Seguin Albert

Article by Kathleen Hay
Standard -Freeholder
December 8, 2009

Seguin has been entertaining folks on his fiddle since he was 13 years old. The McConnell Manor resident, now 89, continues perform on a fiddle he purchased for a song at a Montreal pawn in the 1940s.

It's a wonder Albert Seguin is here. Albert was born prematurely in 1920 while his mother was visiting relatives in Coteau Station, QC. He weighed only 1.5 pounds and his incubator was a shoe box full of cotton batting which was placed on the oven door to keep him warm.

His family at that time lived near Williamstown and he grew up, as such, with the nickname "Little Albert''. Albert first started playing the fiddle at age nine when his uncle went to work in Moose Creek for a couple of months, but left the instrument behind. Upon his return, the uncle took his nephew under his wing to teach him how to play properly.

The family moved to Valleyfield in 1930 and by age 13 Albert was playing for parties. He met another 13-year-old, Donat Henley, at that time and they often performed as a duo, and a little later he took over as leader of The Happy Hearts, a very popular band during the 40s and 50s. It was during this time he met Sid Plumadore and he played with his band, too.

Albert's first job came at age 13 in the bleach house of Dominion Textiles, in Valleyfield. He stayed there for about three years, then after a stint working out west, he returned to the spinning mill until 1950. It was then the Duplessis government wanted to stamp out union members and blacklisted them as they feared any notion of Communism. Albert, then without a regular job, fiddled all the more to make ends meet.

In 1952, he and his wife, Zita, moved to Ajax where he ironically, was hired as a supervisor in a textile plant. Unfortunately, a few months later, his midnight shift was laid-off, but he luckily found another job with the Visking Corporation. For many years, Albert was involved in the custodial/janitorial business in the Ajax and Mississauga areas, but through all his work, the fiddle continued to be a close companion.

He continued to perform various events, parties and completions, where he met world renowned Canadian fiddle champion, Graham Townsend Albert finally decided to en fiddle competitions himself the ripe age of 65 in 1985. That same year, they moved back to Vaudreuil, QC, where became involved in the Folkloric Society of Quebec. He toured with them across the province and even to Europe.

Albert decided to move back to Cornwall in 1998, and in 2000 he moved to McConnell Manor. He and his late wife, Zita, had one boy, Claude, who died at seven months, and also a daughter, Dianne, who lives in Cornwall.

1. What's your most requested party tune? Well, it's very difficult to say. From the older folks, I think the Quebecers and the English Celtic, it would be Turkey in the Straw, the Chicken Reel and the Guenele, which means a tag in French. Sometimes I'd play all three as a set.

2. What was the worst weather you ever travelled to a concert? In the early 1940s one time we went to St. Stanislaw in the last part of the month, it was a corker of a windstorm. We had to wait until 6 a.m. for the train, then when it arrived, it couldn't move. It went a few yard then backed up to get a run, but we couldn't.

3. What was it like to perform with Graham Townsend? I was very surprised then it happened. I was in Osha at a competition. I'm standing near the stage right next to the stairs and they called Graham Towsend to appear. He came by me, grabbed me by the arm and said ''Get up there'' We played for a about 20 minutes. I was never so proud of myself for anything that happened. To perform with him was great. He'd call out the key, then you'd just fit into the tune. He was great.

4.What was the strangest place you played? White Station, around Huntingdon There was this particular fight. As soon as we started playing, we saw this one guy trying to get into a fight. Myself another guy, we got him and we sat on him. The fight kept on going. There must have been 15 or 20 people in it.

5. What's the best thing about Glengarry? What I 'liked about it was the mixture of cultures. We all got along so well. The French, the Irish and the Scottish. My wife was Irish, a Sloan, she came from Pontiac.

6. What was the first tune your uncle taught you play? The Cock of the North! that's an easy one. Didn't take me long to learn it. Within a short period of time, I had three tunes. I had just turned nine when I began playing.

7. What was your first job? Dominion Textiles in Valleyfield. I started at 11 cents per hour. It was around Christmas and I was going to be 14 the next February. My first job there was working in the bleach house. We bleached all the cotton in big batches. We started at 6 a.m. and most of the time we'd go until midnight. I was about a 30 to 40 minutes walk from home. I had good legs.

8. What trophy means the most to you? The Quebec provincial championship for 60 and over in my class. That was in 1989, I think. The competition was held in Granby. There were years before I was always second, and then. I got the first place.

9. If there was a fiddle tune named after you, what would it be called? They've got one now. They call it Le Two-Step du Père Seguin. Denis Brisson wrote the tune.

10. What was it like growing up for you? We moved to Valleyfield in 1930 with the family. It was the Depression. You'd get coupon to go and get food. In the winter, we'd get that darn wind across the river as we'd go for groceries. I saw somebody running along the top of a train once and he fell, he was killed on the track. We' would have people come to the door asking for food, we tried to help everybody we could. What I remember is that most people who asked for food wanted to earn it. They'd say, "Have you got any work to do?"