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A child on the shipyard

An old black and white photograph. In the foreground, a young child walks alone on wooden planks. In the background, around two dozen men are pushing a schooner towards the river.

Launch of a schooner, first half of the 20th century.

Photographer unknown

Source: collection of the Musée maritime de Charlevoix, Cedric Pearson collection

Between 1934 and 1964 one of the town’s two elementary schools overlooked the shipyards, giving the children front-row seats to see the schooners as they were being built, launched and pulled back ashore. Toddlers were free to walk around the work site, despite it being strewn with heavy equipment, large pieces of lumber and other various dangers one expects to find in a shipyard. Oh, how times have changed!