Days are as long as the night is short on Lake Superior 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 kilometres—a typical voyageur day—to the mouth of the Michipicoten 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’ birchbark canot du maitre. This 36-foot monster was the ideal way to transport loads on the larger rivers and lakes between Montreal and Fort William at the head of Lake Superior. 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 shallowest 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 paddling 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 paddled 65 strokes per minute for 18 hours a day and were paid a pittance in company credit. Once ashore, respite 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 hernia 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 positions and I end up in the stern. Controlling the canoe’s momentum requires prying my two-metre-long ash paddle off the gunwale; sometimes a little too much. Too often I find myself over-correcting and causing the canoe to track a meandering course.
Sunset finds us several kilometres offshore and squinting into the horizon, looking for the cliff-lined entrance of Old Woman Bay. The voyageurs called the unpredictable wind of Lake Superior La Vielle—the Old Woman—so it’s apt that we encounter southeasterly gusts and choppy waves as we approach.
The wind hits the boat at a diagonal and a metre-high chop has us fishtailing even more than usual. It’s all I can do to lever the canoe back on course before we wallow and spin out again.
All singing on this bus has ceased by the time darkness falls. We’re still 25 kilometres from Michipicoten, and Old Woman Bay is our last possible pullout.
We’ve paddled 55 kilometres and we’re lagging, despite all the high-energy designer snacks we’ve eaten. All is quiet until someone offers a carefully formed argument for calling it a night. Despite a few half-hearted objections we decide to head for Old Woman Bay’s beach where we haul the canoe beyond Superior’s reach, flip it over and curl up underneath.
As we find space to sleep with our heads under the overturned canoe I look around and see a group of weary, wet and hungry paddlers looking more like voyageurs than I thought was possible. The only thing missing is the pork lard.
While the crew dozes off one by one, a few of us pass around a bottle of rum. Staring at the lake I think I catch a glimpse of a big canoe still braving the wind and waves. After a quick tip of the bottle it’s lost in the inky darkness.
Conor Mihell interned at Canoeroots last fall.
This article first appeared in the Spring 2006 issue of Canoeroots Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Canoeroots’ print and digital editions here.
