“For fifty-four years I’ve shaped canes to fit other people’s hands. Now I can’t open my own.” — Why a seventy-one-year-old cane maker from Muskoka is letting her last 317 hand-carved canes go at a special price, before her workshop closes for good.

Between twenty and thirty percent of Canadians over sixty-five have a fall every year. Most of those falls happen at home, on the front steps, on the driveway, on the first ice of the season.

A cane lowers that risk. But only if it leaves the house.

The grey cane in the hall closet

Odette Thibodeau has made canes in Huntsville, Ontario, for fifty-four years. In that time she has heard the same story hundreds of times. Someone comes home from the hospital with a grey aluminium cane. They use it twice. Then it goes in the hall closet, and they stop going out.

“People don’t say they’re ashamed of it,” Odette says. “They say they don’t need it. Then January comes, and they stay home until April.”

Five things a cheap cane gets wrong

• “The wrist breaker” (a flat handle). A handle that sits straight across puts all the weight on the wrist. “Hold a full kettle out in front of you and count to thirty,” Odette says. “That’s your wrist on every step.”
• “The announcement” (a hollow metal tube). A thin tip on a metal pole clicks on every floor. People turn around before they even see you.
• “The cold grip” (foam or varnish). Fine in the store. In January, with a cold hand or a glove, it slides. That is the one moment a cane must not slip.
• “The rattle” (push-button height). Adjustable metal canes always rattle a little at the pin. A cane should be cut once, to the person, and left alone.
• “The patient look” (grey and medical). The biggest fault of all. A cane that makes you feel old is a cane that stays at home.

A workshop that has made canes since 1951

The workshop stands behind the house on a lake road outside Huntsville. Odette’s father, Aurèle, built it in 1951. His first cane, plain maple with a smooth hook, still hangs on the wall.

Odette started at the bench beside him in 1972. She was seventeen. In 1989 she took over. She has never done any other job.

She starts at six, when the stove is lit and the window is still dark. Her husband Gérard, a retired snowplow driver, brings coffee in a thermos at ten. She runs her thumb along a rough edge without looking up.

“Papa said a cane is fitted like a shoe,” she says. “You start with the hand, not the wood.”

Fifty rolls of brown paper

That rule is why there is a shelf of brown paper rolls in the corner. Before a grip is cut, the hand is traced in pencil. Papa did it. Odette still does it. More than fifty rolls, full of hands.

The winter her own mother stayed home

In January 1994 Odette’s mother, Thérèse, slipped on the icy church steps after Mass. She came home from the hospital with a grey aluminium cane.

She took it out exactly twice. Then she stayed inside. All winter. No church, no grocery store, no coffee with her friends.

“I’d made canes for half of Huntsville,” Odette says. “And my own mother sat at home all winter because of a grey one.”

So Odette traced Maman’s hand on brown paper and shaped a grip to it. Every evening, Maman listened to the barred owls calling over the lake. Odette carved an owl.

The next Sunday, Maman went back to Mass.

Before that winter, the workshop made plain canes. Since then, every grip has had an animal on it.

Shape first. The animal comes last.

First Odette shapes the grip until it sits right in an open hand. Only then does the owl or the horse come out of the wood. “Do it the other way round,” she says, “and you get something pretty that hurts to hold.”

From the first saw cut to the last coat of oil, one cane takes her about nine hours. Most of that is the grip.

Why people actually take one of her canes out the door

• “The Palm Line.” The grip is shaped to the open palm first, the way Papa did it in 1951. The animal is carved around it afterwards. The weight spreads across the whole hand, not two knuckles.
• “The Wrist-Saving Angle.” The handle sits at a slight angle, not flat across. The weight goes into the palm and forearm instead of the wrist.
• “The High Balance.” The weight sits up near the grip. The cane swings forward on its own as you walk, so the hand does less work.
• “The Oiled Grip.” Rubbed with oil by hand, never varnished. Varnish gets slippery with a cold hand or a glove. Oiled wood gets a better grip, not a worse one.

Four animals for four different hands

The Owl is for a weak or stiff grip. The rounded chest fills the whole palm. It was Maman’s, and it is still the one people ask for first.

The Horse is for travelling. The brass ring unscrews, so the cane comes apart for the car, the bus or the flight to see the grandkids.

The Elephant is for people who really lean on it. The curled trunk is a hook for the fingers when getting up out of a low chair.

The Leopard is for longer walks. “This one goes to people who still walk the dog every morning,” Odette says. “Snow or not.”

Where her canes end up

Odette still gets letters. A man in Thunder Bay who walks to the Legion again. A woman in Moncton who took the owl to her granddaughter’s wedding and made sure it was in the photos. “Nobody writes to tell me how nice it looks on the wall,” Odette says. “They write to tell me where they went.”

The hands that can’t open anymore

It started in 2023 with a small lump in her right palm. The hand surgeon in Barrie gave it a name: Dupuytren’s. The fingers slowly pull in toward the palm. Now it is in both hands.

This fall, her ring and little fingers stopped straightening. The sawing still goes. The oiling still goes. But Papa taught her to check every grip by laying her hand flat on it. She can’t do that anymore. And a carving knife in a curled hand slips.

317 canes, and then the door is locked

Odette doesn’t complain. Her daughter Annick is a nurse in Sudbury. There is nobody to take over. After seventy-five years, the workshop Papa built will close with her.

What is left stands in a rack along the back wall: 317 canes. Owls, horses, elephants and leopards, all carved, oiled and finished. When they are gone, they are gone.

Why she priced them the way she did

Two collectors from Toronto drove up in September. They wanted to buy the whole back wall. Odette said no.

She kept the price low on purpose. “A cane on a wall is a cane that failed,” she says. “I want them on the church steps this winter. On the driveway. In the line at Canada Post. At the rink on Saturday morning.”

Gérard drives the parcels to the post office in town. Anyone who gets one of these last canes is carrying on seventy-five years of one family’s work.

What people say about Odette’s canes

• ★★★★★

  Mom had two canes and used neither. She has carried the owl every day since September, including on the ice at church. She tells everyone who made it.

  Linda M. · Peterborough ON
• ★★★★★

  I bought the horse because it comes apart for the car. What sold me was the grip in winter. With gloves on, my old one slid. This one doesn’t.

  Doug R. · Red Deer AB
• ★★★★★

  The angle of the handle makes a real difference. With my old cane my wrist ached all evening after the walk to the store. Same walk with the elephant and nothing.

  Pierre L. · Sudbury ON

Questions people ask before ordering

More from people who carry one

• ★★★★★

  Bought the leopard for my husband, who walks the dog along the river every morning and refused anything that looked medical. He has given it a name. That tells you how it went.

  Carol B. · Kamloops BC
• ★★★★★

  You can feel the grain right through the finish. It came in brown paper with the length written on the end in pencil. My granddaughter cut it to my height in five minutes.

  Ken T. · Brandon MB
• ★★★★★

  I’m eighty-two and I’d stopped going to church in winter because of the steps. The elephant got me back up them. The priest asked where I got it.

  Monique G. · Moncton NB