BURSTMichel Saint-Amour began his day at the historic Fort Langley site with a messy, but necessary cleaning of the blacksmith shop that dusted his face with soot.
“We’re getting the ash out of the coke and then we’ll start the fire.” Saint-Amour explained.
A resident of Mission, the 72-year-old Saint-Amour has been demonstrating the art of blacksmithing for about five years at the 12-acre fort at 23433 Mavis Ave.
Visitors to the historic site often ask Saint-Amour if he has always been a blacksmith.
“I get, yeah, what’s your background? Did you do blacksmithing before? And the answer is no, I learned it all here,” he said. “I was just coming here, volunteering and working with Danny, our regular blacksmith, and then learning from him.”
Meet the blacksmith who demonstrates Voyageur era metal-forging skills at Historic Fort Langley. pic.twitter.com/by6NZeGvxA
— Langley Advance Times (@LangleyTimes) April 20, 2026
Back in the day, Saint-Amour worked on a servicing gang that operated on the railroad between Calgary and Edmonton, hammering in spikes with a maul.
He went on to change careers and became a school teacher.
“And of course, this is still a teaching job because I’m teaching history, teaching also skills and trying to promote getting away from buying things all the time,” he said.
“You can make your own stuff.”
At the 16th annual Vive les Voyageurs Festival celebration of French-Canadian and Métis culture on Saturday, April 18, the blacksmith shop was, as always, a focus of attention for curious visitors.
“I get inspiration from the people that come here because, well, they’re always in a good mood,” Saint-Amour told the Langley Advance Times. They want to learn. They’re fascinated and they’re interested. You know, they come to the site to learn. And that’s a very exciting thing to do.
Preparing the blacksmith forge starts with a wood fire, using pieces of wood from the cooperage, the wood barrel-making building at the fort.
“We build up our fire hot enough and it lights the coal,” Saint-Amour explained. “And then, once the coal gets going, we introduce coke into it. Coke is just burnt carbon coal. And then we get the fire hot enough using the bellows, of course, which I’ll demonstrate. And then we heat up the steel and then I start working on the steel.”
Historic Fort Langley promotions officer Lin Zou agreed there is an increasing interest in our history, and not just from Canadians.
“We’ve got visitors coming all over Canada and even internationally,” Zou said as Vive les Voyageurs got underway.
“People come to Fort Langley specifically because they are interested in where B.C. came from and how B.C. became a province today, Zou said. “And how the indigenous community helped to shape this place. And people are really curious about this part of the history.”