Napoléon-Alfred D'Amour was born in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield on April 22, 1884. The son of Napoléon-Édouard D'Amour and Henriette Sauvé, he began his career as an operator for the Grand Trunk Railway in Hawkesbury, in 1903. He continued his work in Allendale in 1904 and North Bay in 1905 and 1906, prior to becoming station agent for Canadian Pacific in Webwood (1906-1909).
N.-A. D'Amour held the same position in various cities in Ontario and Québec. Then he married Marie-Laurette Boudreau in Algoma, Ontario, on July 25, 1910, and settled in LaSalle, at Highlands train station (1916-1947). He even went into politics for a short time and served as City Councillor from 1921 to 1923 under Mayor Anatole Carignan. He had defeated his opponent, outgoing City Councillor Delphis Larente, 42-25 in the elections. Then in 1923, D'Amour quit municipal politics.
A versatile line of work
In fact, in those days, his job as station agent amply occupied him, as—in addition to selling tickets to passengers, writing documents related to freight transportation, handling telegraph communications as well as looking after receiving or sending mail carried by train, he kept the Highlands station in good condition, not to mention its heating, too.
During the 1940s, he was in charge of a team of telegraph operators and clerks and had the responsibility of looking after the tracks at the CP rail yard. A number of companies in LaSalle used the train to deliver or receive goods. Samuel Bronfman, one of the founders of Seagram's, the famous whiskey distillery, sometimes came to see him to ensure the safe transportation of his plant's production. The theft of whiskey bottles had to be prevented, but this did not prevent the two men from exchanging a few jokes when they got together.
