Marcel Giroux made things happen

Jeff Green | Jul 19, 2023

Marcel Giroux

A couple of months ago, Marcel came into the Frontenac News office to get some photocopies. He was putting some materials together from his past, and needed to copy some photos.

The photos that he was copying included a shot of an unusual looking flat-bottomed houseboat, and a second photo of a young Marcel, and even younger Pam, that was taken on the day they got engaged.

He built the boat himself, well, as he explained, he did not do it all by himself. In 1960, a few years after arriving in Sharbot Lake to work at Sharbot Lake High School, he bought a boat kit, sight unseen, and started building it in the basement of Stan Mika’s hardware store (now Sharbot Lake Home Hardware).

Marcel explained that he did not know a lot about construction or about the specifics of building a water-worthy vessel, but Stan Mika and Virgil Garrett, the shop teacher at the school, helped him figure out how to put it together, and within a few months it was built. They trucked it to Westport and put it in the water, and it floated.

He docked it at the rustic family cottage compound, on the Ottawa River, that was overseen by his formidable mother Aline. He took the boat on many adventures during the 1960s, and sold it after Pam had given birth to their four sons.

“It was impossible to have four kids running all over that open boat, so I sold it,” he recalled.

The story stuck in my mind for a couple of reasons. For one, it was a new one, and over the last 25 years or so I had probably heard most of Marcel’s other stories, and although it pre-dated all of the community efforts that characterised Marcel’s life in Sharbot Lake, it shows a couple of Marcel’s characteristics that made him a real connecting force behind the start of many important projects that he worked on, that still impact the community to this day.

The first is that when he had the crazy idea to build a houseboat, instead of thinking twice about it and moving on, he bought a kit and started building, the second is that when he realised he was in way over his head, he leaned on people who had the skills and equipment that was required to build it. But why did Stan Mika, Virgil Garrett, and others, decide to help build Marcel’s boat. My guess is that it was the fact that his enthusiasm for the project was contagious.

Marcel Giroux died last week, at the age of 90. His family held a big party for his 90th birthday at the Sharbot Lake Legion months ago. It was a full house in the afternoon, with a jazz band from Kingston playing, followed by a prime rib dinner for family and close friends. He was a happy man, surrounded by his wife Pam, whom he met while working at Sharbot Lake High School where he worked for over 30 years, their 4 sons, and partners, and their grand-kids.

Among the community members who were there, were many who knew the mark he had made in the local community. Starting in the early 1970s, when the community was at a pretty low ebb, he joined a communications group that began meeting to determine how to help bring the community back, after its role as a railway hub had been eliminated. They started with a newsletter, which became the Frontenac News, and soon formed North Frontenac Community Services, which is now Rural Frontenac Community Services. Marcel became a member of the Oso Council, under Reeve Harold Clark, and later served as both Deputy Reeve and Reeve. Among the accomplishments of those councils was the purchase of properties that became the Sharbot Lake Beach, the purchase of the K&P Trail, from Sharbot Lake to the township border with what is now North Frontenac, closer ties with neighbouring townships, that led to the building of the North Frontenac Arena (now the Frontenac Arena).

Wayne Robinson, who met Marcel when he was a grade 9 student at Sharbot Lake High School, and became a lifelong friend and business colleague, said that when people would say any of these things were “too expensive or too complicated, Marcel would say 'let's have a meeting and figure it out'. And look at all they got done!”

When municipal amalgamation was taking place, Marcel was a key figure in the coming together of the Frontenac and Kingston Public libraries, and served as the first chair of the Kingston Frontenac Public Library. He was also one of the key facilitators behind the establishment of the 911 system in Central Frontenac.

A lifelong Catholic, he was at the centre of the effort to raise funds and build St. James Catholic Church, and worked with another parishioner on the crazy scheme to buy a cottage and auction it off as a fundraiser for the construction project.

To the end of his life in Sharbot Lake, he enjoyed everything that he accomplished, and was not shy about recounting stories about how everything that he was involved with had come to fruition. And he never stopped supporting any, and all, community efforts. He went to the Legion dinners every Friday Night, and was the first to show up at every Lions Club 'All You Can Eat Breakfast'.

Marcel died at Smiths Falls hospital on Friday, July 14, surrounded by family. Details about his funeral, which is set for Saturday, July 22, at 11 am, at St James Catholic Church, in Sharbot Lake, can be found here

(This article has been altered, as a preliminary version of the print version was originally posted online.)