Fishermen Bordering the Rémigny Lake

Impatience…

I’ve been desperately waiting for spring for a few days now and my eagerness is growing as I see the snow flakes falling, a surge of winter that is taking way too long to die down.

For a week now, April has been feeding me a tempting bait and I’m becoming as hungry as a northern pike. The new calendar page I’m seeing is showing a picture that’s making me sick. A beautiful river is flowing and its water is reflecting the greenness of a mountain newly adorned. Two fishermen in summer clothing are cooking fish in large cast iron pans. I can almost smell the frying smoke, delicious wood fire, the fragrance coming out of the boiling coffeepot.

Here is a magazine page recounting the merits of a new outboard engine, which is why an open deck boat is so useful. The storefront of hardware stores are filled with fishing rods, reels, chests, dip nets and a variety of artificial baits…

I will need a new pair of boots; my fillet knife will need to be sharpened; need to get the boat’s engine started up; the boat itself needs cleaning, and an examination of all the accessories.  I need to keep myself occupied in order to stop daydreaming of that marvellous day when I can launch my boat…

Ah! Ah! It’s a long wait for the spring thaw!

-Excerpt from Abitibi : mon pays, mes humeurs.
Weekly papers published in L’Écho Abitibien,
Val-d’Or, Imprimerie Lebonfon, 1980, p. 21, by René Duval.

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