comforting to think, “I can know these guys” … sort of. Cabins and stoves and benches by the river edge that remain on the land really help this understanding feel tangible.
The Northcote property near Lakefield, Ontario, on the Trent-Severn waterway may appear incongruous beside the Horton and Nahanni river finds, but not so. It was with the same spirit of inquiry and intrigue that I drove (not paddled) up the grass-rutted lane to the Douglas homestead. Whereas I had expected more at Stefansson’s Coal Creek and Patterson’s Wheatsheaf Creek, this place was in better shape than I had imaged. The large riverbank white house with green roof stood tall and majestic, as did the barn — once full of canoes, now full of winter sleighs. The wraparound veranda of the main house gave a well lived in impression, as did the overall grounds where winter play on the open slopes and lake paddling and sailing used to abound. The two square, timber-log summer cabins are settling into the ground surrounded by brambles and foot-catching dog-strangling vine. They are very rustic and charming in that simple living, sparse needs, and few possessions way. I instantly fell in love with the place. The insides proved that all buildings need work. Indeed, that’s why I was there. Here is history alive and well. The Douglas brothers’ story of Arctic travel told in the 1914 classic Lands Forlorn[16] is a must read, and the characters who visited Northcote read like an early 1900s who’s who of the north: John Hornby, Guy Blanchet, and P.G. Downes are highlights among them. Northcote was a conduit of northern affairs. But it was also a recreational playground for the related Greer and Mackenzie families.
George Douglas’s homestead in Northcote.
Finding cabins, or what’s left of them, doesn’t have to be just an Arctic pursuit. Here, to my mind, is a house/cabin/barn all linked to arctic travel. Those same imaginative feelings grabbed hold as I wondered about George Douglas and all those who loved this grand property. My northern interest led to an invite by Bill Gastle and Kathy Hooke (George is her uncle by marriage). Bill and I, along with Richard Johnson from Lakefield College and Bert Ireland, all sized up the work needed to restore the main house into a liveable space again. The stone foundation needed to be reinforced and the house levelled on the foundation. The insides needed more than a Molly Maid cleaning. The veranda needed to come off to access the foundations, then get rebuilt. The roof must be covered anew. It is doable but expensive. The school envisioned summer programming. I envisioned northern literature and canoeing symposia. It all felt like a dream to me, but not to Bill and Bert, who started talking specifics of refurbishing and actual dollars.
Later that day (my second trip to Northcote), Kathy Hooke, the main Northcote/Douglas researcher, treated Bill and me to a fine lunch and kitchen sit about with her many photo albums of life at Northcote. Kathy and Bill swapped stories of Mrs. Douglas (twenty-three years George’s junior) and George. George must have had fifty canoes. Seems he’d paddle down into Lakefield with one and paddle back with two. Kathy said George was on the water every day somewhere or nowhere in particular. Winter was a special time for family visits. Photo albums reinforce this, as ski and snowshoe outings (along with picnics and family portraits on the veranda) dominate the images of daily life.
I returned home from the Northcote day and went straight to my 1914 copy of Lands Forlorn and read with new vigour. The man behind the study had come to life. It is the same feeling one can get when finding an old stove and logs remaining at a cabin site almost lost to the ground and river flooding. It needn’t be in the north to be about the north. But the Northcote site also sings a song of outdoor living. The photos are not of singing around the piano or dining in the formal dining room. Rather, folks at Northcote picnicked, paddled, hiked, and loved the winter. 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.
[no image in epub file]
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.
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