Table Of ContentNASTAWGAN
The Canadian North by Canoe &Snowshoe
A Collection of Historical Essays
Edited by Bruce W. Hodgins
and Margaret Hobbs
'Nastawgan' is an Anishinabai word meaning
'the way or the route one must take to get
through the country!
Betelgeuse Books
Toronto, Canada
Nastawgan is used with the consent of the Wilderness Canoe Association
which publishes a quarterly journal of the same name.
Wilderness Canoe Association
PO Box 496
Station K
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M4P 2G9
Published by Betelgeuse Books
in co-operation with the
Ontario Recreational Canoeing Association
1220 Sheppard Avenue East
Willowdale, Ontario
Canada M2K 2X1
© Betelgeuse Books
First Edition 1985 (hardcover) ISBN: 0-9690783-34
Second Printing 1987 (paperback) ISBN: 0-9690783-4-X
Betelgeuse Books
PO Box 1334
Station B
Weston, Ontario
Canada M9L 2W9
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
Nastawgan : the Canadian north by canoe 4 snowshoe
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
I. Canada, Northern - Description and travel -
Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Canoes and
canoeing - Canada, Northern - History - Addresses,
essays, lectures. I. Hodgins, Bruce W., 1931-
II. Hbbbs, Margaret.
PC70.N37 1985 917.1*0^ C85-098989-2
F1012.N3? 1985
Printed in Canada
Typeset and assembled by Directart Inc., Harm/ton, Ontario
ii
This volume is an acclamation of
the northern wilderness* Let us
strive for its survival*
iii
The publisher gratefully acknowledges the
contribution of Ria Harting who provided
all the sketches for this book.
iv
NASTAWGAN
The Canadian North by Canoe &Snowshoe
Edited by Bruce W. Hodgins and Margaret Hobbs
Foreword: Eric W. Morse
Introduction.
Bruce W. Hodgins and Margaret Hobbs 1
The Quest Pattern and the Canoe Trip.
William C. James 9
David Thompson's Explorations of the Muskoka and Madawaska Rivers.
C. E. S. Franks 25
History, Travel and Canoeing in the Barrens.
George J. Luste 39
Purposeful Wanderers: Late Nineteenth Century Travellers to the Barrens.
Margaret Hobbs 57
The Mounted Police in the Barren Lands: the Pelletier Expedition of 1908.
John Jennings 83
George M. Douglas and the Lure of the Coppermine.
Shelagh D. Grant 99
Women of Determination: Northern Journeys By Women Before 1940.
Gwyneth Hoyle 117
The Written Word on Canoeing and Canoe Tripping Before 1960.
Bruce W. Hodgins 141
"Idleness, Water and a Canoe": Canadian Recreational Paddling
Between the Wars.
Jamie Benidickson 163
The Nastawgan: Traditional Routes of Travel in the Temagami District.
Craig Macdonald 183
The Lure of the Temagami-Based Canoe Trip.
Bruce W. Hodgins 189
Kawartha Lakes Regattas.
Jean Murray Cole 203
The Heritage of Peterborough Canoes.
John Marsh 211
Wilderness and Culture.
John Wadland 223
The Contributors 229
Index 230
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Foreword
Change in Wilderness Canoeing in Canada
During the Past 65 Years
From an address to the A.G.M. of
the Wilderness Canoe Association, Marc/i, 1984 by
Eric W. Morse
I made my first wilderness canoe trip in 1918, just over sixty'five years ago. My
memories of that trip are still vivid. The equipment was, of course, different from
today's. The earliest maps, for instance, were less accurate as to rivers and lakes, in
those days before aeroplanes and pilots had been released from World War I to
start our first aerial mapping. Portages, on the other hand, were most faithfully
portrayed, so that the map as a whole rather resembled a picture of an old fishnet
hung up to dry. Dehydrated foods were practically non-existent till well after the
war, making provisioning more difficult, and food a lot heavier to portage. Our
mattresses consisted merely of bracken, and hemlock or balsam branches, spread
under waterproof sheets. Light mountain tents were unavailable; our tents were
large and heavy, if they were taken at all. Often we slept simply with heads under a
mosquito bar, sometimes two beneath an overturned canoe. A candle in a can
served as a flashlight. A copper trolling line was always out when crossing lakes,
for we counted on any fish we could catch. Berries, too, were picked with a sense
of purpose.
But beyond such matters of equipment was the difference in the sense of
wilderness. In fact a canoe trip was a total wilderness experience. I cannot recall
encountering other canoe parties until the early thirties. My most vivid wilder-
ness image is the bird chorus, mostly warblers and thrushes, whose insect diet was
soon to be killed off by sprayed insecticides. From five in the morning or earlier,
every diminutive male was voicing, clamorously and rapturously, his own partic-
ular version of the territorial imperative, in chorus so loud that few could sleep
through it. The ugly prophecy implicit in Rachel Carson's Silent Spring has since,
tragically, been fulfilled.
Canoeing traffic increased appreciably after 1918 and again after 1945.1
was slowly becoming aware that, at least in the pressure zones of Montreal and
Toronto, we were unlikely again to experience the wilderness I had once been
lucky enough to know.
Provincial Parks such as Algonquin and Killarney, designed to fence out
developing interests such as mining and lumbering, for a time provided good
canoe country free of developers, but even in that they failed: paradoxically, the
Parks began attracting canoeists in such numbers as to defeat their end. A friend
of mine, in one Park encountered no fewer than 300, not canoeists, but canoes—
in a single day.
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Trying to stem what was happening, Park authorities began to stipulate
"designated campsites only," which only made these into dusty pockets. Canoe
parties of as many as forty were admitted to Parks. On the more popular routes,
often the portage path became marked out, like some sordid paper chase, by gum
wrappers and orange peel. The business of loading and unloading at portage
landings—even the simple matter of two parties passing on a narrow portage
path—became seriously impeded.
This was change—not individual, trivial changes, but one big, almost
revolutionary change. For the wilderness canoeist, at least in the east, could no
longer find readily accessible canoe country. Not canoeing as such, but its essen-
tial milieu, had retreated.
In 1951 I joined a group of canoeing friends. Though a little long in the
tooth, we were a strong if not yet fully experienced party, choosing to learn skills
such as whitewater as we went along. There were no "schools" as yet set up for
learning canoeing techniques—and we certainly did not want to take along
guides, who already were becoming more proficient at fixing outboard motors
than in adopting the strenuous regimen of an amateur canoe party.
In 1952 we decided to look at the Quetico region. From a camp that we
made near the shore of Lake Superior we portaged the nine miles of the Grand
Portage and paddled along the beautiful Border Lakes canoe route as far as Fort
Frances at the west end of Rainy Lake. Here we were entertained by the local
Chamber of Commerce, as being the first canoeing group that had paddled from
Lake Superior to Fort Frances in recent years. In 1953 and 1954 we made two more
exploratory trips in Quetico, during one of which we came upon a large sign
erected by the Minnesota Historical Society, on the Grand Portage. The sign
informed us that the portage path we were on had first been trodden by La
Verendrye in 1732, and had carried those voyageurs of the Northwest Company
who were bearing trade goods from Montreal to Fort Chipewyan on Lake Atha-
basca, and fur pelts back. Every Canadian explorer of the west (Mackenzie, Fraser,
David Thompson, and others)—in an age when there was no rail, nor air, nor
motor means of travel, and when the only "highways" were rivers and lakes—had
used this path. Running beside the Pigeon River, it ascended the thousand-foot
rise from Lake Superior to reach the plateau on top where the continental divide
lay, and whence the waters flowed west. This was their very path.
We were impressed by the reading of the sign and all were inspired, for our
next year's trip, to attack the other end of this celebrated fur trade route, but
without the labour of going over the thirteen-mile Methye Portage. That route
headed east down the Churchill and Saskatchewan, and crossed Lake Winnipeg
to pick up the Winnipeg River, connected to the Grand Portage by the water
route we were already on
In 1955 we therefore flew out to He a la Crosse near the source area of the
Churchill River in northern Saskatchewan. In the next three weeks we
descended the Churchill, Sturgeon-weir, and Saskatchewan Rivers for 500 miles,
to take out at The Pas, Manitoba. We had seen so few other canoeists as to
viii
confirm our feeling that we did not really require wilderness by legislation:
difficulty, danger, and occasional discomfort took care of its protection. Sigurd
Olson, the most experienced of our party, said after the Churchill River trip that
this was as good canoe country as he had ever paddled.
In 1957, looking for another route in the same general area, we scanned
early journals during the winter months and planned next summer's route.
Nearly 200 years earlier the Northwest Company had found that canoes sent up
the Churchill and across the Methye Portage were likely to be blocked by ice in
the higher lakes. The Company ordered David Thompson to explore a back route,
whereby these lakes and the long thirteen-mile portage itself could be avoided. In
1796 therefore Thompson went up the Reindeer River, lying 20 miles east of Frog
Portage, and continued northward for another 100 miles on Reindeer Lake. From
its northern end he headed west then north via Swan Lake and the Blondeau
River, which he ascended as far as possible, then portaged over to Wollaston Lake.
The Fond du Lac River then led him into the east end of Lake Athabasca, not far
from Fort Chipewyan. We followed Thompson's route, enjoying good canoeing
with beautiful, wild scenery.
Over the next decade we canoed waterways along Superior's rugged
north shore, across the top of Manitoba and Saskatchewan, and through the
Territories, amounting in the end to a transcontinental paddle from Montreal to
Alaska.
All this was mostly in Pre-Cambrian terrain, the Churchill and Fond du
Lac so beautiful that we wondered why they had not been set aside as national
parks.
And so the quest for good canoe country led on, shifting further north to
the great rivers of the arctic and sub-arctic, where primitive wilderness still
existed.
A less purely personal account would say, more succinctly, that change in
wilderness canoeing in Canada during the past sixty-five years has been twofold:
the retreat of wilderness in the eastern canoe country (Haliburton, Muskoka, the
shore of Georgian Bay, Algonquin Park, and Temagami), which was more vulnera-
ble to the population pressure from the large eastern cities—this was a qualitative
change affecting only the wilderness environment once offered; and a quantita-
tive change, extending the concept of canoe country into the areas of the Shield
in the northern parts of the three prairie provinces, and eventually to the arctic
and subarctic portions of the mainland.
E. W. M.
"Wildwood"
March, 1985
ix
