Miner toys with retirement

Some men never grow up, and retired miners are no exception. They grow older, their hair recedes, and bellies often hang over their belts, but inside these men is a playfulness that never goes away.

These grown men express this playful behaviour in different ways. Some buy fancy cars; others take up sports. Jean Boudreault, on the other hand, makes wooden toys that resemble giant mining machinery.

Boudreault worked in Rio Algom’s uranium mines in Elliot Lake, Ont., for 25 years until a heart attack in 1989 forced him to retire at age 54. He still lives in Elliot Lake with his wife of 39 years, Monique. They have a 9-month-old granddaughter, Grace, from their only son, David, who works for Inco in Sudbury.

Boudreault was a rather restless retiree for a couple of years before he evolved into a toy-maker. “I was tired of looking at the TV, so I figured I had to do something,” says Boudreault. “I bought a couple of tools and one thing led to another. First, I bought a lathe and was making some bowls and plates, but I soon got tired of that and wanted to do something different.”

And toys are so much more fun than plates–so much so that he established his own version of Santa’s workshop in Elliot Lake. In addition to a lathe, he owns a mitre saw, a table saw, radial saw, band saw, press drill, planer and a sander, all of which set him back $5,000.

He keeps his tools in a shed where he has built about 250 miniaturized versions of everything from load-haul-dump machines to logging trucks to jumbo drills to tractors and trailers.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about his hobby is that he was not an accomplished woodworker before retirement. His designs come from his head and are usually trial-and-error endeavours.

“I worked in a mine long enough that I knew what these [vehicles] looked like . . . and I said to myself, ‘I’m going to make one of those,'” says the toy-maker. “With most of them you try something, you take it off [the workbench] and start again. When you figure the design is not too bad, then you know what to do.”

Boudreault uses mostly birch and oak because they have more longevity than a softwood such as pine. Some of his creations are as long as 42 inches and cost $50, a relative bargain for high-quality wooden toys. He has sold his creations to customers in Australia and Sweden, and more than 30 pieces of his work are on exhibit at the Mining Hall of Fame in Elliot Lake.

The 5-foot, 6-inch French Canadian is a miner to the core. He grew up in La Visitation, a small town 20 km south of the St. Lawrence River, that marks the midway point between Quebec City and Montreal. When he was a just a youth, the government was giving land to people willing to settle in Val d’Or. Boudreault’s family — four sisters and seven brothers — jumped at the offer and headed north. When they were old enough, Boudreault and his brothers went to work in the nearby mines. At one point, there were five members of the family employed at a Val d’Or copper mine — Jean, his father and four brothers.

Sadly, Boudreault’s father would later die after suffering a heart attack while mining in Val d’Or, and one brother would later meet the same fate at a mine in the U.S. Boudreault lost another brother in a blasting incident at another American mine.

So when Boudreault received a second chance after heart problems in 1989, he knew it was time to relax, enjoy life and find a pastime. It took a couple years, but the retired miner enjoys making toys, and, as he says, “I try to do the best that I can.”