More Trails, More Tales. Bob Henderson

Later, the Gastle family started an annual sleigh ride, which one year attracted three thousand arrivals down the country lane. Today, the sleigh ride is still a Northcote event, as are school camping outings. History is brought to life in other ways than just northern travel; the school conducts an American Civil War re-enactment on the grounds.[17] I can’t help but think George and Lionel Douglas would have been amused and might have gone canoeing. Yet, this speaks to a new life for Northcote, once a conduit to northern travel, now possibly to be restored to offer new energy and life to the place. This energy will involve lots of canoeing, camping, and winter recreation. It will involve experiential re-enactments, symposia, and a place to ponder Douglas’s time here on the Trent-Severn waterway and on Great Bear Lake to and from the Coppermine. Douglas didn’t write a grocery list travel account (nor did Stefansson nor Patterson), but he was a meticulous list taker who was well organized and, simply put, “got it right” in the North. I was to learn he got it right as a dweller at Northcote too. As for Patterson and Stefansson, it is good to have something tangible along with their travel accounts to help imagine the traveller. With Douglas, there is the added local and family histories alive on the Northcote farm. As Stephen Leacock learned, I hope people come to realize the cabins and houses among the brambles are part of history with these three early 1900s northern travellers. Herein lie histories with much to teach us that will help us reclaim the simple pleasures of outdoor life.

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      4

      The French River and Georgian Bay:

       Big Eddies and Ice Fields in Spring Waters

      “Historians worth their salt are storytellers.”[1]

      — John Boyko

      I have been writing about my travels for forty years now. This little outing on the French River has always stood out because of the intense similarity of two moments: one at a rapid, the other a common ex­­perience dealing with lake ice canoe travel. Like many trips, it was also memorable for friendship, glorious weather, and the joy of time away experienced as time found. Now, over twenty years since the trip, there is an added quality of … well … concern. Am I honouring the Indigenous people who first travelled here in their homeland? Am I a player in a decolonizing movement that should connect all canoeists, as the canoe is part of our national story? When we tell a grand narrative, such as the Canadian national story with the canoe as a centrepiece, we will always leave out aspects of the overall story. Young Canadian scholars (younger than I, certainly) are asking canoeists to be aware of what is so often left out when folks like me speak or write about the joys and trials of our canoe trips.[2] The question decolonizing literature would ask is, are canoe trip travel writing and the white Anglo canoe tripper complicit in the oppression of Indigenous peoples? I hope to answer this here. I do think it is good that we are thinking about such things more now than we did twenty years ago. But first, some canoe trip writing — more trails and more tales that explore Canada’s past.