Motorhome News from North America 15

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Motorhome News from North America 15 16th - 26th June 2006
Ontario, ‘Yours to Discover’, it says on the vehicle license plates. So, let’s get started.

Ontario stretches for more than 1,000 miles across central Canada, from Manitoba all the way to Quebec and it’s a similar distance from the Great Lakes in the south to the saltwater coast at Hudson Bay in the north. Great Britain would fit quite snugly in the centre. Our journey this week will take us from the vast area of forest, lakes and swamps of ‘Lake of the Woods’ along the Rainy River towards Lake Superior and Georgian Bay, and beyond to the forest and lakes of Huntsville, north of Toronto. That’s a lot of forest and a lot of lakes, with little sign of agriculture other than an occasional fragile hay-meadow. So, lock your back door, pack your wash-bag, lace up your walking boots and fasten your safety belt as you join us for a brief look at some of the wonders of northern Ontario.

The flower-filled pastures along the Rainy River came as a welcome surprise, fresh and green in the haze of a cool summer breeze off the swift-running waters, rattling the poplars on the wooded slopes of the north bank. Across the river into the mid-day sun lies Minnesota in the USA, so close you could cast an arrow to the far shore. The land and the poignant history here are the property of the Ojibway. The Kay-Nah-Chi-Wah-Nung, (‘place of the long rapids’) Historic Centre is run by the Rainy River First Nations, securing for posterity a line of ancient burial mounds overlooking a beautiful mile long stretch of the river. Little is known of the origins of the burial mounds, but their presence here in Ontario provokes reflections of practices across much of Europe around the same period. We continue to learn more about the fascinating past and present culture of the aboriginal people as we travel through North America and this fine centre opened many new windows for us. I’m a great fan of Longfellow and recall he had mentioned the Ojibway people in ‘The Song of Hiawatha.’ I asked our Ojibway guide what she could tell me about Longfellow’s reference to her people. She shook her head in response to my question. “I have not heard of Longfellow,” she replied. With that dead-end I determined to investigate further.
Meanwhile, let me quote you a little from the beginning:


Should you ask me, whence these stories?
Whence these legends and traditions,
With the odours of the forest,
With the dew and damp of meadows,
With the curling smoke of wigwams,
With the rushing of great rivers,
With their frequent repititions,
And their wild reverberations,
As of thunder in the mountains?
I should answer, I should tell you,
"From the forest and the prairies,
From the great lakes of the Northland,
From the land of the Ojibways,
From the land of the Dacotahs,
From the mountains, moors and fen-lands,
Where the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
Feeds amongst the reeds and rushes,
I repeat them as I heard them,
From the lips of Nawadaha,
The musician, the sweet singer."


Birding has been the focus of many of our walks in recent days, but the pesky little blighters are becoming difficult to see amongst the dense undergrowth and bright sunlit canopy of mixed woodland. Only the Shuh-shuh-gah stands out along the water's edge. We don’t recognise the songs of the birds, (they don’t speak English the way we do) and any sighting comes with excited fumbling for binoculars tangled up in the camera straps, before they vanish from sight in a flurry of flapping wings. Our list of North American birds sighted since our arrival in January now stands at 296 and we’re nervously searching for the elusive few to bring the total to 300 before we reach Huntsville where we plan to stop for a week or so and take a holiday amongst friends.

The jigsaw of lakes on the western borders of Ontario could well be mistaken for Finland. Indeed, there are many Finnish immigrants living in this area they now call home. The economy is dependent on tourism, mostly fresh-water fishing, and lumber - slender pine, fir and spruce, rather than the giant redwoods of the west coast.

Our plans to camp at Fort Frances were thwarted in the late afternoon when we discovered the municipal campground occupied by tents, caravans, trailers and motorhomes set up to support runners and walkers on Canada’s ‘Relay for Breast Cancer’ charity night. Entrants were expected to keep the momentum going from 7pm that evening to 7am the following morning! That all sounded a bit noisy for us and we rose to the challenge of a further 100mile drive to overnight at Atikokan further along the pink rock-lined TransCanada Highway. Campsites in the provincial and national parks continue to be sparsely occupied despite the fine weather and advancing summer months. ‘Where are all the campers?’ I enquired at one site. ‘Where are all the retired people with their trailers and motorhomes?’ ‘They’re staying at home,’ the warden told us. ‘The price of gas is keeping their cars in the garage.’ We are aware of gas price increases of course, but we are committed to our travel plans and, for the moment at least, we’re choosing to ignore it!

There are so many wonderful open spaces for Canadians to hike, fish, hunt, canoe, camp or cycle, and to share their lives with mother nature. For us travellers the National and Provincial Parks are a perfect match, strung out across the country with spacious campsites and easy forest access, fulfilling our desire to be close to wildlife and the land’s wealth of flora and fauna. Early morning overcast skies brought clammy weather to Quetico Provincial Park for our short hike in the woods. Jack pine and black spruce mingled with the deciduous maple, alder and broad-leaved oaks rising from the pink bedrock and water saturated valleys. Bunch berry, the magnificent swamp pink orchid, blue bead lily and Canada anemone carpeted the footpath verges; white admiral, dragon swallowtail and Camberwell beauty butterflies flirted with flowers and shrubs and inquisitive dragonflies chased us along the boardwalks. Janice spotted our first magnolia warbler here at the top of the trees. Like many of the more common birds, this one had eluded us for some weeks. As the sun finally broke through the thin cloud a black-backed woodpecker rattled the trees for us near its nest, a neatly bored hole in a rotting pine, the bark stripped clean around the ‘front door’. 298 species and counting.

Our now traditional special treatment greeted our arrival at Fort William (in Thunder Bay). it was just Janice, myself, and ‘Mrs Bruce’, our well-informed guide in period costume, for the best part of the afternoon. Fox, squirrel, moose, bear, mink, ermine and beaver skins were all traded here in the early 1800’s by the North West Trading Company (an enterprising group of Scots in competition with The Hudson’s Bay Co.). The furs were brought to the fort from the west by trappers, voyageurs, and local Indians. Beaver pelts were used to make felt top hats, and furs were highly desirable fashion accessories in Europe at the time. Goods arriving by sea from Europe were either exchanged for furs or transported onwards further west by the voyageurs in canoes and heavy backpacks. There were no roads of course; everything was transported by water.
Thunder Bay still stands as the transport hub on the northern shores of Lake Superior; the 110mile stretch of the Trans Canada Highway east is the only way in and out, and it’s the end of the line for ships coming up the St Lawrence and through the Great Lakes. Lumber comes into the Bay from the boreal forests, for paper- pulp, pit props, posts and palisades, along with ore from local mines and grain from Saskatchewan and Manitoba by the mile-long trainload.

As we journey across this vast nation we learn of the drive, determination and stamina of those who travel alongside us. In particular there are those who cycle the 5,000 miles across Canada, (Catherine in Vancouver for one) and those who walk. We have come across two Dutchmen, one cycling and one walking, at campsites in past weeks. Some of you might remember a young Canadian, Terry Fox who set out from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to run across Canada in 1981. A memorial to him stands just to the west of Thunder Bay 3,300miles from his starting point. He ran 26 miles each day before finally succumbing to cancer near this point. Terry won the hearts of many, bursting the pride of all Canadians and raising $24m dollars for Cancer research. What was remarkable about this young man was his character and determination to challenge a feat of such magnitude, running 26miles each day - with one leg already lost to cancer when he was just 18 years old.

Twenty six miles has been a marathon ever since the Greeks invented competitive long distance running. Strangely enough, there’s a town called Marathon a kilometre or two off the highway and we dropped in to meet the locals and poke around the shops for a few essentials. Marathon looks quite prosperous at the moment, strongly supported by wood and paper and a newer industry, gold, in its infancy having turned up here only in the past 20 years. The old part of town sports smart square box houses with neat gardens and a few speedboats on driveways, and rambling shopping malls to feed the newer wealth. But the writing is clearly on the wall for the paper plant - the thinking caps are already on to secure a future for the 4,700 inhabitants, many of whom work there.

Beautiful Pukaskwa National Park won our hearts and filled our minds with fond memories of some of our favourite places. The glacier-hewn Canadian Shield in Pukaskwa is rich with circles of pale green lichen on smooth rounded granite. Juniper, stunted birch and mountain ash struggle for survival on shallow soils; silver reindeer moss, yellow rock-rose and white flowering Labrador tea grow side-by-side, bearded moss streams from forest branches and twisted roots straggle the sweet pine-scented footpaths. Were it not for the timber-strewn sandy bays on the north facing shores of Lake Superior we would surely be hiking the trails of magical northern Sweden, way north of the Arctic Circle.

Lake Superior is rather special for a number of reasons. First and foremost, it is the largest expanse of fresh water on our diverse planet. Water temperature averages 4 degrees Centigrade, bringing cooling winds in summer and ‘warmer’ air to the shores in the depths of winter. The cool climate, shallow acidic soil and bedrock combine to bring fascinating arctic flora and fauna to the surrounding parks. Our good friend Longfellow, mentioned earlier, also mentioned a lake called ‘Gitche Gumee’. Hiawatha and the Pearl-Feather, begins; 'On the shores of Gitche Gumee, Of the shining Big-Sea-Water,' I seem to remember. But I’ve always wondered where it was. Well, now we all know. Apparently, Lake Superior is called ‘Gichigami’ (big water) by the Ojibway, and now better known by Longfellow’s interpretation.

You may recall the statue of Winnie the bear at Winnipeg Zoo in our recent blog. Like you, I thought the story might end there, but along Lake Superior’s shores there lies the little town of White River. We learned purely by accident that Winnie was originally purchased there by Lt Harry Colebourn of the 34th Fort Garry Horse and Canadian Army Veterinary Corps. The young bear was to become the soldiers’ mascot and she was named Winnie after Harry’s home-town of Winnipeg. She was left in the care of London Zoo when the 34th Fort Garry Horse were sent to fight in France in 1914 and after the war she was given to the zoo for permanent keeping. It was there that A A Milne and his son, Christopher, first saw Winnie; later to become the much-loved character Winnie-the- Pooh in Milne’s stories. We thought you might like to see the picture of Winnie with Janice and Todd. (Sorry; with a little more thought we might have pictured Winnie the motorhome with Winnie the Pooh!) We have discovered that if we search for long enough, every little hamlet has a story to tell.

As we travelled south along the eastern shores, forests of pine and fir gave way to broadleaf woodlands of polar, birch and maple, breaking the skyline on wide rocky hills, falling away to sandy beaches on the lake under stunning blue skies. There, the silver coves and rocky pools portray a scene of seaside holidays past and dreams of Treasure Island, but the crystal waters are as fresh as a mountain stream and the rock pools host crayfish and tadpoles.

There is beauty beyond belief in the wilderness parks - and mosquitoes beyond our patience without a generous spray of repellent at certain times of day. Those parks blushed by the breeze from wider waters like Lake Superior Park, and along the logging rapids of Chutes Park were free of bugs which made for more enjoyable walking. We hiked in the forest around the lakes in Killarney Park, justly named ‘The pearl of Ontario’s parks’, and high up on the granite peak above the lighthouse we spotted a pine warbler - (on a pine tree, a good clue!) taking our total to 299. Killarney sits 40miles into Superior on a peninsular. The first signs of suburban influence appeared there at the ‘seaside’ harbour, with pleasure craft, canoes, fishing dinghies and holidaymakers enjoying fish and chips from a stationery old bus, last licensed in 1976, parked amidst the flower-beds. Boy, were they good! Dropped there from outer space, I would swear I was in Port Patrick on the Galloway coast where the Irish pop over for the weekend.

The roads, even the great TransCanada Highway, are a pleasure to drive. Generally there is so little traffic we’re able to set out in the morning with the cruise control set at around 53mph and travel for an hour or two in automatic without touching the brakes. It’s best if one of us is there of course - just to help steer around the corners. The weather continues to be good to us, raining somewhat rarely and then generally overnight. Parked up for the night on Mid-Summer’s Day, the skies darkened around dinnertime, wind off the lake swept through the trees and lightning heralded the coming of thunder and heavy rain. Don’t you just love that sound of camping; the security of thrashing raindrops on canvas - or in our case, fibreglass? It’s almost as wonderful as the smell of crispy bacon, frying over an open wood-fire.

Our last night in the forest before heading to Huntsville was at Grundy Lake, a small parkland site of 800 pitches awaiting the advance of school kids dragging along their screaming mums and dads with trailers, motorhomes and campers of all descriptions. The signs were already up: ‘This is a quiet site’. You betcha!
On cue, as ordered, a Veery (a small thrush) appeared on the path in front of us as we drew into the camp, bringing Winnie to an abrupt halt whilst we searched for the bins, and, with the unexpected appearance of a pair of resident trumpeter swans on the lake next morning, our quest for the tri-century was exceeded by one - 301!

You’ll have noticed there has been no mention of fishing. That’s pretty sad, eh? The walleye, pike, crappies, perch, trout, bass and muskie will have to wait a while for my bait - and the frying pan, whilst we try to find a way of stopping the bus. Perchance Huntsville will slow us down for a while. A couple of guys at a gas station were off for a fishing break with their father, towing a dinghy behind their old school bus. “A bad day’s fishing beats a good day’s work,” they reckoned.

The next newsletter might be some time.

David & Janice. The grey-haired-nomads.

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Photos

Winnie the Pooh with Todd and Janice
Janice is the one on the right