I wanted to do something different for this blog and that is why I decided to tell you a story.
In fact, it’s the story of a young boy who was pampered by a loving family of hard workers. This family consisted of a mom and a dad as well as three daughters and a single son.
At the time we are talking about, the moms stayed home to raise the children and the dads went to work to provide for them. This beautiful little family lived in a beautiful little village in the Mauricie region called Ste-Anne-de-la-Pérade. The village had a little over 3000 inhabitants and several industries and businesses. One of them was the small channel fish industry but it had not yet reached its full potential as we know it today. Nevertheless, many young people from the village worked in this industry which was established from winter to winter on the frozen river.
In the 1960’s and 1970’s, there were close to 1000 small cabins where people could fish for the small channel fish called tomcod. This small fish was discovered during a winter when a resident of Ste-Anne-de-la-Pérade went to break some ice from the river to put in his cooler. He had then discovered fish in surprising quantity. Due to the time he made his discovery, it was also called “little Christmas fish”. Isn’t that a cute name?
Let’s get back to our young boy from the beginning who, as I said, came from a hard-working family. During his school breaks, he helped out in his father’s garage who was a mechanic and as you can imagine very hard working. He also worked as a cab driver and did various other jobs. Work was his reason to exist.
Like other young people of the village, our boy had the idea to go work for an outfitter of small fishes of the channels and started his work for the Robert Mailhot Fishing Center also called the Pioneer of the Ste-Anne River.
During a few years, Mr. Mailhot showed him all the rudiments of this unique industry to such an extent that our young man, now an adult, decided to buy a small existing outfitter and launched himself into the great adventure of ice fishing.
At the age of 26, he started with 7 small fishing cabins and then bought others and built some himself to enlarge his outfitter. He ended up with 27 cabins, which was quite a large outfitter because he had a regular job the rest of the year as an electrician on the construction.
Now, 46 years later, the Mario Leduc Fishing Center has twenty beautiful fishing cabins. We can no longer say fishing shacks because with all the improvements made to the little shacks of the past, they are now cottages in which people can comfortably sit and catch the little fish in the channels. In the past, the cabins could accommodate an average of 4 to 6 people while today, from 4 to 24 people can settle down to have fun with family and friends.
Our young man is now the dean of the outfitters on the Ste-Anne River in Ste-Anne-de-la-Pérade and he still has the same passion.
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