Choose your own pace. PHOTO: ©
GARYANDJOANIEMCGUFFIN.COM
Some rocky, some wet.. PHOTO: KEVIN CALLAN
QUETICO • Ontario O
Ontario’s Quetico Provincial Park was once part of a voya- geur route that stretched from Montreal to the furry heart of Canada. Canoe brigades met in early July just east of Quetico at Fort
William, near present day Tunder Bay, where the 36-foot birchbark canots du maitre from Montreal would exchange their metalware and muskets for the winter’s worth of pelts arriving from inland via smaller canots du nord. Once the last cask of rum ran dry, the canots du maitre would return to Mon- treal to send English gentlemen their sought-after beaver hats and the inland voyageurs would return to their posts. Shortly after hauling their newly-acquired goods across the
13-kilometre-long Grand Portage, bloodshot-eyed voyageurs would enter the 4,600-square-kilometre watery network of Quetico—lakes and rivers which drain north to Hudson Bay and the Arctic. A first-timer crossing this height of land would be awarded a black feather and be baptized an homme du nord—before paddling a few more thousand kilometres to spend a cold, lonely winter at a forgotten northern post. Te best way to recreate the voyageur experience through
Quetico is to take a week to paddle the 125-kilometre French Lake to Cache Lake loop. Starting at the French Lake ac- cess point on Highway 11, the route follows Baptism Creek to Baptism Lake—named after the voyageurs’ black feather ceremony. From here, you’ll pass through nine lakes before returning to French Lake via Pickerel Lake. With nearly 12 kilometres of portages—some rocky, some wet—you’ll earn your black feather.
MAPS: Quetico Provincial Park map
INFO:
www.ontarioparks.com www.queticofoundation.org
GUIDEBOOK: A Paddler’s Guide to Quetico and Beyond, by Kevin Callan, Boston Mills Press, available spring, 2007.
“See any beavers?” PHOTO: ©
GARYANDJOANIEMCGUFFIN.COM *For information on topographical maps, go to
www.fedmaps.com. CANOE ROOTS n 39
OUTFITTERS: Canoe Canada Outfitters, Atikokan,
www.canoecana-
da.com, 807-597-6418.
READING: Caesars of the Wilderness— the second of Peter C. New- man’s volumes recounting the history of the Hudson’s Bay Company—delves into the company’s second cen- tury and its struggle against the North West Company for monopoly control of the Canadian fur trade.
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