SIDNEY GENDRON
THE MAN WHO LISTENS TO THE TREES
This story emerged through a long-form conversation, shaped over time through listening, reflection, and careful narrative development.
I interviewed Sid as part of the Voices of the Land project, documenting Indigenous voices connected to Mississauga.
Sid didn’t grow up with his family history clearly laid out.
What he inherited was something else. Silence. Work. A sense that some things were carried quietly, because that was safer.
He didn’t learn the full story until much later.
“I was about forty-five when my dad finally sat me down,” he says. “He told me I needed to know where I come from.”
It didn’t turn him into someone new. It gave shape to something that had always been there.
Some parts of that history are difficult to hold.
Stories that don’t become family lore. Stories that stay quiet.
“My dad and his five siblings were left in a barn in winter,” Sid says. “He said, ‘I’m going into town and I’ll be back.’ He never came back.”
There are other stories too. The ones that are harder to say out loud. The ones that explain why silence can last generations.
Sid’s life in sawmilling didn’t begin as a plan.
It started with a renovation. An old barn. Wood no one wanted to touch.
So he and his wife bought a sawmill and started doing it themselves.
“It always started with ‘just a couple,’” he says. “Then it evolved.”
Over time, the work became something more defined.
Not just what he cuts, but how.
“I’m only going to sawmill logs in an environmental way,” he says. “Storm or disease. I want it verified.”
He doesn’t want to be known for cutting down healthy trees because they sell.
“That’s not what I want to be known for.”
Sid doesn’t approach carving as repetition.
“I’ll never ever do two of the same thing,” he says.
When he stands in front of a tree, he doesn’t impose an idea onto it. He waits.
“She wants to dance,” he says of a lakeside tree he carved into a jingle dancer.
“The medium will tell you how it’s going to go.”
His work is not only about wood.
It’s also about how you hold people.
He tells the story of a young man who worked with him while trying to finish nursing school. Living in a shelter. Sometimes on the street.
They helped him find housing. Supported him through school. Helped him move forward.
“Someone’s working for you,” Sid says. “Promote them. Promote them out.”
What grounds all of this is place.
The Credit River. Port Credit. Lakeview.
“It was the first highway,” he says.
To him, the land carries memory. Movement. History.
“The wood itself has a historical presence within the region.”
Sid doesn’t talk about legacy.
He talks about responsibility.
About paying attention. About not taking what isn’t yours.
About listening first.
This story was shaped through long-form interview and narrative development, and carried across both written and film.
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