of Nature, and recoil at the assertion that I may be anything better than this, or an expert in any field. I am a dedicated survivalist; however, I prefer not to be called that. My ultimate goal for myself, for my family, and inevitably for those who choose to travel in the wilderness with me, is to submit to the pleasures of backwoods travel instead of fighting the elements that define it.
There have been good adventures, and there have been adventures I’d sooner forget. Things happen that you don’t expect while wandering through paradise, and they have to be dealt with accordingly. The unwritten laws have not changed for the modern adventurer. Trails and Tribulations explores the more obtuse adventure, the senselessness of wilderness politics, and the sometimes psychotic behaviour of the self-seeker.
ONE
CONFESSIONS OF A PARK RANGER
Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
— Thomas H. Huxley (1825–1895)
Before living the quixotic life of a park ranger, I was living the quixotic life but without the steady government paycheque. From the time I finished high school, to the time I was put on payroll as a park technician, I spent six summers, from break-up to freeze-up, in the canoe, doing what any normal, intransigent youth would be doing, I supposed, and it had nothing to do with what was expected of me.
In my renovated chicken-shed-cum-studio, perched on the brim of a hill in the tiny hamlet of Laskay, Ontario, I did my artwork. My mentor Jack McBride, a retired printer, had taken me under his wing and gifted me with the use of his country property, located well outside the dirty fringe of Toronto. There was an adjoining cottage but I preferred the chicken shed as it was easier to heat in the winter. In return for this rather splendid asylum, I supplied him with illustrations for various printing jobs. Also retired were various archaic printing presses that found a home in his basement; together we had quite a business percolating, making assorted greeting cards, hasty notes, posters, and bar mitzvah invitations.
There are no traffic jams on the way to work.
The winter snows piled up against the tiny, un-insulated shack as I scribbled out design after design, persevering, thinking of nothing but the coming spring, saving just enough to grubstake six months of canoeing. In May, when the ice was out, I would be gone.
Forty dollars was enough money to buy supplies each month, as long as I baked (actually fried) my own trail bread — bannock, or what the Anishnabek called buck-way-ja-gin. I would also have to fish every other day, eat fresh-water clams (I never liked the rubbery, gritty taste) and pick berries — a veritable feast. Trail fare was simple, life was straightforward and uncomplicated but nothing was prosaic or even predictable. In my early twenties I felt that I could do anything, except, and undeniably so, settle into a conventional lifestyle. After all, I had built cabins and spent the winter in the bush with a school friend, had near-death experiences, been shot at (shot back), been chased by grizzlies and Wyoming buffalo, mauled by wild dogs, climbed a mountain in my bare feet, lost the end of my toe to frostbite, survived a pub-night in Lourdes du Blanc Sablon, been a house-guard for singer Anne Murray, and worked only when I needed money. How could my life become any more idealistic?
But every so often in life as we amble down whatever path we choose to follow, there appears a door, slightly ajar, a shaft of light radiating from the aperture, mystery beyond, opportunity but not without circumstance. I could never resist. It was like discovering a new trail wending its way to somewhere and I needed to know where it would take me … the quest. In 1976 I banged on the local government forestry door in Temagami, Ontario. No longer the Department of Lands and Forests but conspicuously more officious, it was now the Ministry of Natural Resources office, buzzing with salaried timber cruisers, district foresters, game wardens, and lands and parks administrators. A woman at the front desk directed me to the lands supervisor, Reg Sinclair.
“You want to do what?” Sinclair smiled inquisitively. I was fully prepared to be rejected, or ejected from his office. “I want to produce a canoe guidebook for Temagami,” I explained somewhat timidly, expecting a quick dismissal. Sinclair spun around in his chair and looked out the window at Lake Temagami, taking an inordinately long time to proffer an answer. “And you would chart out all the canoe routes, portages, and campsites?” he questioned. I showed him what I wanted to do on a regional map — to compile all linear recreation trails and canoe routes in a book format that could be used for in-house management and service front-desk inquiries about canoeing in Temagami. But that wasn’t the real reason for being there; logging companies had begun accelerated clear-cut operations and were encroaching on my beloved wilderness. Temagami was known for its pine stands, a much valued timber resource. I had this grandiose idea that if I were to document all the threatened canoe routes and publish a guidebook, that backcountry adventure-seekers would flock to Temagami, thereby thwarting the wave of extraction-based industry intrusions. The environmental movement in Canada was picking up momentum, slowly, but some of the developments in northern Ontario gave lobby groups an added punch. The Ontario government, in its myopic wisdom, had slated Temagami’s Maple Mountain as a world-class ski resort development, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the mountain (one of Ontario’s loftiest peaks) was still revered by the Anishnabek of Bear Island Reserve as a sacred vision-quest and ancient burial site.
“It would make things easier in the office here,” Sinclair pondered. “Just sell people the book and that’s it — they’ll leave happy....” My foot was in the door. Sinclair was an opportunist and he wanted to look good; he knew my idea was a good one.
“When can you start?”
“Tomorrow.” I beamed.
I never asked how much money I would be making. Having a steady paycheque every two weeks was a novelty in itself, and I felt somewhat guilty about being paid for canoeing. The office regulars scoffed at what I was doing, but at the time there was money in the parks budget to be spent, and Sinclair had convinced the district manager that my proposal would benefit the province. My explorations, however, dipped outside the district and into three adjoining administrations, and none of these administrators were in the least bit interested in supporting Sinclair in the project. The excuse being that if they made any canoe routes known to the public, they would then be obliged to maintain the routes; and there was also the threat of conflicts between paddlers and logging companies to contend with.
Trails without boundaries; these were ancient travelways for the original people who cared nothing for political barriers on a map. Sinclair’s district was the heart of wilderness Temagami — all trails circled back to his administration. I had already paddled the majority of routes in and outside his domain. Anyway, it didn’t make sense to research water trails eviscerated by arbitrary precincts. I could accomplish all this in one year — one year. That was insane. I would have to paddle a total distance of over 3,500 kilometres in the next six months.
For some inane reason I turned a good paddling friend into a relative and married the girl next door. We would be working together, getting paid handsomely (two paycheques) for doing something we loved (canoeing), and experiencing pangs of guilt as a result. But the guilt didn’t last long. Ice-clogged lakes, gruelling portages, incessant biting insects, wind, rain, isolation, and deprivation managed to assuage any feeling of self-reproach. And we accomplished what we set out to do; the book was published, and even with its inherent sloppy first-run production, the book sold out to a demanding crowd of adventure-seekers in short order.
Sinclair was now in a
