Twinned with a rock · Established 1971 · Population: Enough FREN

Chapter One

How A Town Got Invented

In the spring of 1971 there was no Chimoubongo. There was a logging road, a bend in a creek, forty-one hectares of white pine nobody had bothered to cut, and a school bus with the seats torn out.

The bus belonged to Alphonse-Réal Bougie, who was thirty-four, from Trois-Rivières, and had been asked to leave four communes in two provinces. Not for anything criminal. People simply found that after a few months in his company they had started keeping a candle lit for reasons they could not articulate.

Eight other people were with him. Their names are on the stone by the post office. There was also the dog, named Motion, because Alphonse-Réal insisted every vote needed one.

“A town is not a place. It is a group of people who have agreed to keep showing up. The trees were already having a town. We just asked to join.”

Alphonse-Réal Bougie, 1971

The Vote

On the night of June 2nd, 1971, they held what the charter still calls The Vote. It lasted eleven hours, for two items.

Item one: shall this be a town? Passed, nine to nothing. Motion abstained by falling asleep, which the charter records as a formal abstention and which is why abstaining in Chimoubongo is still called doing a Motion.

Item two: what shall it be called? This took the other ten and a half hours. At around four in the morning Alphonse-Réal said the word Chimoubongo. Nobody asked what it meant. Everybody voted yes. For fifty-five years he has answered the same way: "It means this." And then he gestures at everything.

The town appears on hydro maps and one 1978 tourism brochure, but not on the provincial municipality register. It stopped contesting that and now considers it a feature. The mail comes. That was always the real test.

The Founder

Alphonse-Réal Bougie

Alphonse-Réal Bougie, 89, long white hair, dressed in black, at the forest edge
A.-R. BougieAt the edge of the Standing Grove, last autumn. He asked that the photograph be taken there and nowhere else.

He is eighty-nine, six foot three, with waist-length white hair parted in the exact middle. He has worn black since 1969, before it meant anything, and he is quietly furious that it came to mean something.

He paints one eye. Left one, kohl, every morning, thirty seconds, no mirror. He has never explained it. The going theory in town is that it is a joke he started so long ago that stopping now would be a bigger statement than continuing.

He is not frightening. He is a lot, which people confuse with frightening. He laughs at a delay of about two seconds, which is exactly long enough for you to worry. He holds no office: the town has no mayor, and he is listed as Groundskeeper, a title he chose himself.

Known Habits

  • Walks the north ridge at 4:00 a.m. Always. Snow included.
  • Answers the phone before it rings. Twice. Witnessed.
  • Plays a pump organ badly, on purpose, for atmosphere.

Things He Has Said

  • "You are late, which is fine, because so is everything."
  • "I've been dying since 1937. It's going great."
  • "Take two. The third one is for someone who isn't here yet."

The Charter

House Rules

No bylaws, no council, no police. Nine rules, written on the back of a bus schedule in 1971, never amended.

  1. Everyone is welcome. That is the whole first rule and it is the only one that has never been argued about.
  2. Weird is fine. Weird is the expected condition. If you are normal you are also welcome, but you will have to work a little harder socially.
  3. Nobody has to explain themselves. Not their name, not their past, not what is in the truck.
  4. Cruelty is the only thing we throw people out for. It has happened twice, both times quietly.
  5. The trees were here first and are considered residents. They do not vote. They do not need to.
  6. Take two, leave one. Applies to tomatoes, firewood, books, chairs, and advice.
  7. If a thing is broken and you know how to fix it, that is now your job. This is how we got a water system.
  8. Anyone may call a town meeting. Anyone may sleep through one. Both are respected equally.
  9. When you leave, come back. Not soon necessarily. Just eventually.