Verne, Another interesting little story about Lejac was the fall rabbit hunt. The boys would make all kinds of clubs and spears from whatever they could find. Apparently the rabbits go in cycles where once every 5 years or so there would be a great abundance of rabbits. At that time CN Rail was upgrading their tracks to 120 lb steel so the old tracks were being taken up and all the spikes that held the rails to the ties were being changed as well. The old spikes were left between the tracks to be picked up at a later date to be recycled. For the Lejac boys those spikes were weapons from heaven. The spikes were picked up by the boys and stuck in their belts like tomahawks. When a rabbit which by this time of year had turned white for the winter season was spotted the shout went up and 5 or ten boys would surround the rabbit and the spikes would fly. The poor rabbits did not have a chance against such an onslaught. On one Saturday I think they brought back about 70 rabbets which were skinned and cleaned and delivered to the cook who made rabbit stew for everyone. I bet the CNR is still trying to figure out why there were no spikes to be picked up for recycling for two miles either side of Lejac. To this day I'm sure you could walk through the bush around Lejac and still find all kinds of Rail Road spikes. Any grouse in the area also fell to the onslaught of the RR spikes. To this day I'm still amazed how no one ended up getting seriously hurt by a flying spike. There must have been thousands of spikes scattered throughout the bush. One of these days the area will be mistaken for an iron ore deposit. Happy days. Thanks to Jim Callanan for this story and photo
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