are the lifeblood of Northern Ontario.
Speaker 6:Yes, for sure, the mining sector has really gone nuts and lots of people doing those you know, seven days on, seven days off, kind of jobs.
Speaker 5:Well, look at the price of gold over $3,000 an ounce now. Right, that's right, that's right. So you got any gold exploration going on in your area.
Speaker 6:Well, we just spent the winter there. They were running drills. So they're looking for gold? I don't think they. I don't know if they found any, you'll never hear about it. You know they keep everything pretty hush-hush, of course, yeah, yeah, but you never know. You never know.
Speaker 5:Interesting, right Interesting. So what else are on the plans for this year, pierre?
Speaker 6:Nothing. Get the mill going. A little bit of work for Philip Around. Get the mill going. A little bit of work for Phillip at the round. There's a few other.
Speaker 5:What kind of work? What kind of work?
Speaker 6:Probably some MTO work and then maybe some excavator work. We still have the excavator that we leased last winter still in Phillip's yard, so there's another little job coming up, I think. Right, anyway, I'm just anxious to get the mill going for now.
Speaker 5:Yeah, MTO stands for Ministry of Transportation.
Speaker 6:Yeah well, right now I just yesterday I went and fixed a washout. They're just waiting. They're kind of on pins and needles. Which road's going to wash out next? That kind of thing. Right, with all the floods and the rainwater that are coming through. Right the culverts, just some culverts, just let go and yada, yada. So, we'll see what happens.
Speaker 5:All right, very good, Pierre. As always, it's a pleasure talking and getting an update of what's happening in your part of the province and now the country out to BC and everything else. Very interesting, as always.
Speaker 6:All right, Terry. Well, we'll let you go and hopefully you'll take a couple days and you and Diane can come and catch some fish at the cottage.
Speaker 5:That sounds good, Pierre.
Speaker 6:I know Diane really enjoyed catching that pike.
Speaker 5:Oh, and not only that, but they were great eating after you showed us the proper way to clean them out, that's perfect, All right. Jerry. Okay, Pierre. As always, it's great information and more understanding of what happens in a lot of parts of the country and the province out there under the canopy. Thanks, Pierre, Sounds good.
Speaker 6:Over and out.
Speaker 2:How did a small-town sheet metal mechanic come to build one of Canada's most iconic fishing lodges? I'm your host, steve Nitzwicky, and you'll find out about that and a whole lot more on the Outdoor Journal Radio Network's newest podcast, diaries of a Lodge Owner. But this podcast will be more than that. Every week on Diaries of a Lodge Owner, I'm going to introduce you to a ton of great people, share their stories of our trials, tribulations and inspirations, learn and have plenty of laughs along the way.
Speaker 1:Meanwhile we're sitting there bobbing along trying to figure out how to catch a bass and we both decided one day we were going to be on television doing a fishing show.
Speaker 2:My hands get sore a little bit when I'm reeling in all those bass in the summertime, but that might be for more fishing than it was punching.
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