Saint-Jean Port-Joli has carved a place for itself as Quebec's -- and possibly all of Canada's -- crafts capital. It earned its reputation through wood sculpturing, a craft as much associated with the south shore Saint-Laurent villagers as soapstone carving is with the country's Eskimos and snowshoe fashioning with its Indians.

The handiwork of farmers and seafarers brought from France by the late-1600s settlers became the carved decoration in the village church. The depression of the 1930s gave the craft, which had diminished as a pastime with the demands of farm life, new meaning.

That was when the Saint-Jean Port-Joli born and bred Bourgault brothers revived the hobby to give their out-of-work neighbors something to do with idle hands.