- - DONT LET NOBODY TRY TO STEAL YOUR GLORY THAT DONT KNOW YOUR STORY! Here is one of my favorite campfire stories - FOLLOW THE LEADER ! ‘ “ Not interested in trying for the Chibougamau? “ Finlay watched the other closely. Bathoche’s eyes glittered. “ Chibougamau? “ he sneered, “ Onlee fool head for de Chibougamau from here! “ ” And they paid for it by drowning in the Waswanipi rapids - all of them. “ Batoche’s pale eyes probed the inscrutable face of the white man, then shifted to the spruce ridge, beyond the river, silhouetted against the rose afterglow in the western sky. “ Ah-hah! “ he said,after a space. “ Onlee Montagnais Indian travel dat Waswanipi. It ees bad water. De prospector all go in from Lac St. Jean. “ ” I hear that Isadore’s people found a piece of a canoe.” “ For sure! All smash up below beeg rapide on Waswanipi! “ ” Which party was that? “ ” Two young fallar who go in last year wid Peterboro cano’. “ Finlay’s eyes clung for an instant to the purple ridge as pain lanced through him. “ That’s all they found - no bodies or outfit? “ Batoche shook his head. “ Dat’s all! “ VANISHED MEN by George T. Marsh -1939 - Ever since I was a boy, I have enjoyed reading books about the colorful French Canadian Voyageurs who in olden days paddled and portaged the great Northern Wilderness of Hudson’s Bay - the birth place of the Northwest Wind - Keewaydin. My favorite stories are those written by George T. Marsh and illustrated by Frank E. Schoonover, one of the Giants of the Golden Age of children’s book illustrations. Both men knew and loved the North Woods through personal experience, and their joint efforts in producing such classics as TOILERS OF THE TRAIL and SLED TRAILS AND WHITE WATERS are unmatched to this day in the creative art of the North Land. While pouring over pictures of Voyageurs shooting the rapids or poling up streams and reading of their exploits, I would dream of - some day - traveling myself to the Regions of the Home Wind. As a young man, I was fortunate enough to follow in the wake of my childhood heroes - the Voyageurs. As a canoe-man for Keewaydin, I paddled and portaged for over twenty years most of the waterways of New England and many of the canoe routes of Ontario and Quebec, Canada. My tripping days took place during the twilight of the era of the wood and canvas canoe.It was a wonderful time to be a canoe-man: roads had made even the remotest areas within reach and it was historically a time of peace in North America. Voyageurs have always been a peaceful breed. Indeed, it has often been said, “ the French Canadian Voyageurs were never great fighters nor great hunters, in terms of Anglo-Saxon frontiersman, but it was said of them that they laughed in ‘ farther places ‘ “. When I stowed my paddle in 1980, I knew that it was time to retire from canoe tripping. By coincidence, I was 33 years old then - ‘ l’age de Christ ‘ - as the Voyageurs would say. That same age when they too often would retire because of the physical demands of a Voyageurs way of life and turn from the ‘ toil of the trail ‘ to more spiritual endeavors. Now the memories of my trips cause my heart to take wing and the Voyageur songs of yesterday flood my soul and compel me to use my art to create pictures and stories of North Woods canoeing. Two lines from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “ The Song of Hiawatha “ provides the title for my favorite picture “ To the Regions of the Home Wind, of the Northwest Wind Keewaydin “. My picture, an acrylic rendering on hand carved and tooled leather, is modeled after one of Frank Schoonover’s illustrations using the skills taught me on the reservation in Lame Deer, Montana by my friend and mentor the late Northern Cheyenne Indian artist Frederick Dale Seminole. Over the years, I have never tired of reworking and exploring the possibilities of this picture. Especially because I am well aware that back in the summer of 1963 my fate, in the very same rapids on the same river, was almost the same as the one that befell those ‘ young fallars ‘ in George Marsh’s story, VANISHED MEN! Let me try to paint for you the picture. The scene is almost as clear to my recollection as when experienced it over 40 years ago. After two summers canoeing in Vermont, the Saranacs and the lakes and streams of the Adirondacks in New York, the Rangeley Lakes in Maine, and La Verendrye Pac in Quebec, Canada, I knew I was ready for a trip through what then was a truly wild country - the rivers, lakes and storied “ chemins “ of Northern Quebec. The entire summer season of nine weeks from beginning to end, June 28th to August 26th, I was a part of “ a trip of a lifetime “ - the 1963 Keewaydin Exploratory Trip - the first trip of the newly formed Keewaydin Wilderness Canoe Trips, Quebec of the legendary Keewaydin Camps. The most memorable experience of the entire trip had its beginning after mid-season on August 8th when we beached our canoes in front of a small settlement below the widening of the river, were the Chibougamau joined the Opawica to form the Waswanipi. There we came upon two large orange crosses. One cross was recently placed in the ground in memory of a woman who lived to be 100 years old. The other marked the grave of a young Indian whose body had been found the day before our arrival having drowned in the river rapids. As I looked at the crosses and contemplated the Indian’s fate, George Marsh’s story of the calamity on the Waswanipi river in the white chaos for which the rapids were given the name in the old days - The Frying Pan -came to my mind and goose bumps prickled my body as my hair stood on end! Surely our Cree guide, the famed canoe-man Jim Bossum from Lac St Jean , would continue to find us safe passage through the rapids in the river below or lead us to the portage. On leaving the settlement, as we paddled our canoes back into the swift current, over my shoulder I took one last look at the orange crosses. I admitted to myself, “ it was true, during the first month out we had shot some rapids maybe we should not have. We had some close calls “ . The Waswanipi River, which meant to old timers “ water where they spear fish by torchlight ”, was by now several hundred yards wide and in relatively a few miles we would have to drop 326 feet from Lac La Treve { 1136 ft. } to Lake Waswanipi { 810 ft.}. The following day, after a night of rain, the weather was still ominous when we broke for lunch. It was cloudy and bitter cold. The mornings work on the river had not warmed us up at all. Before lunch we paddled 16 miles, shooting a series of long but fairly easy rapids. Approaching the first rapids we encountered after lunch, we knew right away they were in a class by themselves. You could hear their roar long before you could see the spray rising above the boilers. Jim stood in his canoe, quickly found a way to lead us safely down, and gestured to us to follow directly behind his lead canoe. When my canoe reached “ the point of no return “ , I had no doubt this corner bending, high waved rapid which we had to head into at an angle was The Frying Pan! The first two canoes behind Jim’s followed his lead and made it across the big waves by going over the submerged rocks but the trippers in the next three canoes, taking their eyes off of Jim’s canoe, instead followed the canoe directly in front of their own. Each canoe, on taking the bend in the river, because of the current and the angle of the canoe, set a foot or more out into the middle of the rapid and progressively veered more and more from following directly in Jim’s wake. The third canoe in line , a heavy laden old HBC [ Hudson’s Bay Co/ ’Here Before Christ ‘ ] canoe, road a little low and went right through the standing waves but when the midstream current hit it broadside it was almost swamped by the first wave. It then shot out of the biggest plume into smaller rips before the second wave hit it. The canoe did not ship any water. The next ones, following the old HBC canoe, also made it but, further missing the mark of Jim’s lead, shipped a dangerous amount of water. It was a good thing The Frying Pan then cooled down and we soon found ourselves on Lake Waswanipi As we beached our canoes in front of the Hudson’s Bay Post at the Indian Reserve, I vowed from then on to follow the leader! Especially if my guide was an experienced North Woods Cree like Jim!Yes - my childhood dreams came true and I followed in the wake of the Voyageurs. Now - as I gaze at the old trip journal opened before me to the entry for Friday August 09, 1963, in a kind of cinematic overlay, I watch our canoes, one by one, shoot The Frying Pan. Looking through the vision, I “ see “ Lake Waswanipi and the Cree gathered that night around our camp fire listening to our Voyageur songs and tales. And I hear one wise Cree elder once again say “ yes - the last Grand Rapid is quite dangerous “.
Posted on: Mon, 26 May 2014 15:02:08 +0000
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