Léon Tremblay on cleaning and rebuilding the floor of the mill

Léon Tremblay: We had a serious pest problem; it was unbelievable. Daniel was catching them. We weren’t allowed to have a cat — no pets were allowed. So, one year, at the end of the season, in October, if I remember correctly, I said: “Enough is enough!” I started lifting up the floorboards. There were two sections, one a little higher than the other. We lifted it, and underneath, there was maybe a foot and a half of flour, full of the vermin’s trails. It was crazy, absolutely crazy. So we removed the whole floor. I had asked the City to send me a container, and we chucked the whole works in the garbage. Then we took out the layer of old flour. We washed everything; back then, we weren’t as environmentally aware as we are these days… We washed everything all the way to the stone, everything that was underneath. Then, to prevent the flour from falling on the stone, we put down a sheet of black paper. After that, we completely rebuilt the floor with 10”x2” boards we had found. I can’t remember if it was my buddy Lucien who sold them to me or… Anyway, we managed to rebuild the floor, and since then… it reduced our pest problem by 90%. That sure was a huge job.