The figurehead proclaimed that he belonged heart and soul to the age of the sailing-ship. Therefore, we knew beforehand that we should find as the French say, Un Caractere. So we hurried and turned in down some steps and knocked at the door of the old shop.
In answer, there came to the door a little, almost aesthetic-looking old man with a sweet smile and an equally sweet voice. He stood a moment looking at us and at our camera, entering as if by intuition into our enthusiasm. Then he bade us, in a charming manner, combination of the sweetness of old age and courteous French, “Entrez, entrez!”
That was our first glimpse of Louis Jobin, whom we have since come to regard as “The Dean of Canadian Religious-figure Wood-carvers”—a man possessed of so sweet and simple a nature that he approaches easily and naturally, the carving of Christ on the Cross.
The little shop in its simplicity is just the place one might expect to find Jobin working in. Everything in it falls behind its master—not a single offending note. There is a wooden thumb to hold his hat. Everywhere on the walls bits of carving—models and patterns—an old trumpet, a cherub’s head, an angel’s wing. On the floor the old stove for heating, the tool-bench and the figure or figures on which he happens to be at work.
Jobin found for us one chair and that curious movable bench with legs resembling a colt’s, known in the trades as a “carpenter’s horse”. I sat the “horse” and never has one carried me into more enchanted country.
Jobin made us feel at home at once, continuing his work and chatting at the same time. There is about the man and his shop a sweet restful spirit of repose, as if no vaulting ambition had ever here o’erleaped itself to fall on the other side.
I cannot recall all that we talked about that first morning. I remember it rather as the occasion on which Jobin invited us to come in again whenever we felt inclined. It lingers as the morning on which we discovered that now rare nook “a woodcarver’s studio”.
It is no little thing to have such a door open to one in these days of hurry—a little shop full of the spell of Holy Figures, here and there, and about the door.
M. LOUIS JOBIN IN HIS WORK-SHOP.