ST. JOHN PLANTATION, Maine — Before there were airplanes or rail lines or even roads, there were the rivers.
It has been close to a century since the St. John River was a major transportation hub, but one local man is bringing a piece of that era back to life in his own front yard.
For the past several months, Lezime Thibeault has been creating an exact replica of the horse-powered, flat-bottomed boats known as wanagans that carried cargo and goods from Grand Falls, New Brunswick, up the river to depots in Madawaska, Fort Kent and beyond.
“I’ve always been enthused by history,” the 57-year-old woodworker said, standing in front of his creation. “I’m hoping to use this as kind of a museum to teach people about these boats.”
Once a common site on the St. John River, the flat-bottomed wanagan could navigate in shallow waters where craft with deeper draws could not, Thibeault explained.
“These boats brought in tobacco, beans, groceries, and all the supplies needed by people and the lumber camps,” he said. “The rivers were the roads back then.”
To get the cargo from points farther east along the river, larger “tide boats” were used, bringing goods up the St. John to the natural barrier at Grand Falls.
“That’s where the cargo was moved onto the wanagans,” Thibeault said.
Before the advent of gas- or steam-powered motors, the wanagans ran on horsepower — literally.
Cables ran from the boat’s mast, or “tree,” to a team of horses that pulled the craft in the river against the current. The boat’s pilot, or “sweeper,” guided the craft from his position on the roof.
When they could, the horses walked along the shore pulling the boats, but more often the animals waded in the shallows of the river, according to Thibeault.
“The horses a lot of times got a free ride back down the river,” he said, showing off historical photos depicting a turn-of-the-century wanagan pointed down the river with two horses standing on the bow.
Each wanagan was equipped with a rudder, but Thibeault said the sweeper also relied on a series of cables running from the boat to the horses.
By keeping an eye on the current, the sweeper knew just when to tighten or let out those cables to propel his wanagan in the desired direction.
“They would use the ropes and current to steer those boats across the river,” Thibeault said. “It was so smart and so simple.”
Thibeault is a big fan of all things smart and simple.
“I never liked school very much,” he said “I learned from the farmers.”
After his parents died, Thibeault was raised by a foster family in St. Agatha, where as a boy he was captivated by the metal workers and fabricators he met.
“I’d watch them and learn because they had already thought of so many things and how to do them,” Thibeault said. “But then I began thinking of things on my own.”
Thibeault said the local barbershop also served as an informal classroom in his youth.
“There were 15 of us in that family so we’d have to go to the barber’s in shifts,” he said. “I always went along if I needed a haircut or not, just to hear the old-timers talk.”
With skills he had picked up watching his elders, Thibeault built his first small boats when he was 8 years old.
“I’d build these boats and as soon as my foster mom saw one floating on [Long Lake], she would send my foster brothers out with pickaxes to poke holes in it,” he recalled. “At the time I thought she was being cruel, but later I learned it was because she was afraid I’d take one out and drown.”
When he was 12, Thibeault built his first flat-bottomed boat, and his foster mother let him launch it.
“She figured it had enough wood that even if it broke apart, it would still float,” he said.
As he got older, Thibeault learned the specialized art of underwater welding, and in the mid-1970s it afforded him one of the great adventures of his life.
“I was working up in Canada and my boss came through asking if anyone could speak French,” Thibeault said.
Turns out, his boss had a new client — the renowned oceanographer Jacques Cousteau, who was in need of a skilled fabricator.
“I told him I could speak French and they took me right away,” Thibeault said. “Of course, my [St. John] Valley French was quite different from their French, but I got to know [Jacques] Cousteau and his crew [and] they were awfully nice people.”
Thibeault spent six weeks working for the Cousteaus off the coast of Greenland repairing an underwater laboratory about 100 feet beneath the ocean’s surface.
Not long after, he found his way to Alaska, where he again used his underwater welding skills, this time working on sections of the Alaskan oil pipeline that ran under remote rivers and lakes.
These days, Thibeault is a furniture maker by trade, creating unique chairs, tables, benches and cabinetry with lumber most carpenters consider waste.
“I use bent wood, crooked wood or wood that’s full of worm holes,” he said. “You know how some people say the wood speaks to them? For me it comes up and hits me on the head.”
When one local mill owner discovered Thibeault was transforming castoff pieces of lumber into marketable goods, the owner began demanding a portion of the proceeds.
In response, Thibeault thanked the mill owner, paid him for a final load of wood and went home, where he promptly fabricated his own personal wood mill.
He calls his business One Step.
“All of life is about moving one step at a time,” he said. “If people would not worry about the past and just look ahead one step at a time, they would be happier.”
Thibeault’s wanagan, constructed using local spruce, fir and cedar, measures 32 feet long with an 8-foot-high deck cabin.
Had he opted to eliminate the cabin from his replica, the boat would be classified as a scow.
“This is actually a fairly short wanagan,” Thibeault said. “Some of the ones back in the old days were up to 100 feet long.”
Over the years, the wanagans evolved from using horse power to mechanized motors and incorporated small luxuries such as windows and wood stoves in the cabins.
Thibeault plans to power his boat with a 28-horsepower motor. The cabin will include a wood stove, a small bathroom, kitchen area, and accommodations to sleep up to six people.
He anticipates the maiden voyage later this summer on Long Lake.
Thibeault said creating his wanagan has taken a great deal of work, but that’s just fine with him.
“Life isn’t always easy,” he said. “But it can be fun.”
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