By the turn of the twentieth century, Chapleau was a human anthill, a brushed-out busy speck in hundreds of square miles of threatening northern forest. It offered little in terms of natural beauty, plopped down on the lowlands beside the slow-moving Chapleau River, surrounded by swamps and tracts of funereal black spruce and emaciated jack pine. There were few of the granite outcroppings, hardwood hills, or patches of majestic white pine that made the bush country west, south, and east of Chapleau so richly picturesque. It was about as isolated as you could be in the lower half of Ontario. The closest towns of any consequence were Sault Ste. Marie, 180 kilometres south-southwest the way the crow flies, and Sudbury, 250 kilometres south-southeast in a straight line. There was no highway connecting the town to the outside until after the First World War.
The town went up in too much of a hurry to allow for any thoughtful planning or significant architecture. Most of the houses were wood-frame, two-storey boxes the shape of the hotels in a Monopoly game. Buildings usually were clad in clapboard because sawn lumber from the bush was more readily available than manufactured brick. Houses and businesses spilled along either side of the tracks, which were numerous because Chapleau was a divisional point where crews and equipment were changed. This required sidings for maintenance and repair facilities, supply depots, and auxiliary equipment. Aside from the bustle of railroading, it was a bleak place, especially during the long winters of snowdrifts, icy winds, and freezing temperatures that could kill anyone without heated shelter.
Time out from railroading focussed on home and church. Many Chapleau townsfolk were Roman Catholic, French and English alike, and built themselves what probably was the finest building in the town — Sacred Heart of Jesus Church, or Sacre-Coeur. They built it in 1885 the same year the CPR established Chapleau, but the church rapidly became too small for the growing population and a new one went up in 1891. It burned in 1918 and the brick structure with two bell towers, still active on Lansdowne Street, replaced it.
Church gatherings were a main entertainment outside the home, bringing together families such as the LaFrances, the Aquins, the Tremblays, and the Burnses. Sacred Heart Church developed a unique experiment in Canadian culture in Chapleau’s early days. The town was so small and so isolated that it was difficult for different ethnic groups to remain apart. Sacred Heart became a truly bilingual and bicultural parish out of necessity and still is, right down to the stained glass sacristy windows — St. Patrick on one side, St. Jean-Baptiste on the other. The church became even more a centre of town life in the years following 1911 when a young, energetic, and personable priest named Father Romeo Gasçon arrived. A born organizer, he threw himself into the community’s affairs and became friends with many of the townspeople, including the LaFrances. Their lives became part of his life.
The LaFrances met the Aquins when the latter moved into town in 1902. The meeting was inevitable — two large families in one village could not avoid each other. Besides, no one could miss Isidore LaFrance on the street. He seemed as tall as the trees, a kind-looking giant with a perpetual half grin and large and dark friendly eyes. He dressed sharply and always was well-groomed even when crossing the tracks in greasesmeared striped overalls and a big lunch pail under his arm.
Louise Aquin turned heads as well. She was tall, unusually so for a woman of her times, not far from six feet in her shoes. She had piercing eyes. They were clear, knowing, and persistent, and certainly in later life could quickly search out fibs that might float from the lips of a grandchild. She was talented in music and remarkably articulate for a young woman with little formal schooling. She was bilingual, speaking French and English equally well. She often sang solo at Sacred Heart, her soprano voice soaring to the ceiling and beyond. Anyone who ever heard her hit the high soprano notes of “O Holy Night” on Christmas Eve would never forget it.
They dated, mainly attending family and church and sporting events. Before long, Isidore and Louise were married in the old church in 1904. Sacred Heart was the scene of many such family weddings. The Burnses, Francophones despite the Scottish name, also met the Aquins, but the Burns boys found the LaFrance girls more interesting. Three Burns brothers ended up marrying three LaFrances, all sisters of Isidore. These were remarkable times of large family gatherings celebrating engagements, marriages, and births. Talk and food were the centres of the celebrations. If a piano was handy, there was singing and often the main voice was Louise Aquin LaFrance, principal soloist at Sacred Heart.
Louise and Isidore LaFrance in their thirties and childless after a dozen or so years of marriage. Both were tall for people of the times, Isidore well over six feet and Louise close to it.
Booze, not often openly used in conservative families, made an occasional appearance. One memorable appearance was during Christmas holidays when family celebrations were breaking out all over town. These people, their lives tied to the railway, knew all train schedules down to the minute and the contents of every rail car. One night, one of the Tremblay boys, who had married into the LaFrance family, led a party to the tracks with a brace and bit and several buckets. It was a bitter night with the white of one’s breath barely visible in the fog of blowing snow. One of the boxcars contained a shipment of fine Scotch whiskey that was headed west. They drilled through the boxcar’s wooden floor and into an oak keg and caught the whisky in pails as it drained through the hole.
Isidore had started work at the Chapleau rail yards in 1899 at age fifteen. He quickly worked his way into a locomotive cab as a fireman and in 1902 advanced to locomotive engineer. At nineteen years old, he was in command of a roaring locomotive beast thirty metres long and weighing close to three hundred tons. Being a locomotive engineer had its benefits: good pay, status, and the joys of exercising command and control in an important job. But it also brought sacrifice. There were long stretches away from home and family.
Railroading was dangerous work. Construction accidents were common, as were collisions resulting from inaccurate timing and crashes set up by Mother Nature. The LaFrances were not immune to the tragic consequences of railway life. In 1906, Lambert received word that his brother Napoleon had been hurt while working on a construction train carrying gravel west of Chapleau. The train pulled in to Chapleau with Napoleon, his leg severed when he had slipped between two cars. Lambert held him in his arms as the train travelled to Biscotasing where medical help was available. When the train reached Biscotasing, Napoleon was dead, having bled to death in his brother’s arms. His name is engraved on a workers’ memorial plaque near the Chapleau station.
Five years later, Isidore braked a locomotive as it rolled into Chapleau station when a small engine wheel broke off. The engine stayed on the tracks and no one was hurt. CPR bosses tried to blame the incident on Isidore, so he told them to shove the job and applied to the Canadian Northern Railway (CNoR), which was rapidly expanding out West. He and Louise found themselves far from the warmth of family life in Chapleau. They were stationed in Port Arthur, the main eastern terminus for the new railway, and Isidore began running the big engines in every division between Hornepayne on the east and Edmonton on the west.
The LaFrance-Aquin-Burns family circle mourned the move of the eldest LaFrance son and the eldest Aquin daughter. Louise and Isidore were key family players — sociable, friendly, and just nice people to have around. Free rail passes were plentiful in the family, however, and there was enough back and forth between Chapleau and Port Arthur to hold family ties intact. Then, in early 1918, the Chapleau families learned that Isidore and Louise had left Port Arthur. Inexplicably they moved west and were living in the unheard-of village of Hanna, somewhere out on the plains of east-central Alberta.
Then came news from the West of the arrival of a long sought after baby. Isidore