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Story and photos by Bob Henderson Fall 2003 Issue What exactly is it that makes us come to know and love a specific bit of land and water? Is it the land’s gorgeous contours? Its stories? Its politics? Its art? Bob Henderson explores how he developed a relationship with Temagami by looking well beyond fame and a pretty face. Some places are all about “landscape”. Others first bring people to mind. For me, Temagami is a place where people, past and present, are central to my thinking. I wonder why this is? Certainly geography is always a major factor in our relationship with canoe country. I caught myself using the curious word, “landscape,” above. Worse, I might have used the word, “scenery”. I dislike both words. Our relationship or personal rapport with canoe country is not about simply admiring landscape and scenery. “Seen one redwood ...” In the 1950s and 1960s the American intellectual maverick, Paul Shepard, turned his attention to such concepts as landscape, scenery and wilderness. In an essay titled “Ugly is Better”, Shepard comments on Ronald Reagan’s remark; “Seen one redwood, seen ‘em all.” “The remark is true”, Shepard says, in his role of cultural provocateur. “It refers to retinal forms, curiosities, architectural and pillared spaces through which one moves; they are objects from another world, repetitive surfaces filling the visual screen.” Reagan’s observation, he says, “has candor and courage; it puts the aesthetics of the beautiful where it belongs”. Shepard reminds us that “scenery” is from a Greek word meaning stage prop. To a detached observer, even magnificent old growth can be reduced to a prop. Landscape, similarly, is a term that came into use in the 1500s to represent the pictorial abstractions of places. Soon “landscapes”, both in art and literature, became aesthetic creations: the “real” was all too easily displaced. Shepard even wonders if a test of nature, for some, is whether it lives up to literary descriptions of it. Living up to a beautiful reputation Shepard’s essay always brings Temagami to my mind. Temagami is a very special, very beautiful place. It is truly an epicentre for the Canadian Shield as a residential and tourist recreational area. Temagami is rightly famous both for its beauty and for its decades as a touchstone for issues of preservation and resource extraction. But the fame itself can shape our perceptions. Temagami is also a very political place — a hotbed of debate and rhetoric. I have more books and files about Temagami than any other region of Canada. No region has garnered as much attention and held that attention for as long. Logging, roads and old growth white pine have been the mainstay of the debates, but two pivotal sparks in the ‘70s included the battle over an Ontario government plan for a ski resort on Maple Mountain (1972) and the Teme-Augama Anishnabai land claim (1973). As recently as February 2003, the Wildlands League and the Sierra Legal Defence Fund released a report titled, The Road Less Travelled? A Report on the Effectiveness of Controlling Motorized Access in Remote Areas of Ontario. Ontario has more than 33,000 kilometres (20,500 mi.) of logging roads dissecting its publicly owned forests, and the report says that protective restrictions on those roads are violated almost 50 percent of the time. The authors use — what else? — Temagami as a case study. No surprise. The years of attention have brought more people to the region in canoes, prompting more intense land use conflicts. People who have never visited the region and live far removed from it have, like most of us, seen countless stunning photographs of old growth pine, “blue lake and rocky shore”. Beautiful images, yes. But can so many images begin to become “retinal forms filling the visual screen”? Is Temagami in danger of becoming “scenery” to preserve — a pictorial abstraction? Working on a relationship My point is, simply put, that we need to develop a relationship with the land, to feel a participation in the place. In an essay, The Erotic Landscape (as opposed to the abstracted variety), Terry Tempest Williams captures this distinction, saying “we must take our love outdoors where reciprocity replaces voyeurism. We can choose to photograph a tree or we can sit in its arms, where we are participating in wild nature, even our own.” Special places like Temagami can bring forth this inner wild nature .— but we need to truly experience it. My Temagami I first travelled in Temagami by canoe in 1971 and have returned almost every year since, summer or winter. The Temagami most people are familiar with is the big lakes (Temagami and Lady Evelyn), the Maple Mountain area and the Obabika/Wakimika Triangle: all that country east of the Sturgeon River to the Ottawa River. But if you glance at KANAWA’s map, you’ll see the region I refer to as the extended Temagami — all the country east to the Wanapitae River (including the Chiniguchi River in the southern end) and Smoothwater Lake to the north. This Temagami might be covered in a twenty-plus day canoe trip. Taking our love outdoors I travel in the extended Temagami region but feel an unusual craving to reconnect with the immediate Temagami, townsite and big lakes, if a few years go by. I’ve read most of those books on my shelves and have engaged in some Temagami grassroot political action. I have read about the area’s history. All this has helped me gain the perspective Terry Tempest Williams writes of, where “reciprocity replaces voyeurism”. More than a pretty face In fact, although Temagami is undeniably beautiful, I’ve personally come to think that in terms of Canadian Shield geography, Temagami is not so radically different than the Biscotasing area to the west, or the Lac La Ronge area of Northern Saskatchewan, or the Kipawa area of Quebec. What makes Temagami special to me is my relationship with the land, largely through its extraordinary people. My Temagami is a people-centred place. I can only mention a few people who are important to the quality of canoe travel today and the integrity of the Temagami forests and waters. Each deserves a fuller treatment, but quick, respectful sketches (or just an honourary mention) must suffice. Those who came before I think back to the seventies when I first visited Temagami. Former Chief Gary Potts and lawyer James Morrison, among others, were central in proving in the Ontario courts that the Teme-Augama Anishnabai were not nomadic peoples, aimlessly wandering on the Canadian Shield with no fixed address. Our old textbooks were wrong – but think who benefitted from the taught perception of native peoples as nomadic. In those years, anthropologist Frank Speck’s work was a force to be reckoned with. He broke down the 1913 family hunting territory of N’Daki Menan, whose homeland was the immediate Temagami. The Teme-Augama Anishnabai peoples are central to the region’s heritage and hopefully its future. Think of it this way: on main Temagami campsites such the beaches of Temagami’s Sandy Inlet, Florence and Obabika Lakes, we are camping on top of the old campfire sites and resting places of many generations. I am grateful for the story Madeline Katt Thereault tells in Moose to Moccasins. Since her life spanned the 1900s, we learn about her family trapping base on Diamond Lake, about family based education (home schooling) and preparing for the March thaw, and about the early native guiding business. I love the details. For example, it takes ninety rabbit skins for a blanket of 72 x 60 inches (180 X 150 cm). “Everyone had one,” she adds. A man who dreamed dreams The Canoe Priest Historian Bruce Hodgins, whose own story I will revisit later, tells us the story of Charles Paradis, the northern Oblate Priest. In Hodgin’s words, he was “a man who dreamed dreams and deserves to be remembered.” Paradis and Oblate colleagues travelled by canoe from Mattawa to Lake Temagami in 1880. As “the first tourist” to the area, he hired a local native guide and travelled to the Hudson’s Bay post on Bear Island. He camped for ten days on Rabbit Nose Island, later claiming to have caught the largest trout (60 lbs./ 27 kg) taken from the lake. So began a pattern for summer campers to follow. Paradis was a farmer, colonizer, prospector (on Emerald Lake), artist (most works were lost in a 1924 fire) and political activist. But he was also inventor of a bug dope and a canoe priest. (His longest trip (1884) stretched from Mattawa, to Abitibi to Fort Albany in a 36 foot canot de maître.) Paradis went on to establish a “little theocratic wilderness retreat.” His aim was to colonize Les Canadiens whom he feared were soon to be assimilated. At his main squatters’ base, Sandy Inlet (now the site of Camp Wanapitei), he cleared over 60 acres (24 ha) of land for farming, raised a large wooden cross and held his ground. He had been expelled from other locations and was expelled from the Oblate Order as well. In the 1920s at the end of his years, he was a folkloric attraction. The canoe fire ranger: Grey Owl Grey Owl – Archie Belaney really, the English boy who came to Canada in 1906 to “live the dream” — came first to Temagami. He wanted romance: the Canadian north woods, canoes, snowshoes, trapping and mostly native peoples. He married a local girl from Bear Island and learned to turn romance into reality. By 1914 Grey Owl was a canoe fire ranger travelling from Biscotasing to Lake Superior via the Mississagi and Aubinadong Rivers. He worked as a canoe guide for wealthy tourists mainly from New York, Chicago and Toronto at Temagami Lodge, and also at the rival Wabikon. There, he met Anahareo, one of his five wives. Later, he abandoned the trapper’s lifestyle for a public life. Through his wonderful writing and his lecture tours, he promoted conservation of the north woods and the dwindling beaver populations. By the mid-thirties, Allison Mitcham suggests, Grey Owl was the most prominent “Canadian” in England and America. The fact that he was a native imposter was revealed only after his early death in 1938. The Keewaydin Camper Just as Grey Owl was discovering Temagami, so too were campers and camp staff from the New England’s Keewaydin Camp. In 1903 they travelled north from Mattawa, as had Father Paradis over twenty years earlier. They established a base on Devil’s Island on Lake Temagami, hired native guides (mostly from Mattawa), and a new tradition began: the summer camper. Keewaydin also started senior boys trips “out to the Bay,” James Bay. They established a traditional set of canoe travel practices that they wisely hold to with pride. (See Herb Evans’ excellent 1975 how-to book, Canoeing Wilderness Waters.) Other camps would follow. On Lake Temagami, Camps Wabun, Wanapitei, and Wabikon influenced generations of campers. I vividly remember a few years back meeting a group of healthy, happy boys from a camp in Sharp-Rock Inlet who were paddling back to camp from the Temagami train station, having just returned from a canoe trip down the Hurracana River into James Bay. It was a fine moment for me, a solo tripper that day, who could think back to the impact of my own camp background. And I must mention David Henderson Carr, a school teacher at London Central High School, who became a “Mr. Chips” of London and Temagami by leading a canoe tripping program from 1933 to 1951. The 1930-40 routes highlight many interesting and forgotten portages, such as a long portage between the Wanapitei and Chiniguchi Rivers. A collected book of reminiscence made possible thanks to his Christmas mailing list tells the stories of many influential canoe trippers. One of Carr’s alumni is David Suzuki who, we are told, once caught twenty rock bass, then gutted and cooked them for a camp fish fry, a camp record for Lake Obashkong in 1953. For all the people mentioned here and the many dozens more who are part of Temagami today (see sidebar), Temagami is never simply landscape or scenery. I wouldn’t be surprised if every one of them, as Terry Tempest Williams suggests, has sat in the arms of a tree — likely a white pine — to draw out their own wild nature. By their example, they have helped me develop a deeper affinity with Temagami. “Seen one white pine, seem ‘em all?” I think not. Temagami is a special place where primal forces come alive. I’ll give Hugh Stewart (see sidebar) the last word. “It is imperative that I continue to feel these forces from time to time.” Paddlers may want a copy of the more detailed maps produced by KANAWA’s map makers, Chrismar Mapping Services: Temagami 1, North East Corner, available through Paddle Canada. $14.95   Suggested Reading In the Footsteps of Grey Owl, Journey into the Ancient Forest, by Gary and Joanie McGuffin. $39.95 ($35.96 mem) Grey Owl: The Mystery of Arche Belaney, by Armand Garnet Ruffo. $14.95 ($13.46 mem) Tales of an Empty Cabin, by Grey Owl. $ 18.95 ($17.06 mem) Temagami Canoe Routes Planning Map. Ontario Parks. Ministry of Natural Resources. $6.95 Where We Belong: Beyond Abstraction in Perceiving Nature, by Paul Shepard. University of Georgia Press, 2003. The Temagami Experience, by Bruce W. Hodgins and Jamie Benidickson. University of Toronto Press, 1989. Moose to Moccasins, by Madeline Katt Thereault. Natural Heritage/Natural History, 1992. Paradis of Temagami, by Bruce W. Hodgins. Highway Book Shop, 1976. Canoeing Wilderness Waters, by G. Heberton Evans III. A.S. Barnes, 1975. Hap Wilson’s Temagami book is out-of-print, and PC has no stock. Hap has a few copies on hand, but here’s the good news: his new Temagami book, scheduled to be out in spring 2004, features several new routes, including kayak routes along one of Canada's longest undeveloped, freshwater coastlines (Lake Temagami and the Ottawa River), and over 40 hiking trails and viewpoints. Look for new, coloured, hand-drawn maps and illustrations and a larger format. Henderson’s Temagami Honour Roll Reluctantly turning to the present, I consider myself fortunate to have met, or know as a friend, the following influential Temagami personalities. There are so many more I cannot mention here – but I welcome emails for future stories! Hap Wilson’s working motto has always been, “if you don’t use it, lose it”. As a self-appointed steward of the area, he has opened trails throughout the ’70s and ’80s. His Temagami Canoe Routes book of 1977 has been central to the conservation movement, and here’s one more example: the Obabika Trails. When an area critical to Temagami’s Old Growth Pine ecosystem was to be logged, Hap would get the news and establish hiking trails as a recreation base for the area. Political will for conservation follows. The Temagami canoe country needed Hap and Hap certainly needed Temagami. Dr. Peter Quinby, a forester from the University of Toronto, helped put Old Growth on the Ontario map by defining what old growth was and shifting the pervasive thinking from “a few old trees here and there” to an Old Growth ecosystem. Quinby, both through his non-profit organization Ancient Exploration and Research and by working with science field crews from the international organization EcoWatch, mapped and built trails of Old Growth zones. When you go to the trails at the north end of Obabika or enjoy the Red Pine stands at Wolf Lake surveyed by the Sudbury Naturalist Club, you will be grateful for the work of Wilson and Quinby, and many others such as Viki Mather of Kukagami Lake. Brian Back is a Temagami historian (specifically Camp Keewaydin) and a leader in Earthroots, which has been at the centre of controversy over land use. (Earthroots’ organizational roots were in the Temagami Wilderness Society.) Check out Brian’s ongoing work at www.ottertooth.com I’ve mentioned Bruce Hodgins who, since the 1970s, has been a leading Temagami historian and a spokesman advocating care for the region and the Teme-Augama Anishnabai peoples. The Hodgins family have a long history at Camp Wanapitei, and their writings are wonderfully instructive. Bruce’s Temagami history, co-authored by Jamie Benidickson, is an essential resource for those who want to know the complex stories of Temagami. Carol Hodgins’ recipe books are among the finest dealing with traditionally-wise cooking methods. Craig Macdonald has spent decades learning the old ways of elders, and his historical map of Northeastern Ontario celebrates the centrality of the native presence in the area in a dynamic and unique way. He has recorded 661 place names for the region and plotted the old native travel routes. His recording of the Bon-ka-nah (winter route systems) is a one-of-a-kind mapping project. Hugh Stewart, like Craig, Brian, Peter and Bruce, was a kid at a summer camp at age thirteen. Later he discovered poets, novelists and artists who shared his love of the bush. In the 1970s he combined these Canadian studies with tripping, to form Headwaters, a small wilderness travel business which offers a premier interdisciplinary travel education. Like the camps and individuals mentioned above, Headwaters influenced many. Certainly I am among them. To find consolation in the wilderness, Hap Wilson visits his cabin deep in the heart of Temagami. “For me and my family,” he writes, “canoeing is our preferred lifestyle — everything else is incidental. We share in the celebration of the wilderness as our real home, our life inspiration, and our future salvation as a species. It is our common goal to continue to promote canoeing as a corroborated means to salvage what’s left of our wild heritage.” From Paddle Quest: Canada’s Best Canoe Routes, Alister Thomas, ed. PC Sale price: $14.95, while quantities last.