Gogama, Ontario, Canada

Gogama, Ontario - Joe Laflamme photo The tiny hamlet of Gogama, established in the mid 1920's, is home to 500 people and like many other communities dotting the wilderness, Gogama played its own part in shaping Northern Ontario's culture.

The creation of numerous towns and hamlets peppering the Canadian North, outposts like Gogama, depended greatly upon the ordinary people who were attracted by the industries and large companies. History is partial to the stories of well-known figures like McKenzie King, Louis Riel, Simon Fraser and Lord Simcoe, but history doesn't detail the stories of the thousands of ordinary folk who spent their everyday lives in their own communities and created culture simply by living and working there.

This article is about one such character. It is the story of a man who rose from obscurity, and put one little Northern Ontario town into the limelight. For the village of Gogama, nestled on the sandy shores of beautiful Lake Minisinakwa, this almost forgotten, but remarkable man was Joseph LaFlamme.

Newspaper accounts have painted am ambivalent picture of him. He has been profiled as a hero, possessing extraordinary qualities that most of us think are beyond our capabilities, and he has also been labeled a heretic, an “in-your-face” kind of guy who flaunted the law, could be abusive and violent, and had highly questionable moral values. But love'em or leave'em, heretics mirror the world, reflecting images of ourselves that we normally see.

Gogama, Ontario - Joe Laflamme photo Born in 1889 in St. Télésphore, Quebec, he marries a petite woman from France by the name of Marie Theoret. Most of LaFlamme's early years were spent in la belle province where he engaged in a number of career moves before heading for the scheduled hinterland of Gogama in his thirties. Blessed with striking good looks and a husky six foot, 225 –pound frame, he was later to make good use of his unusual size and strength. Joe LaFlamme was a man of unusual qualities. He applied his extraordinary talents to the taming of wild beasts for his own purposes. Known as “Mooseman” and “Wolfman”, he earned his reputation by skillfully and courageously domesticating the wildlife that roamed the bush around Gogama. His reputation quickly grew as word of his sensational exploits spread, first from town to town throughout the North, then from city to city throughout the South.

Those talents most widely recognized were his uncanny ability to relate, some would say speak, - to wild animals - that is, converse with them. Joe spoke French, and had a good command of English, but it is said he actually conversed with the animals in Ojibway. Ojibway? Conversing with animals in any language? Is this the ferreting of fact, or the fabrication of myth? Whether Joe actually conversed with the beasts of the bush or whether he was just a natural at animal behaviour is unclear and likely to remain the stuff of legend.

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