(1902-28 June 1984), blacksmith. (Oliver Hamelin) (date of birth 1904 also found) Born at St-Polycarpe or at St. Raphael’s. His father’s name was also Olivier Hamelin. Young Olivier Hamelin, the subject of the present entry, learned the blacksmith trade in Alexandria from a blacksmith whose name is given as Joe Gaudet. (Perhaps correctly Jovenin Goulet?) Hamelin is quoted as having stated that he began work as a blacksmith on 22 June 1920, at the age of 18. (Mullin) About 1923 he was a blacksmith at Niagara Falls, and he was a blacksmith at Glen Norman for several years, then at Apple Hill, where he settled in 1931, he was a blacksmith over many years. Surviving to be one of Ontario’s last blacksmiths, he was widely known in his last years. He was written about and photographed, and he appeared in television documentaries. His little log shop on the main street of Apple Hill was a striking sight, catching the eye of the driver-through, and seemed an object inexplicably surviving from an earlier period. Often the flames of the forge could be seen through the open door. A sign above the door identified him as a “General Blacksmith.”

     This little log building was moved to Apple Hill from St. Raphael’s or from west of Apple Hill in 1911. There is a traditional story that its original location was at St. Raphael’s and that it was used in early pioneer times for church services there.

     As with other GC blacksmiths, shoeing horses was for many years a prominent part of his business. Hamelin ceased shoeing horses about 1972. In his later years in blacksmithing he was active in another part of the traditional GC blacksmith’s trade, that of making metal objects as replacements for factory-made parts that had broken. Farmers valued this service for keeping their field machinery operating. Olivier Hamelin was still working as a blacksmith when he was an old man. The Glengarry artist Douglas A. Fales did much to publicize the career of Hamelin. Hamelin was married to Clara Desforges (1898-1974). They are buried in the Apple Hill cemetery. In 2000 Olivier Hamelin’s blacksmith shop, donated to the Glengarry Historical Society by his sister, Antoinette Valade, was dismantled and moved to the Glengarry Pioneer Museum at Dunvegan, where, a notable exhibit, it stands well reconstructed and restored. He has been inducted into the Glengarry Agricultural Wall of Fame.

No obituary in Glengarry News, but Robert A. Filliol published a letter of tribute, GN 25 July 1984, and there was an In Memoriam notice GN 26 June 1985 *gravestone, Apple Hill * Alex Mullin, “Still Operating… Oliver Hamelin’s Blacksmith Shop Village Landmark,” Standard Freeholder 26 July 1975 (illust.) * drawing of the blacksmith shop at Apple Hill, by Robert W. Eadie, cover of Glengarry Life 1982 * Jean Paquin, “Oliver Hamelin d’Apple Hill: C’est en forgeant qu’on devient forgeron,” Le Point 19 mars 1983 (illustr.) * refs. to Hamelin in William N.T. Wylie, “The Blacksmith in Upper Canada, 1784-1850,” Canadian Papers in Rural History, VII (1990): sources include interview with Oliver Hamelin * Douglas A. Fales, “The Last Blacksmith,” Ottawa Citizen 12 March 1977 and “Glengarry’s Last Blacksmith,” GN 24 March 1977 (these are two different articles, both illust.); also Douglas A. Fales, letters, GN 6 Jan. 1977 & 15 Dec. 1982 * Douglas A. Fales’s paintings of Hamelin described, Joe Banks’s column, GN 27 April 1994 * “historic” blacksmith shop at Apple Hill in decay, GN 16 June 1993 * Apple Hill (1982) 30 * Ewan Ross on the history at St. Raphael’s of the log blacksmith’s shop, Souvenir Program, Glengarry Highland Games, 1979 * move of blacksmith shop to Dunvegan, GN 1 & 29 Nov. 2000, 15 & 22 Aug. 2001, Vankleek Hill Review 14 Feb. 2001, 19 Sept. 2001 * ”been inducted”: GN 6 & 20 April 2005, with letter 27 April from Douglas A. Fales on his illustrations and photographs representing Hamelin; VKHR 20 April 2005