Story Break
How I Make Invention The Duluth Pack.
I am the Camille Poirier, maybe you hear of me, eh?
I I am born March the third 1838 Camille Poirier in Lower Canada what you now call Quebec. I was in St. Jacque nearby to the back of Montreal born.
My family was a poor one and my mother she died soon when I was yet young. One uncle who was a god father to me he raised me and for that I am yet grateful since without him I have no life. Without him I am a dead one but he was there for me and I live to the old age because of him.
The life was still hard though. I have but two years the schooling, from seven to nine years in age as a small boy and that was it, I do not learn too much in the school. Mostly I work on the farm, my uncle’s farm until I am 14 and then I run away.
I do not know what I am doing this time running away but I have a life too hard on the farm so I do it I guess and I am soon in a shoe shop there I start the trade that is my life. The farm life she is very hard and so is the shoe shop but still not so bad this time as the farm life.
To learn the trade I was taken on and it was my life to be in the shop 15 hour of the day and in the year I am earning $10 for the whole of this work in the year. I am doing this three year before I get my papers as a full fledge shoe maker, and then I am earn at $6.00 the month for the next year I stay.
We are different now. I turn around and I look back at my life then, it was another life, like it belong to another one, not to me. In the winter it was dark half the time we had three of us working around the one candle a home made one, a tallow candle, that was it. That was our light to make the shoe by. We work and work, always work. We work hard, we did.
Then I am 19 in the year 1857. I look at the United States we all did, us boys in Lower Canada it was the land of the dream for us. We all see there wealth in our visions. Yet I am too poor and it is too hard to get in and then I am in Manchester England soon to try it there, it is easier place to get to from Canada in those day.
But I have no English not a word but I stay three year I work hard at it all. I make the shoe, I lay the brick, I chop the wood for anyone they need some, still no head way. I stay poor always.
I am having with an ax the accident on my knee, where it cuts. It become a very bad situation for me, the doctors not doing so much good, then I walk on the crutches for better than a year. My knee she is stiff she will not bend much so I am go back to home again in Canada.
I am better again there. I marry to a woman and we have the two childrens. That was the year 1862 and then she die my wife in the year 1864 the fall of it, with me the poor cripple man and two kids behind left all alone it was a sad day that one, a sad day. I miss that good woman, I love her yet. I have tears sometimes in the dark of night for her, my first love. I am in the bed at night in the dark and the tears run down my face like is raining for her, and she is no more, she is gone now these long years.
I was in my native land five year back from England and age of 27 when 1865 come along. Still I am thinking since a boy of the States the land of promise and now I have the English language a little, maybe enough, so I go, I have some money save up by now.
It was first to St. Paul in Minnesota I go. I am a good workman. Fast, I work hard all day there at home in Canada, 12 hours in the day, for 75 cents and I get by good. But then in St. Paul where I go I am now get suddenly two dollar, three dollar in the day I am so surprise how can this be I am doing it the same way but the money is so big. I am greatly surprise, I am.
Then after a while I am there I am a foreman in a big place. I am still making the shoe, but now I am pay one thousand of dollar in the year as foreman to make the shoe.
This goes into my head a little and I think back on the farmland so I buy some, 120 acre of land. For I was brought up that way and it is still with me as a thought to be a farmer. Then I am marry again to another woman, in the year 1868 and the next year I am look around to start my own shop, always restless, this young man was, the one who I was then.
Town after town I look at, St. Peter, St. Cloud and so on. I look some other place too but keep looking for the new place, the right one. They are talking then of the railroad, the St. Paul & Duluth Railway I hear. This must be the coming thing I think to me which turns me to Duluth as my home and I go there for the opportunity.
In the cold of the year, it was February of the year 1870 I am leaving my wife, with my tools and what supply of leather I have to travel in the suffering cold alone very cold but I make it at the end to Duluth where I settle.
From Colonel Graves Spruce Young I lease the property which was all snow then, four feet deep, and I buy the wood and the tar paper to build but found no carpenters to work. They are all busy this time at three dollar and a half the day and working hard at it, very busy. I say I give them $5.00 to work on my side and they all say yes and they come over to me and so I have my house then in five days, done.
I have my shop then and I have a boarding house on the other side of it where I am the cook too. This is how I become a good cook to this day now. Then I work at the business. Six week go by and I have six good man they work for me the money rolling in, working some times part of the night too, to make the work finish but we do it. We get it done.
I am getting trust of people through my work. I have some credit. Some times it go bad then I give them my word on the debt, that I pay them back no matter what, now many years on I am still deal with the same ones and they still have the trust with me. I am good for my word still. I am the honest man, always. It is the right way. I always do this things so.
Then I send for the wife in March. It is still the year of 1870. I am of age 32 years. My wife and the childrens at first they stay with Mr Sweeney the city engineer as I have no place which I have to build on the back first. Everything frozen hard. Without the trees they cut all winter to make the fire we freeze, and the ice was long on the lake this year, the boats stuck on the lake so we almost starve at the end but then spring come to us and we make it. Supplies come in for us from the boats from the Great Lake.
By year of 1877 I have 25 man. They are board with us too, some of them. My wife she does the work very hard I do not know how, she is a good woman. Sometimes I think too good for me but she stay with me anyway and then we start the first water business in Duluth. The business are going good. The shoe business. The ice business. The water business. We are make the good life.
But I think the insurance is eating me. It is seven percent, eight percent on my stock so I drop it and then the fire come, big surprise. I am then suddenly $15,000.00 in the deep hole of debt so I have to start over from nothing like the first lonesome blade of grass in spring from the burned earth.
I move. I sell some property. I make money some more. I am the only shoe man around for year on year so they all come in from every place around to buy the shoe so I get by. I have the large business with working from six in the morning to the night, 11 or 12 in the night some days, always working.
Many of them that need the shoe come to me from the copper mine in the good times then the mine run out and they still owe me the money. I collect from a few, not too many. Then McGregor & Morrision take fire up the street and I get burn out another time from that, it spread to my shop too. All my stock at $40,000.00 is gone I get some on insurance for my building not much though so I start at it again. This is the year 1883 now, this year. I start over again.
I go on. I keep up with the work. Then I sell out. I think $30,000.00 cash for my building is good, a good offer from Henry Bell and I take it. I think I am rich now with all this money and I think the land is the thing to buy and sell. I think I will get rich that way.
I buy and sell the land. One year go by, two year. Then come the year 1894. The panic in the year 1894 come to me like a wolf and take it all away from me when it all go bust so I am broke down another time. I feel like a rock on the bottom of the lake where I sit dead under the waters. I am too old for this now, down too deep I think but I have to eat some more so I go back into it. I am 56 year old this year. I am not a young man no more. I build up slow, the hard way it is for me, but what else? It is my fate.
Back a few year before all this I make lots other stuff. I know the leather, I know the canvas, I am good with the hands. This is the new country. When I first come here there is almost no city. That is why I come with the railroad, it is all new. We build up together I think.
First the ship then the mine, all on the railway line they depend. The copper ore go out, the iron ore go out, the wheat go out, the corn go out, on the ship, the coal come in, the other stuff come in, the food, the goods, we have a big trade here. People come too. Duluth she grow, this city.
People come by. People farm on the land. They need the shoe, the boot, some harness for the horse and I do it all but mostly the shoe and the boot. Then I get another idea.
Back in the old day at first the country she is still wild a lot of place. We get the new railway and some road here and there you know, but lots of land still is the bush. Many go and come by canoe every where, they still use the canoe for get around in that day. They come to the town for supply then go home or they hunt, they haul supply out and back, to and fro. With the canoe. So I think on it.
We have the old pack basket. We have some duffel bag and some gunny sack. None of this fit the canoe too good. What could be better than this I think. We got some people hauling cargo back and forth, around and around, all they got is a bag on a tump line. I see some knapsack around, they been around a long time, the knapsack. I think on it. But the knapsack he are too small for the canoe hauling. I think some more, how I could make the things better for people.
One day then I think some more and I have the idea. I think about the basket and the knapsack. What if the knapsack he get bigger, like the duffel. Big like a pack basket but canvas. You put the shoulder strap on him too, same as always with the knapsack. You still got the old tump line too, like on the basket, maybe he work that way too.
What it going to take I think. I try some stuff. Some friend of mine, they know the canoe so they help me. I do not know the canoe. I never carry the canoe and that is one of the secret. I have it wrong to start but I fix with help from the friend.
For the canoe no matter what, sooner and later you got to carry it. You run out of the water and then you make a portage. It is the way of all the canoe trip, the water she come to the end and then you walk to the next one on the ground with your feet.
The pack basket, the big duffel bag they carry lot of stuff. The basket not too good in the canoe but it hold a lot. The duffel bag harder on the carry but sit better in the canoe. The knapsack good to carry small load and it sit in the canoe pretty good but too small. None of it good for the portage. So I make all them come together and I try it out. It take me a few month. I am busy with the other business I have but I keep on it I am like that.
Pretty soon then I have the Poirier Pack, so I patent him. I have the big pack for lots of the stuff, with the shoulder strap like a knapsack, but he is a big one this fellow. He has also the tump line for the portage and he is canvas and good leather to be sturdy and you can roll him up to tuck away when he is empty. He open to the top end and fasten with buckles to be secure.
The shoulder strap are put on right so he hang low when you wear him. This is for being out of the way during the portage when the canoe she is up on your head and then the pack he is down low and out of the way. Here is the secret. The canoe and the pack then they do not fight each one another. And a small strap again to hold the shoulder strap on the front of the chest tight together for comfort. The chest strap, he is mine. I invent him then.
For carry of load back and forth without the canoe, you have the tump line to make it easy. If you go out with this and it is a bad day, I have also add the carrier for umbrella to provide shade from rain and sun as well it is a good pack I think. It add to my business greatly increasing sales. I have invent this pack, the Poirier Pack. The hunter he use it too sometime.
This was the story of my life. In the year 1911 I have 73 years when I sell all to Duluth Tent and Awning. For them the Poirier Pack then become the Duluth Pack after our city named. It is one of my proud things in my life.
This is my story. I hear you still make this pack today long after I am gone. It is one of my proud things, this pack. I was Camille Poirier then, maker of the shoe. I was Camille Poirier, maker of the pack like you still use today.
It is good I think.
I hope you remember me sometime in a quiet moment.