In 1967, at the age of 9, Jean Gamache and his dairy father made his first “milk runs” in Quebec, “bottles of milk at 22 or 24 cents a pint”. Next December, after 49 years of good and loyal service, Mr. Gamache will retire from the Agropur plant in Quebec. La Presse met this energetic and jovial 60-year-old who laughingly describes himself as “a calf’s tail”.
Born in 1958, Mr. Gamache knew the days of the milkmen who went around the neighborhood houses every morning, collecting empty glass bottles, in which a few coins had been left, and replacing them with others , filled with milk. “In winter, the change was frozen at the bottom: people rinsed their bottles, but they were not dry,” he says. We put a cardboard cap on the milk bottles. If she stayed there too long, in the winter it would freeze and the cape would rise. »
At 12, he took advantage of his free time to help another milkman who served Beauport. Idleness, obviously, was not his forte. “I could move!” I have always been a bit nervous, he agrees. As soon as I had a break from school, I would call the guy and go with him. On Saturdays, I was there all the time, vacations, holidays, summer, Easter. »
His official career began in 1974 when he was hired in the summer by La Laiterie Laval, which had an establishment on 4th Avenue in Limoilou. He even kept his first pay stub dated July 6, 1974, net $79.50 for 41 hours of work, which he proudly shows to the LaPresse photographer.
Acquired by Agropur in 1977 at the same time as the Laiterie Cité, the plant saw its activities moved to the former Coca-Cola bottling plant in 1984. Despite the climate of uncertainty and the threat of cutbacks, Jean Gamache kept his job.
Which was good, since a few years earlier, in 1981, Mr. Gamache had married Ginette, a girl from Quebec, with whom he will have two daughters. He acquired his Vanier home in November 1984 for $51,500 and secured a mortgage despite the risk of layoff. He still takes care of it.
It would be shorter to summarize what this worker did not do in the Agropur plant. Here, the milk arrives raw in tanks and goes through all the stages of transformation before coming out in cartons, bags and cartons of Québon and Natrel milk, butter and ice cream. “The only business I haven’t done is lab and pasteurization. Pretty much every job on the floor, I’ve done. »
The work, even if it has become automated over the years, remains very physical. Was he injured, does he have any damage today? He responds with a very funny anecdote.
“I was 5’6, 120 lbs, a calf’s tail for a long time. I was around twenty years old, we had a chain on the ground for empty crates. I was jumping over the chain, I didn’t go where there was an arm and all that. The boss always told me: “Jean, stop jumping, look, you have a great place for this, you’re going to get hurt!” »
The young Jean finally complied. He will be entitled to his first significant accident at work. “Crisse, the first blow I hurt myself was when I passed there! I came off the edge, the floor was wet, I slipped, I rolled my foot, I was on crutches for a week! When I saw the boss, I said, “Astheure, I’m going to keep jumping over it.” »
If the tasks have not changed that much, he somewhat regrets the atmosphere of the time.
During the interview, one of the Agropur representatives had the brilliant idea of asking him the real question, the one that hadn’t occurred to us: after 56 years in the field, does he still like milk? ? Oh yeah ! “If I was allergic to milk, I didn’t realize it! I went to the doctor two years ago, I was starting to have a little cholesterol. When she told me that, I said: “Tabaraouette, I’m just doing a little! I’m really happy!” »
He says that in one of the dairies in his early days, he stuffed himself with soft ice cream which continued to flow after filling.
Does he consider Agropur to have been a good employer for him? He does not hesitate to praise the company, first for “the very good salary”. But there is more. “I saw guys who had problems, alcohol or whatever. The bosses met them, they sent them for treatment before throwing them out. Even the rest of us used to say, “Hey, that’s enough, seems to me…” I’ve seen it, I’ve been a team leader. We would have kicked them out long before that. »
Mr. Gamache is not sure what awaits him during his retirement, which he sees, not surprisingly, as active. “That morning I get up, and that’s when I decide. […] I would like to do this for two years: I get up in the morning, hop, I’m tempted to go cross-country skiing, cycling, whatever. He may return to his 1980s hobby of woodcarving. “When I got married, the early years, I started that, I kept all my knives. I was an early riser, I went down to the basement, I kidded. Anything: a horse’s head to put headphones in the living room, a rose for my wife on her jewelry box, a Winnie the Pooh head for my little girl, a lion’s head too. »
