Obituary of Jean Marcel Francois Guenette

Jean Marcel Francois Guenette 1930 - 2009 Mac was born on September 23, 1930, and passed away September 21, 2009, just a couple days short of his 79th birthday. He was the eldest of Bruno and Lucienne Guenette’s ten children. Mac and his siblings grew up on the family farm in (John)Jean Cote, AB. Life was hard then and the children were all expected to work and contribute to the farm. For entertainment they enjoyed many evenings of music, singing, and socializing with Mac on the harmonica or spoons. My personal experience with Mac began when my high school friends and I started working at Canfor doing weekend clean up. I thought Mac was a very important person there as he had his own name "MAC” on all his tools. It wasn’t until later that I learned about all the different brands of tools that had their name stamped onto them. One time one of my fellow co-workers and I were cleaning out under one of the upper decks. They each had a trap door that we had to open and then we would push the sawdust onto a conveyor below. Unknown to us, Mac was repairing the chain links on the conveyor right below. The next thing we heard in a very loud voice was "hey you son of a bin, quit dumping that down here or I will come up there and kick your ___”. We moved over a couple of decks and thought it would be safe to continue cleaning, unfortunately some of the sawdust drifted over to Mac again and when we heard him yelling we took off and hid out under the log decks for a couple of hours to let him cool off. As we all know, he wasn’t an easy man to deal with but he had a heart of gold and would give you the shirt off his back. You’d probably hear about it forever after though – so you wanted to make sure it was worth it! Who would have guessed Mac was a match maker or perhaps he thought it was time for Heidi to meet someone as they didn’t always see eye to eye. As the story goes, Chris worked with Mac at Canfor and in the summer of 1982 he called Chris at home asking him where his keys were to his tool box at the mill. Chris replied that he didn’t have them, he’d already given them back to him. Of course Mac started yelling and swearing at Chris. About 20 minutes later Chris called back and sheepishly admitted that he’d just found the keys in his coveralls, at which point Mac apologized and asked him to come over for a beer. The rest is history. His grandchildren were his pride and joy and he never missed an opportunity to brag about them. When the kids were smaller they spent quite a bit of time with Grandma and Papa at their home West of Chetwynd and then later at the farm in Willow Valley. Mac took a lot of pride in his garden and lawn and spent many hours working on them. Mac worked for Canfor for many years as a millwright and then later as a foreman, retiring in 1989. He was very proud of receiving his 25 year service award. The family would like to say thanks to Ardie and Ed Schrieber for all their help and support over the years and more recently to Kathy Felhauer and family for checking on and visiting Mac during his failing health over the past few months. In Heidi’s words she always wanted to tell him thanks for being her Dad when he didn’t have to be. Heidi, I am very sure that Mac realized this especially after how you stuck by his side after the passing of his wife, your mother. Knowing both of you I do not know who is more stubborn. I guess if we want to know we just need to ask Chris. Mac will missed and remembered by all that knew him. A Memorial service for Marcel was held on Monday, September 28, 2009 at the Royal Canadian Legion, Chetwynd, British Columbia.