The Ultimate Canadian Experience
I frequently heard friends’ accounts of wilderness whitewater canoeing trips. Their tales of heavy portages, treacherous rapids, and clouds of mosquitoes had always been enough to dissuade me. Gordon Lightfoot, who organized annual canoe expeditions to the Northwest Territories, had regaled me with macho stories of survival in Canada’s northern lands, and my writer-friend Tom York had spun many a yarn about his perilous adventures with his Native buddies in the bush. Pierre Trudeau had challenged several great northern rivers and returned inspired by the spectacular beauty of his native country. “Travel a thousand miles by train,” he wrote, “and you are a brute; pedal five hundred miles on a bicycle and you remain basically a bourgeois; paddle one hundred miles in a canoe and already you are a child of nature.”
My own concept of canoeing had evolved while I lazed on a foam cushion watching Pierre’s agile arms dip polished wood into water as he ferried me around Harrington Lake and discussed the political and social events of the day. Having to actually paddle for hours on end, doing battle with swirling rapids and bugs, sounded far too strenuous, so it came as a surprise to my friends when, in the summer of 1989, I agreed to venture on a two-week whitewater canoe trip up the Missinaibi River to James Bay. Shaftesbury Films wanted to produce a documentary about a well-known Canadian navigating a northern river, and for some reason they chose me — a city slicker. All these years, I had called Canada home but avoided “the ultimate Canadian experience.” I was about to find out firsthand what I had been missing.
Our party of ten intrepid adventurers included Vlad the director, his “strong-like-a-bull” Polish assistant, inveterate canoeists David Silcox and Linda Intaschi, the producer Christina Jennings and her boyfriend, a writer, and an aide to help portage five canoes and tents. As Joel and I packed inflatable mattresses, life jackets, long underwear, a waterproofed guitar case, and a neatly folded outfit for my concert in Moose Factory, I wondered what I was getting myself into, especially knowing that once on the river, we would have no radio contact with the outside world.
Air Ontario flew us to Timmins, where the Ministry of Natural Resources had scheduled a Twin Otter seaplane to airlift us to Missinaibi Lake. As we circled over expanses of Precambrian rock and forests sprinkled with lakes, I remembered Longfellow’s epic poem, which I had loved so much as an eleven-year-old English schoolgirl — the poem that had somehow started to forge my Canadian identity. Now, almost three decades later, I was heading for Gitche Gumee, about to become part of the legendary land of Hiawatha. When I emerged from the bush plane, a deer fly welcomed me with a sting on my thigh; I hastily donned long pants and shirt despite the heat, but the blackflies, no-see-ums, and mosquitoes beset us in droves. Silvery lacy-winged dragonflies swooped around catching bugs in mid-flight as Joel showed me how to assemble our tent: a tangle of poles, ropes, and pins. Everything from our socks to our sleeping bags felt clean and new; thank goodness we could not envision how different they would be in two weeks.
Vlad suggested some shots of me honing my skills with a paddle, and cajoled me to nearby Whitefish Falls, where I did my utmost to look experienced for his camera. “Just manoeuvre your canoe a little closer to the falls. This shot is great,” he yelled over the roar of churning water as I worried about getting swept into the eddy. Thoughts of my frequent “wave” nightmares and fear of moving water gave me pause. Had not the great Spanish composer Enrique Granados suffered a similar lifetime phobia, only to be drowned the first time he dared take a ship across the Atlantic?
After surviving the falls, I paddled around Fairy Point, whose ancient bear-oil pictographs of caribou, bear, fish, and war canoes were a quiet reminder of the spiritual beliefs of the Native people inhabiting this wilderness. “Figures strange and brightly colored; / And each figure had its meaning, / Each some magic song suggested. / The Great Spirit, the Creator.” Contemplating the tranquil beauty of these mysterious paintings, I felt overwhelmed and humbled.
Rocky outcrops delighted our eyes with splashes of colour: orange and yellow lichen, red berries, and dark green moss like plush velvet from a Renaissance gown. Twisted pines, tamarack, spruce, and silver birch trees leaned precariously from the ledges, evoking the paintings of the Group of Seven. We made it back to camp, “And the evening sun descending / Set the clouds on fire with redness, / Burned the broad sky like a prairie.” I was already feeling the forces of nature rekindling my childhood love affair with Hiawatha and making me a part of this great Canadian landscape.
After a campfire guitar serenade, I turned in early, trying to resist scratching my bothersome bug bites. Suddenly, I was awakened by heavy footsteps padding around our tent. I roused Joel, as we had been warned that prowling bears posed a real danger. My irritable tent-mate ordered me to go back to sleep and stop imagining things, but my mind kept focusing on the bag of candies tucked into my pack and the warnings never to keep food in the tents. I lay awake wondering what to do if a large furry paw ripped through our mosquito netting. Should I bash him over the head with my guitar case or, grabbing Joel as a protective shield, throw him the licorice allsorts as a peace offering? I heard a loud grunting and banging and again shook Joel to consciousness. Why didn’t any of the other tents respond? “For God’s sake, Liona, go to sleep and quit fantasizing about bears! It’s probably one of our group knocking something over on their way to take a leak in the woods.” I slept uneasily, dreaming that Grandma’s brown-bear rug — one of my early childhood fears — was chasing me around her house. The next morning, I was vindicated. During the night, two bears had entered our campsite, destroyed the fish-cleaning table, and torn apart our supply tents! My ursine fears had been well-founded. Guiltily, I wolfed down the licorice allsorts for breakfast!
The mosquitoes and blackflies were unremitting; bug hats were essential when emerging from the tents, as thousands of bloodthirsty creatures surrounded the netting, anticipating a meal. As I crouched in the steamy canvas, trying to reorganize my waterproofed guitar case, I felt trapped in a David Cronenberg horror movie. Our DEET repellants, lemon oils, and rituals of vitamin B and garlic seemed like a cruel joke; the relentless bugs loved it all.
As we loaded our five canoes, I could not believe the quantity of gear we were taking. The wanigan was filled with so many gourmet provisions and so much dry ice as to render it almost unliftable. With daiquiri cocktails, Waldorf salads, and shish kebabs, our meals would have amazed the voyageurs. It was time to push away from terra firma and trust our lives to the river. Becoming familiar with the art of navigating rapids, I learned how to calculate the fickle pull of current on paddle and to recognize the first tell-tale signs — an ominous sound of rushing water and acceleration in river drift. We had to rely on our director’s superior knowledge about which channels and currents to select, but each couple had to fend for themselves once the canoes became caught in the capricious rapids. One wrong decision could mean a sudden capsize into swirling water. Several accidents did ensue, but a guardian angel was helping to steer my craft. I learned how to head into the V, manoeuvre deftly around boulders, spot concealed rocks, and back-paddle as though my life depended upon it. My heart raced as we occasionally broadsided a wave and the canoe filled with foaming water. We were heading down what had been one of Canada’s legendary water routes at the height of the Hudson Bay fur trade in the eighteenth century.
Retreating into my clothes, I sought protection from the swarms of blackflies and mosquitoes, preferring sweating beneath a Gor-Tex jacket to being slowly eaten alive bite by bite. The bug hats were designed to prevent the pests from attacking our faces, but the bloody bites on my neck and ears were a testament to either their inefficiency or my own lack of expertise. I became proficient at drinking tea through the netting, but eating pasta proved a greater challenge! Dive-bombed in my sleep, I awoke to discover that one eye was swollen shut, rendering me half-blind all day. Feeling wretched from the painful bites, I was in no mood to face cameras and felt renewed respect for those courageous pioneers who once inhabited these remote outposts.
At times, as we made our way past Swamp Rapids, Peterbell Marsh, Deadwood Rapids, and Thunderhouse Falls, we experienced interludes of supreme tranquility, exalting in feeling at one with our natural surroundings. A huge bull moose paused to savour the unfamiliar strains of classical guitar. “Recuerdos” was obviously not quite his musical taste, and he nonchalantly waded into the brush that fringed the river. At noon the bugs abated, allowing us to drift downstream drying laundry in the sun. In the quiet reaches of the river, alongside beavers, families of ducks, and great blue herons, we caught pickerel and pike. How satisfying to sit around a jack pine campfire reliving our trials and triumphs as our catch of the day sizzled on the embers and scintillating showers of fireflies surrounded us. “Wah-wah-taysee, little fire-fly, / Little, flitting, white-fire insect, / Little, dancing, white-fire creature, / Light me with your little candle, / Ere upon my bed I lay me, / Ere in sleep I close my eyelids!”
I started to compose the film’s soundtrack: a simple melody evoking the imagery of Native paddlers and constant river motion. Another theme that I scribbled onto my crumpled manuscript paper was inspired by the raindrops falling like silver pearls into the still, reedy waters that we traversed. For a couple of days, we had to paddle through driving rain and portage our canoes through deep mud. “Portage,” I learned, is a euphemism for carrying a heavy object that is supposed to carry us! My hands, constantly wet inside rubber gloves, were in poor condition to play the upcoming concert.
July 11, my fortieth birthday, was to be a hard one; ahead lay the worst portage of the voyage. Pulling on cold, soggy jeans and wet socks in the dark, I wondered what madness could possibly have possessed me. Why, at a time of my life when I could have been soaking up rays on the Riviera, had I consented to such a gruelling ordeal? Liona Boyd must have taken leave of her senses! If this was the ultimate Canadian experience, then I would happily leave it to real Canadians. Every muscle was aching, and my complexion was a blotchy mess from all the repellant oil and insect bites. We paddled on in grim silence, through drizzling rain and along the monotonous river bends of the Missinaibi, until eventually a ribboned fir tree, the marker to our portage, was spotted and we began the muddy chore of unloading and dragging canoes up the slippery bank.
Suddenly, to our jubilation, a float plane circled and landed on the river. Perhaps the ministry had decided to mount a rescue and fly us amateurs back to civilization. But there was no such luck. A friendly couple on a fishing trip who owned the only lodge in the region had spotted our canoes from the air and come to investigate. They offered to fly our heaviest equipment over the portage to the lake on the other side and guide us to their lodge. We nevertheless had to spend the next three hours struggling over the land portage with the rest of our gear — an onerous task I hope never to repeat! Sinking waist deep in squelchy, black mud, we frequently lost our footing on moss, slippery logs, and rocks. The swarms of implacable bugs droning their incessant chorus would have driven me mad were it not for the protective hat. Finally, our spirits soared. We emerged from the dense tangle of undergrowth to a breathtaking lagoon of bulrushes and pale yellow water lilies — “To a pond of quiet water, / Where knee-deep the trees were standing, / Where the water-lilies floated, / Where the rushes waved and whispered.”
After a two-hour speedboat tow, a welcome sight of human civilization came into view: a couple of wooden structures built on the rocky shore. Never had cold beer tasted so delicious or a hot shower felt so euphoric! We had been transported to another world. The couple greeted us like family, preparing a birthday feast of smoked fish while I premiered my Missinaibi theme in the living room. The contrast between the day’s sodden struggles and the evening’s unexpected festivities was overwhelming. Our timely rescue had been my ultimate birthday gift: one whose memory I would treasure forever. But all good things have to end; the next morning, it was back to the trenches, where we and our freshly laundered clothes soon succumbed to the Missinaibi’s muddy embrace.
Our director suggested Joel and I climb a rocky canyon — spectacular scenery for the film, but one slip and we would plummet a thousand feet into the boiling waters of the gorge. Climbing up the precipice, I already saw the headlines: “Classical Guitarist Meets Sudden Death in Whitewater Canoe Accident — Body Unrecovered.” By the time we had inched back down the rock face, it became clear that we would never make it back to camp before sunset with just the one canoe. Navigating rapids in the dark scared me as much as the many bear footprints we had been noticing in the sand. But our ingenious director organized the hasty construction of a raft, lashing together seven long driftwood poles. It floated perfectly, carrying us down river like Huckleberry Finn as the last orange streaks were fading on the horizon.
A guiding spirit was with me when my guitar and I struggled over the portage alone rather than shoot rapids at Allan Island with the others. Joel and “Strong-like-a-bull” smashed our canoe head first into a protruding rock. Like a red arrow it flew into the air, its riders and all our gear swept downstream in churning water. Everyone rushed their canoes into the river in a fast rescue operation, while on the bank I gave a silent prayer of thanks to have been spared.
After a few more days of arduous paddling, we reached the estuary where the Moose River empties into James Bay. In the town of Moose Factory, the sons and daughters of Hiawatha now ride around in motorboats and on dirt bikes and live in wooden government-built houses. They cooked us bannock scones in a smoky teepee carpeted with cedar branches and showed us an old museum housing remnants from the days when this town was at the centre of the fur trade. Countless mink, beaver, fox, and muskrat pelts had crossed the Atlantic to satisfy Europe’s craving for felt hats and fur collars.
In the evening, I played a concert in the Anglican church, where stained-glass windows depicted gigantic trading canoes, missionary churches, and Native powwows. There was standing room only; every pew was crammed. The band’s chieftain introduced me in his sing-song language, a wonderful dissonant choir sang Cree hymns, and then the audience gave rapt attention and a standing ovation to my performance. Bach had been composing in Europe the piece I played at the same time as Moose Factory was being established in Canada — such contrasting worlds, yet both somehow present during my concert. I spoke a few words of greeting in Cree: “Watchee ne mililten uta ministiguk.” Never in my life, I told the audience, had I worked so hard to come to a concert. The ladies’ auxiliary held a reception in their common hall, and I was swarmed by autograph-seekers from three years old to ninety. One young Cree had been making tenacious efforts to teach himself classical guitar. How ironic that he had been doing battle with a Paganini study in Moose Factory while I had been struggling with the Native art of canoemanship.
The concert had been my parting gift to the proud people of the Missinaibi. In the eyes and furrowed faces of the town’s elders, I read that theirs had not been an easy life. The white man had brought both blessings and curses — electricity and television, welfare, drugs, and liquor. Our lumber and mining companies had clear-cut Hiawatha’s forests and polluted his lakes with mercury. The land that our indigenous peoples had cared for so conscientiously over the centuries was paying the price for our daily newspapers and paper bags.
As we prepared to leave the land of Minnehaha, laughing water, the medicine man sang a farewell song, beating out its timeless rhythm on a hand-held drum. “Get up, morning is coming, the birds are singing, and our land is beautiful.” Within his reedy voice, I felt the Spirit of the Wind passing stealthily through the rushes and heard the heartbeat of our great northern rivers. In some inexplicable way I had grown and changed. Hiawatha, you had brought me here to share your world, and yes, my little friend, I had passed your initiations and survived “the ultimate Canadian experience”!