When the year in New York ended, back came Jobin to Montreal. And from that day to this he has never left Canada but has given every day of his life-work to her. Canada reared him and with the exception of that brief year in New York she can claim him and his work.
It is somewhat in the nature of a revelation that there should have been, and that there continues to be, enough trade and demand for wooden figures to have kept this old carver busy for a lifetime. Woodcarving is one of the oldest Arts under the sun and the fact that woodcarving is so widely appreciated in Canada and the United States that a few of these old artists are in their shops every day regularly, keeping steadily at the bench from morning until night, every day of the working week, year in and year out, reveals a phase of the national life and taste which cannot but fill many, who deemed the day of the wooden figure a thing of the past, with surprise.
But, for affirmation, there is the venerable figure of Louis Jobin bending over an angel—a tiny gouge in his old fingers slithering lightly here and there, “bringing out” just a little more each time the spirit, which, when all is finished, speaks out to the forgetfulness of the medium.
The regularity with which orders come in, no less than the air of the shop itself, gives one even stronger assurance that when Jobin has passed to the Land o’ the Leal his mantle will fall to many a successor, provided the carver of the coming generation puts out work up to the standard of this old artist of Saint Anne’s.
Jobin belongs to a long line of woodcarvers whose genius has given the wooden figure a sure niche in the heart of Canada as long as there shall be saint or legend left.
The establishment of Jobin in Montreal after his return from New York extended over a period of five or six years. Making figureheads there for Captain McNeil, he recalls that one was the “Chief Angus”.
With a sweep of the arm, Jobin makes you see that proud hull—those royal-yards sweeping down the Saint Lawrence under the leadership of the spirited figure of the old Chief on the bow, leading one of the clan to victory on the high seas, and the ports of the world. Then the Frenchman speaks, and he recalls the figures of an “Avoçat”, for a gentleman of the legal profession. He recalls that it stood opposite the Court House on the Rue Notre Dame in Montreal. No doubt many an old Montrealler recalls this landmark of Notre Dame.
Jobin’s work in Montreal lasted as long as sails on the high seas created a demand for figureheads, and as long as the Red Indian with his calumet idled the day outside the Tobacconist shops. But steam blasted the growth and life of sails, and paper signs and bill-boards did away with the Indians except in Old Quebec city where the Red Man is still to be seen on Saint Jean Street.
Only then, in the lean years that followed these changes, did Jobin move to Quebec—the home-city of sacred “figures”, and begin what turned out to be his forte and life-work,—the carving of religious figures.
He tells how he had a shop first in Quebec City. But from Quebec out to the quiet shop in the little town of Saint Anne de Beaupré was for a man of Jobin’s feeling a short and natural step. At last his barque had come from the busy marts of the New York waterfront into this quiet little haven, whose main street has at one end this little shop and at the other la Basilica, Mecca of a continent.