In the 1960s, when hippies were singing about free love and protesting the seal hunt, Ontario’s provincial park officials were clubbing massasauga rattlesnakes to death. But today, Kenton Otterbein, the head naturalist at Killbear Provincial Park, says campers are learning to live peacefully with Ontario’s only venomous snake, a species he describes as “darn cute.”

Most people wouldn’t think of massasauga rattlesnakes as cute. But then, most people don’t know much about them. They are less than three feet long with a dark and light blotchy pattern. Baby rattlesnakes are born alive without a rattle. At about 10 days of age they will rub against a rock and pull out of their first skin. The skin will catch on a knob at the end of their tail and the first segment of the rattle will form. They will add another segment two or three times each year when they shed their skin.

When camping and travelling in Ontario’s rattlesnake country it is rare to ever hear the rattle of a massasauga. They want nothing more than to avoid contact with humans. Being cold-blooded, they are only active within a narrow temperature band, one only reached between the hours of noon and 4 p.m. during the spring and between 4 and 10 p.m. during the summer.

Nonetheless, persecution by humans has relegated massasauga rattlesnakes to only a few pockets of habitat in Ontario, the most notable being the eastern shore of Georgian Bay. Statistics kept by the staff at Killbear Provincial Park indicate that, though incidents are rare, the people most often bitten by a massasauga rattlesnake are 18- to 30-year-old men, who’ve been boozing and are acting like the Crocodile Hunter—the guy from the television show of the same name who travels around the world catching poisonous reptiles and insects to impress his female co-stars. The other recorded snake bites are the results of people accidentally stepping on a snake in the dark. Otterbein at Killbear says the chances of being bitten are very low,

“There is a greater risk of drowning in a bathtub at home than being bitten by one of our rattlesnakes.”

In those rare cases that a snakebite does occur, first aid is the same as it is for any small puncture wounds says Lorraine Vankoughnett, the acting director of acute care at West Parry Sound Hospital. Parry Sound hospitals treat up to six bites per year and provide medical research and education across Canada. Vankoughnett says the best thing to do is to stay calm, clean the wound, bandage it loosely and seek medical help. “And do not bring me the snake,” she adds, in the hopes of dispelling a myth.

At the hospital, Vankoughnett and her team would perform blood tests and observe the patient for up to 24 hours. They have found that in one out of every four snakebites there is no venom injected into the wound. From the snake’s perspective, biting a human is defensive and a waste of its precious venom. They need to save their venom for mice.

Buried miles beneath our feet in the cavities and caverns of the earth are thousands of untold tales that date back millennia. When you know what to look for, sagas of glacial shifts, continental collisions and seismic activity can be read in the stone.

Modern versions of those stories are given expression in objects that we take for granted every day. Gardeners fortify their soil with lime. Cooks enliven their food with salt. We purify our water with carbon. In fact, minerals can be found in batteries, computers, televisions, kitchen appliances, cancer treatments, X- ray machines, vitamins and cosmetics. It’s something many of us don’t think about often, but the same can’t be said of the 13,000 rockhounds who descend on Bancroft during the August long weekend.

Long known as the mineral capital of Canada, Bancroft is a haven for rockhounds the world over.

Famous for its annual Rockhound Gemboree, now in its 43rd year, Bancroft has a rich history of mining that dates back more than a century.

Since that time, the town of 4,000 has gone through various peaks and valleys of commercial production booms in feldspar, soaps, paint and glass. Marble production marked another peak in the town’s mining history, resulting in the mineral’s use in such landmarks as Ottawa’s Parliament Buildings and Toronto’s Union Station. The last great boom occurred during the 1960s when uranium reached its zenith in world markets.

Bancroft’s first Gemboree coincided with the closure of the Faraday Mine in 1964. Since then, the town has capitalized on its rich history and geological diversity to attract a steady stream of tourists to the area. Chief among the region’s tectonic oddities are the large number of pegmatites that lay hidden beneath the earth.

Pegmatites contain an inner core of quartz and an outer shell sometimes speckled with radioactive materials such as uraninite. Pegmatites occur when volcanic activity is diverted by substantial barriers—such as the vast Canadian Shield. When the diverted lava cools underground it hardens and remains riddled with dazzling minerals such as sodalite.

The pegmatites are one of the major attractions that lure rock-hounds to the Gemboree says Christine Hattin, the events coordinator with the Bancroft Chamber of Commerce. “Exhibitors and dealers come from as far away as Europe, Iraq and Pakistan,” she says. Visitors are offered field trips to more than 30 collecting sites, have opportunities to hear lectures from geological experts and even pan for gold.

Although you don’t require a background in geology to collect minerals, it is important to outfit yourself with the appropriate gear prior to venturing out to collection sites. A basic rockhound survival kit includes safety goggles, boots, sample bags, a backpack, water, a pry bar, a compass and a small sledgehammer or pick. More experienced collectors often carry a hand lens, gloves, hardhat, guidebook and identification kits.

Commonsense safety guidelines should also be adhered to. Collect with a partner, tell someone where you’re going and stay out of abandoned mines, as these can be particularly hazardous.

Hattin suggests starting your rockhounding experience with a visit to the Gemboree to speak with other mineral enthusiasts.

“You find a diversity of minerals here and lots of people simply don’t have that where they live,” says Hattin. “For them, the experience is unique.”

Earlier this spring the Lawrence & Memorial Hospital in New London, Connecticut, was locked down while police searched the building for an armed man. Apparently, an emergency department nurse had spotted a double-barrelled shotgun poking out of the top of a worn and tattered backpack. She alerted hospital management, management notified the police, the police called in the SWAT team and the SWAT team took the building—like the final scene in a Bruce Willis action movie.

Meanwhile in the lunchroom, two hospital employees chatted about their weekends. One pulled a black, carbon fibre breakdown kayak paddle from the suspect backpack and thanked his friend for loaning it to him. Then they rinsed their coffee mugs and walked into the hall to start their shifts.

The hospital officials and the authorities called it an honest mistake. Surely the nurse did the right thing reporting what she thought was a shotgun. No charges were laid, though the two hospital workers were asked to leave their paddles at home.

Soon after hearing this story, I was flying from Vancouver to Toronto. I travel light and seldom check any bags. I had just a carry-on, a laptop bag and a canoe paddle. I’d broken the shaft on a river trip last summer and shipped it west for repair; I picked it up while I was in Vancouver to save shipping costs. At the security corral I placed my bags, shoes, keys, coins and my repaired paddle on the conveyor belt and walked through the doorframe to the lady with the wand.

Maybe our new heritage minister should launch a national program designed to put our youth more in touch with this country’s heritage.

Big signs are posted all over the airport, signs showing the items banned from air travel. You can’t board an airplane carrying jackknives, mace, chainsaws, or fire extinguishers. For the record, paddles are not on the sign.

Soon I was kneeling on the carpet in front of a half-dozen security staff who’d gathered around me in a semicircle. None of them knew what I was doing. I said it was the J stroke. Empty faces.

The conveyors were stopped, no one was checking through. People were going to miss flights. “Oh for Christ’s sake,” some guy in a suit shouted from the lineup. “He’s canoeing.”

Now here’s some wonderful irony. Canada’s national carrier doesn’t allow you to carry on a paddle. Yet, for hundreds of years the canoe was the national carrier. I had to explain to the staff of Air Canada that my so-called weapon was not a weapon but a canoe paddle. How sad.

I wonder how Pierre Trudeau, our paddling prime minister, or Beverley J. Oda, our new federal heritage minister, would feel about this. There is no symbol more Canadian than a canoe and paddle.

Maybe our new heritage minister should launch a national program designed to put our youth more in touch with this country’s heritage. After a full royal commission it would be written in a 600-page document that children should go away for a couple of weeks each summer and learn to paddle and explore, by canoe, nearby lakes and rivers. The report would recommend that they go to summer camp, a place where rows of canoes line the water’s edge and racks of weapons, just like mine, are for children to play with so that someday when they are standing in an airport they’ll remember that there are at least two ways to travel across Canada.  

This article first appeared in the Summer 2006 issue of Canoeroots Magazine.