Big Joe Mufferaw

Big Joe Mufferaw was a French Canadian folk hero from the Ottawa Valley, perhaps best known today as the hero of a song by Stompin' Tom Connors. Like Paul Bunyan, he made his living chopping down trees. The name is also sometimes spelled Muffero, Muffera, and Montferrand. The last spelling is more common among francophones; anglophones who had trouble with it used one of the other spellings.

In addition to being the subject of many Paul Bunyan-esque tall tales, Mufferaw is sometimes enlisted as a defender of oppressed French Canadian loggers in the days when the bosses were English and their rivals for work were Irish. In one story, Big Joe was in a Montreal bar, where a British army major named Jones was freely insulting French Canadians. After Big Joe beat the major, he bellowed, "Any more insults for the Canadiens?"

Some tales place Mufferaw in the United States.

A real Joseph Montferrand appears to have lived from 1802 to 1864. French Canadian writer Benjamin Sulte told this man's story in a 1975 book. He also is the subject of a chapter in Joan Finnegan's 1981 book Giants of the Ottawa Valley and her 1983 book Look! The Land is Growing Giants. Bernie Bedore of Arnprior also wrote several books recounting Joe's adventures.

There is also a typeface named for Joe Mufferaw.

The Stompin' Tom song describes the following tall tales, with many references to the Ottawa Valley:

• Joe can "paddle the Ottawa River all the way from Mattawa in just one day".
• Joe had a "pet frog who was bigger than a horse, and barked like a dog."
• The Mississippi River dripped off his face, as the citizens of Carleton Place can atest too.
• Joe portaged from Gatineau to Kemptville, to see his girlfriend, and "he was back and forth so many times to see her, that the path he wore became the Rideau Canal."
• He "put out a forest fire from halfway from Renfrew and Arnprior. He was half an hour away in Smiths Falls, but drowned out the fire with five spitballs."
• He "swam across Calabogie Lake to catch a cross eyed bass, but he said "I can't eat that" , so he covered it up with Mount St. Pat."
• After drinking a bottle of gin, Joe "beat the living tar out of 29 men and high above the ceiling of the Pembroke pub, there's 29 boot marks, and they're signed with love."

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Heritage Perspectives Big Joe Mufferaw