E X O T I C BUYER’S GUIDE
MothershipConnection BY CONOR MIHELL Paddling in the Path of the Voyageurs
DAYS ARE AS LONG as the night is short on Lake Supe- rior in June. Still, darkness had already fallen by the time we landed on Old Woman Beach, flipped over our 36-foot canoe and scarfed down a scant dinner. Now, the first of my voyageur crewmates are snoring restlessly and after a last slug of rum, I’ll join them. In a couple of hours—well before dawn—we’ll be back at the paddle. To settle a debate among some paddling friends about
just how tough the voyageurs were compared to modern paddlers, we gathered 13 coureurs du bois wannabes and piled into a replica of a fur trade canoe to paddle part of a historic trade route along the coast of Lake Superior Provincial Park. We would head northwest for 80 kilome- tres—a typical voyageur day—to the mouth of the Mich- ipicoten River where the remains of a fur trade post that once meant a day or two of rest and rum for the voyageurs can still be found amid shoreline alders. Our craft is a fibreglass replica of the voyageurs’ birch-
bark canot du maitre. This 36-foot monster was the ideal way to transport loads on the larger rivers and lakes be- tween Montreal and Fort William at the head of Lake Su- perior. A high bow and stern made it seaworthy in large rapids and Great Lakes swells, yet its shallow draft let its crews find protection from sudden gales in the shallow- est of coves. At 600 pounds, it was light enough to be carried over portages by voyageurs glad to get a break from paddling. Two hundred years ago dozens of these canoes paddled
this shoreline every year, loaded down with four tonnes of such trade goods as rifles, ammunition and cooking pots. At Fort William the Montreal brigades would rendezvous with a fleet of 25-foot canots du nord each packed to the gunwales with furs from the nearly endless waterways of Canada’s interior. After one hell of a party and a hasty, hungover exchange
of cargo, the canoes retraced their routes: the canots du maitre returned to Montreal so the furs could be shipped to Europe, and the canots du nord headed upriver to the scattered trading posts of the interior. It only takes a few minutes on board to realize that pad-
dling a voyageur canoe is like riding in a school bus. They are about the same length and both encourage sing-alongs and juvenile humour. In the bow, the avant sets the pace in stroke and in song and rows of bench seats segregate gung- ho paddle-pushers in the front from bad-ass lily-dippers in the back. Getting 12 to 14 paddlers in synch is as easy as keeping a bus load of grade-schoolers quiet, but when it happens, the canoe cruises at 10 kilometres per hour. Among voyageurs, there were no lily-dippers. They pad-
dled 65 strokes per minute for 18 hours a day and were paid a pittance in company credit. Once ashore, respite
3 2 n C A NOE ROOT S early summer 2006
came with a chunk of pork lard, a slug of rum, some stale tobacco and too little sleep on a cold beach. Most walked with a hunchbacked spine and many died young of a her- nia or heart attack on a remote portage.
Midway to Michipicoten, I’m given the responsibility of keeping the canoe on course when we reshuffle our posi- tions and I end up in the stern. Controlling the canoe’s mo-
Most voyageurs walked with a
hunchbacked spine and died young of a hernia or heart attack on a remote portage
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