Photo at centre
left: The North
County Boys—
Paul (centre),
his brother
Gerry (left) and
Leo Clement
(right)—perform
at Leone’s Tavern
in Timmins, Ont.,
in the late ’60s.
Above left: Paul
is right at home
in Canada’s great
outdoors.the time. I only found
out later that my great-
grandmother Margue-
rite Levert (Raymond)
was a Cherokee Indian,
apparently from a North
Dakota tribe, and that
people born with “some
Indian in their blood” were called “half-
breeds,” or the more socially acceptable
term, I guess, Métis. Seems other people
knew more about our family being partly
Indian back then than I did.
Looking back now, I think that if we
kids had known we were actually Métis,
it would have made things easier some-
how—at least we’d have known what was
really going on. I’ve always resented my
ancestors for being so secretive about
those types of things.
WORKING UNDERGROUND
It seems I was destined to work in the
mines, which I did for more than ten years;
like my dad, I became a packsack miner. I
worked in and around Timmins to as far
north as Giant Mine in the Northwest
Territories. The Can-Met Mine in Elliot
Lake, Ont., was where I was first employed
underground. I was 16 and had to lie about
my age to get the job. It was like an under-
ground highway down there, with shuttle
cars the size of small houses, and I tell you
it could be dangerous. I worked for a min-
ing contractor specializing in shaft drill-
ing, and, yeah, I guess you had to be tough
to get the job done. I worked seven or
eight mines all told, doing all types of jobs.
And, like my dad I suppose, I always had
music with me in one form
or another.
Looking to change things
up, one day I enrolled in a
home-school study course
through the department
of education and attend-
ed a Canada Manpower
training course at Tim-
mins High and Vocational
School to get my Grade 12 equivalen-
cy. From there, I went into social work
at Northern College of Applied Arts and
Technology in Timmins, and graduated
with the Dr. Horwood Award for perfor-
mance. I’ll never forget my English profes-
sor there, Mr. Bert Caldwell, who taught
me an unexpected lesson. I went to see him
with a composition I had written to have
him correct it. He went through it line by
line with his red pencil until there was
nothing left unmarked but one short sen-
tence. He said “You see, Paul, you’ve said
all that needs to be said right here, the rest
is not of any use.” That taught me an im-
portant rule about songwriting—eliminate
the junk!
Northern College turned out to be a real
stepping stone for me. After a stint work-
ing on the TransCanada pipeline, I ap-
plied to the restorative arts program at the
Humber College Institute of Technology
& Advanced Learning in Toronto, which
set me on a path towards a new career in
the funeral business. I got the idea during
a chance meeting at the bar we frequented
after work. I struck up a conversation with
a stranger next to me, who happened to be
a funeral director, and he told me all about
his trade and pointed out the program of-
fered at Humber. The mysteries surround-
ing death and preparing the departed for
burial or cremation somehow appealed to
me, and so I applied and got accepted. As
I progressed through my studies, I came
to view the work as an actual art form and
discovered I had a certain talent for it.
It was my music that paid my way
through Humber. I met two musicians
from Newfoundland while I was there:
Clarence, who played guitar, and Raymond,25