Big Jean Lavoie
Birth: Nova Scotia, 1880
Occupation: Logger/Miner/Sailor
Biography: Two things typify Jean Lavoie - his size, and his wanderlust. Born in Nova Scotia to a family of Scots-Acadians, Lavoie grew up on frontier settlements, following his father who worked as a logger. From a very young age, Jean earned his keep hauling coal and tending steam engines, graduating to logging before he sprouted his first chin hair. Always a big child, his years swinging axes and pulling saws made 18-year old Jean something of a mountain. After a few years of logging, he began to seek change, travelling south to the United States where he got a job as a miner in the Appalachian mountains. His strength proved a merit hauling carts, though standing well over six and a half feet was something of a hindrance. Some years into his tenure he was involved in a collapse, barely escaping with his life after holding up a sagging prop to allow his mates to escape. He then travelled to New York, where he got a job as a stoker with the White Star line’s trans-Atlantic voyages. In 1912, he was part of the crew of the RMS Titanic, though he was sacked for drunkenness and left in the Irish port of Cobh before that vessel met its untimely end. Aimless and stranded far from anywhere he might call home, Lavoie joined the King’s Extraordinary Regiment in the hope of finally finding a calling.
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