Big Joe Mufferaw
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Big Joe Mufferaw was a French Canadian folk hero from the Ottawa Valley, perhaps best known today as the hero of a song by Stompin' Tom Connors. Like Paul Bunyan, he made his living chopping down trees. The name is also sometimes spelled Muffero, Muffera, and Montferrand. The last spelling is more common among francophones; anglophones who had trouble with it used one of the other spellings.
In addition to being the subject of many Paul Bunyan-esque tall tales, Mufferaw is sometimes enlisted as a defender of oppressed French Canadian loggers in the days when the bosses were English and their rivals for work were Irish. In one story, Big Joe was in a Montreal bar, where a British army major named Jones was freely insulting French Canadians. After Big Joe beat the major, he bellowed, "Any more insults for the Canadians?"
Some Mufferaw tales place in the United States.
A real Joseph Montferrand lived from 1802 to 1864. French Canadian writer Benjamin Sulte told this man's story in a 1975 book. He also is the subject of a chapter in Joan Finnegan's 1981 book Giants of the Ottawa Valley and her 1983 book Look! The Land is Growing Giants. Bernie Bedore of Arnprior also wrote several books recounting Joe's adventures.
There is also a typeface named for Joe Mufferaw.
A statue of Joe Mufferaw was erected outside of the Mattawa Museum in Mattawa, Ontario, during the spring of 2005. It was carved by local carving artist Peter Cianafrani, and was his last statue before passing away later in the spring. A plaque commemorating his name sits at the base of the statue.
The Stompin' Tom Connors song describes the following tall tales, with many references to the Ottawa Valley:
- Joe "paddled in to Mattawa all the way from Ottawa in just one day".
- Joe had a "pet frog who was bigger than a horse, and barked like a dog."
- Mississippi Lake was formed as a result of sweat dripping off his face, as the citizens of Carleton Place can attest to.
- Joe portaged from Gatineau to Kemptville, to see his girlfriend, and "he was back and forth so many times to see her, that the path he wore became the Rideau Canal."
- He "put out a forest fire from halfway from Renfrew and Arnprior. He was half an hour away in Smiths Falls, but drowned out the fire with five spitballs."
- He "swam across Calabogie Lake to catch a cross eyed bass, but he said "I can't eat that," so he covered it up with Mount St. Pat."
- After drinking a bucket of gin, Joe "beat the living tar out of 29 men and high above the ceiling of the Pembroke pub, there's 29 boot marks, and they're signed 'with love.'"
[edit] Incidental media references
On May 1, 2007, Home Ice (XM 204) aired a portion of the song, replacing the words "Joe Mufferaw" with a soundbite from the Team 1200's Ottawa Senators-New Jersey Devils playoff game broadcast from the night before, creating a crude "Big Ray Emery".
