KANATA: ROADS MOST TRAVELLED
Life is a highway for this ‘singing mortician’ and he’s seen many twists and turns along the way
Meet a “singing mortician” who is proud of his Métis heritage.
Iwas born in 1941 in the small town of Timmins in northeastern Ontario. We were a poor family of 15, including Mom and Dad, and I was the eldest child. My father was a roving “packsack miner” and prospector, hoping to strike it rich. There was a lot of booze around while I was growing up; the kitchen always had a batch of dandelion wine fermenting in a corner with a towel covering it, and there was a moonshine still set up downstairs. Dad was away a lot, working the mines, but hardly ever sent money back to the family. When Dad was home though, there was always music around the house. My mom sang and my dad had a band called The Porcupine Troubadours, and they’d all practice together at our house when I was very little. I remember hearing my mother’s voice on the radio one time, and Dad showing me my first guitar chord and teaching me about E major. You know, there’s something about music that somehow runs in your soul—it certainly runs through my life and my best memories as a kid are rooted in it.
Growing up in our circumstances was no picnic. At school, I was treated the same as most poor people, which ranged from being ignored to being insulted. Some people started calling us half-breeds, and I didn’t know what it meant at first—i thought it had to do with being hard up for cash all
the time. I only found out later that my greatgrandmother Marguerite Levert (Raymond) was a Cherokee Indian, apparently from a North Dakota tribe, and that people born with “some Indian in their blood” were called “halfbreeds,” or the more socially acceptable term, I guess, Métis. Seems other people knew more about our family being partly Indian back then than I did.
Looking back now, I think that if we kids had known we were actually Métis, it would have made things easier somehow—at least we’d have known what was really going on. I’ve always resented my ancestors for being so secretive about those types of things.
WORKING UNDERGROUND
It seems I was destined to work in the mines, which I did for more than ten years; like my dad, I became a packsack miner. I worked in and around Timmins to as far north as Giant Mine in the Northwest Territories. The Can-met Mine in Elliot Lake, Ont., was where I was first employed underground. I was 16 and had to lie about my age to get the job. It was like an underground highway down there, with shuttle cars the size of small houses, and I tell you it could be dangerous. I worked for a mining contractor specializing in shaft drilling, and, yeah, I guess you had to be tough to get the job done. I worked seven or eight mines all told, doing all types of jobs. And, like my dad I suppose, I always had music with me in one form or another.
Looking to change things up, one day I enrolled in a home-school study course through the department of education and attended a Canada Manpower training course at Timmins High and Vocational School to get my Grade 12 equivalency. From there, I went into social work at Northern College of Applied Arts and Technology in Timmins, and graduated with the Dr. Horwood Award for performance. I’ll never forget my English professor there, Mr. Bert Caldwell, who taught me an unexpected lesson. I went to see him with a composition I had written to have him correct it. He went through it line by line with his red pencil until there was nothing left unmarked but one short sentence. He said “You see, Paul, you’ve said all that needs to be said right here, the rest is not of any use.” That taught me an important rule about songwriting—eliminate the junk!
Northern College turned out to be a real stepping stone for me. After a stint working on the Transcanada pipeline, I applied to the restorative arts program at the Humber College Institute of Technology & Advanced Learning in Toronto, which set me on a path towards a new career in the funeral business. I got the idea during a chance meeting at the bar we frequented after work. I struck up a conversation with a stranger next to me, who happened to be a funeral director, and he told me all about his trade and pointed out the program offered at Humber. The mysteries surrounding death and preparing the departed for burial or cremation somehow appealed to me, and so I applied and got accepted. As I progressed through my studies, I came to view the work as an actual art form and discovered I had a certain talent for it.
It was my music that paid my way through Humber. I met two musicians from Newfoundland while I was there: Clarence, who played guitar, and Raymond,
an accordion player. I played bass, sang and wrote songs. As you might imagine, playing with two “Newfies” was great fun, but my studies paid the price, I tell you—especially when we started to play the club scene. Getting home at 3 a.m. after a few sets and making it to class the following day took its toll from time to time. But I made it! I graduated from Humber in 1979, earning the Bay of Quinte Funeral Directors Association award in the process (I’m proud of that one!) Not long afterwards, I landed a job as an embalmer at Racine, Robert & Gauthier Funeral Homes in Ottawa, where I was employed for about six years. I really enjoyed my work there and still found time to write songs. I wrote two of my most popular recordings, “Men of No Tomorrows” and “A Song for Lech Walesa,” right there in the embalming room, and several others. I was also out there playing my music on the club and casino circuits every chance I got.
I had a couple of pretty catchy tunes picked up by CKBY radio in Ottawa, including “King of the Ottawa City Cowboys,” which I wrote after venturing into a place called Sidewinders that was having a mechanical-bull riding contest. A young lady won the trophy, and I got a song out of the experience, which I wrote on the spot after asking the barkeeper if he had a pen I could borrow. The song ended up winning a songwriting contest later on, but that’s another story.
I eventually moved on to run my own funeral services establishment, which I did right up until retirement a few years ago. Although I never landed a record contract with a major label, I recorded three albums, one entirely in French, and received some decent air play over the years.
I’m now back where it all began in Timmins, working on album No. 4 and spending time looking into my Métis heritage. One of the most discouraging things I discovered is that my great-grandmother Marguerite, the Cherokee from whom my Métis heritage stems, was buried in 1935 in Timmins, but the exact location where she was laid to rest in the cemetery was either never recorded or the records were lost. The same thing happened with her husband Michel Levert’s gravesite, too. It’s confirmed that they were both buried there, but nobody knows precisely where, so it’s impossible for me to visit.
PROUD OF MÉTIS HERITAGE
I have taken the time to obtain my Certificate of Aboriginal Status card and so I’m a proud member of the Painted Feather Woodland Métis, which I vow to have inscribed on my tombstone when my time comes, along with the image of a feather and a few words from one of my songs. Things have changed from my childhood days when I was first called “half-breed”; at least there are some government programs in place to help upcoming generations of Métis get ahead in life, my own children included. I have grown to find my own place in the world, with friends and a wonderful family around me, in a hometown that encourages me in my pursuit of music. Thankfully, there are still many roads to be travelled and songs to be sung. n