May 25, 2001 Kilrush and Coristine stops

The J. R Booth team and democrat from Booth’s office at Eau Claire delivering mail to Booth’s depot at Kiosk, stopping here at the Coristine section house nearby in the early 1920s—Algonquin Park photo.

Kilrush was a stop on the CNR 4 km east of Fossmill, on the north side of Kilrush Lake.  There is little sign of the railway left there today, and little information on the activities there.  The following contacts have provided some information: Homer Pigeau of North Bay went to Kilrush in 1937 as a section man, and stayed for eight years, living in a log house he built nearby.  Homer’s sister Beatrice married Leo Charette who worked at Kilrush for many years as well.  The Pigeau house is now the home of the Kilrush Hunt Club for several men including the Charettes.  

Charlie O’Connor, one of thirteen O’Connor children from the Alderdale area in Chisholm Township was a section foreman at Kilrush for three years in the early 1940s.  He had three section men working with him to maintain the rail line through the area.  Charlie’s wife Geraldine lives in Capreol, and in a recent conversation recalled her life there with their two children.  She remembers a bunk house for the workers, including a coal man who provided coal and water for the trains as required.  

There was also an Inspector who controlled the rail traffic through the area from a small office.  Geraldine remembers this man coming to her house one day as white as a ghost and hardly able to speak.  He had given incorrect information to a locomotive engineer, whose train collided head on with another train, killing five men.  The O’Connors spent weekends with relatives in Chisholm Township and North Bay.  They had good memories of their experience there.   

Louis Polichuck—who had a long career as a section foreman, ending up in Fossmill—was stationed at Kilrush in the late 1940s.  The photo in front of the Kilrush section house shows Louis and his wife Margaret (on the right).  Margaret is the mother of Margaret Grabowski and grandmother to Norm Ellis of Bob’s Kinfolk in Chisholm Township.  One story from that era tells of a man riding the rails and falling under the wheels of a train and losing a leg, while yelling that his foot hurt.
 

Louis Polichuck, section foreman and his wife Margaret (on the right), and an acquaintance in front of the Kilrush section house—Margaret Grabowski photo.

It should also be noted that besides J.R. Booth, who cut logs north of Kilrush, there were numerous other operators in the area.  Chisholm’s Joe Baechler of the well-known lumber family, had a mill at Kilrush for a period.  There are still piles of bricks and an old boiler, from another operation, visible at Dog Lake, just east of Kilrush.

CORISTINE
Coristine, just west of Kiosk on the west side of the Amable du Fond River, was the next CNR stop.  There is nothing left there today.  Its main history, from my perspective, came after it was abandoned and sold to Amedee Laferriere, who was a worker at Kiosk, for a token fifteen dollars in 1936, the year the Staniforth Lumber Mill opened.  Prior to that it was a typical stop, with a section house for the foreman, accommodation for three section men and equipment to keep that section of the rail line in shape.  The photo shows the section house with mail being delivered from Eau Claire in the early 1920s.  

Amadee Laferriere from Chisholm Township, married Rachel Denis, whose father came from the Fassett Lumber Company operation in Fassett Quebec, worked at Fossmill, and helped build the Staniforth Mill at Kiosk.  Amadee and Rachel’s son Gilles and his son Guy still work at Columbia Forest Products, providing almost a century of continuing work through four generations in the lumber business.  Amadee and Rachel were married father Joseph Gravelle in Fossmill in 1931.

Gaetan “Patch” Laferriere, the oldest son of Amadee and Rachel is the family historian and has provided me with information on their family life at Coristine.  Since this column is about Coristine, I will not comment at length on Amadee’s 37 year career at Kiosk until next week.  Since there was no bridge across the Amable du Fond in the early years, Amadee had to cross the river on a raft to get to work.  It should also be noted that after 46 years in the business, Amadee retired on July 13, 1973.  While he celebrated his retirement in his backyard, the fire whistle sounded at the Kiosk mill and in short order it burned to the ground, ending Kiosk as a mill town.   

Gaetan recalls skiing to school at Kiosk  on skis made by his grandfather, who was retired and living with them in an extension on the house.  On one occasion Gaetan broke his leg and his grandfather made him a sleight that could be pulled by Ritz the family dog.  When Gaetan got to school he told Ritz “Go see Mom” and the dog went home, until Mom said “Go see Patch.”  

Patch also remembered the excitement of the local train arriving on Friday.  He and a buddy regularly ordered a brick of ice cream, which they paid for with money they collected from selling wild berries they picked.  Patch notes that “the anticipation, and then the indescribable enjoyment of wolfing down a half a brick of ice cream on a hot summer day, was a treat that has seldom been matched.”

Patch also loved hockey, but with little equipment and no boards on the Kiosk rink had trouble keeping up when he went to high school in North Bay.  He does take pride in knowing that his classmate at Kiosk, Peirrette Chartrand, went on to marry and produce one of the NHL’s greatest players—Guy Lafleur.

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