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Updated: June 24, 2025
No two classes of people could be more unlike than the salmon-fishers of Sunburst and the mill-hands and river-drivers of Viking. The life of the river-men was exciting, hardy, and perilous; tending to boisterousness, recklessness, daring, and wild humour: that of the salmon-fishers was cheerful, picturesque, infrequently dangerous, mostly simple and quiet.
'It is a case of a man who is punish for another man, I say. 'That's the thing for Charley Steele, he laugh. 'He was great man to root things out. Can't fool Charley Steele, we use to say here. But he die a bad death. 'What was the matter with him? I say. 'He drink too much, he spend too much, he run after a girl at Cote Dorion, and the river-drivers do for him one night.
You cannot have this man except over my body: and for my body every one of you will pay with your lives; for every blow struck this night, there will be a hundred blows struck upon the river-drivers and mill-hands of this valley. Take care! Behind me is the law of the land her police and her soldiery." He paused. There was almost complete silence.
I am not one man, I am a whole country." I shall never forget the thrill that passed through me as I saw a man who, but a handful of months before, was neck deep in his grave, now blossomed out into a strong, defiant soldier. There was a pause. At last the leader of the river-drivers spoke. "See," he said, "Sergeant, I guess you're right. You're a man, so help me!
A word or two assured me of all I wished to know. We reached the scene of the disorder. The fishermen were bunched together, the river on the one side, the houses and hills on the other. The river-drivers had halted not many yards away, cool, determined and quiet, save for a little muttering.
Morden and "Mike" McDonald were "bunkies" in a gang of river-drivers that had been cutting logs on the Deer River near its junction with the Magnetawan. Morden was the older, and had a wife and children in the settlements "up north." He had been working his farm for a spell and had gone back reluctantly to shantying because he needed the money in a slack season. But he could see his way ahead now.
A score of river-drivers were marching down through the village, mocking the fishers and making wild mirth. The Indians took little notice, but the half-breeds and white fishers were restless. "There will be trouble here one day," said Mrs. Falchion. "A free fight which will clear the air," I said.
"When I was small I used to go to the river-drivers' camps with my brother, and they were always kind to us. They used to sing and play the fiddle, and joke; but I didn't think then that they were rowdy, and I don't now. They were never rough with us." "No one'd ever be rough with you," was the reply. "Oh yes," she said suddenly, and turned her head away.
They all had a common ground of unity half-savage coureurs-de-bois, river-drivers, railway-men, factory hands, cattlemen, farmers, labourers; they had a gift for prejudice, and taking sides on something or other was as the breath of the nostrils to them.
It looked a wayfarer, like its patrons the river-drivers, with whom it was most popular. You felt that it had no part in the career of the village on either side, but was like a rock in a channel, at which a swimmer caught or a vagrant fish loitered.
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