TRANSCRIPT

NS: Do you remember your very first Trappers' Festival?

EJ: Oh, let me see - it wasn't Trappers' Festival, it was the dog races. And of course the race in those days was from The Pas to Flin Flon return. Of course, Emile St. Godard who lived just a part of a block from where I grew up, and we all had dogs as young kids which we used for hauling ice and hauling wood and all that sort of thing, and Emile, he had a huge barn where he kept his dogs. That's where one of the fellows who worked for our department now lives at the bottom of (I believe it is ) Crossley Avenue. I'm trying to think of his name, not Garnet Clark, his brother lives there. But Emile had these dogs and oh, we really figured he was an expert at dog racing. There was another dog racer at that time, Earl Bridges and he was another one that we remember so very much. Then there was another one and he was an elderly man at that time and I thought he was an old man, you know, you didn't have to be old in our eyes in those days, and that was Sam Pranteau from Grand Rapids. Sam, at that time, was carrying mail from The Pas to Grand Rapids using dogs because in the summer they brought the mail to Grand Rapids by ship, or boat, but in the winter they brought it by dog sled.