After only a few hours on the water, I’m exhausted. A winter keeping ledgers and organizing a warehouse is hardly demanding physical labour, and paddling a loaded canoe is something else entirely. My shoulders and arms ache, and my palms are soon covered in weeping blisters from the butt of the paddle, but my body isn’t the only thing that hurts.
It’s been nearly a year since I last saw Libby, and my whole soul aches to be sailing across the Atlantic, back to Liverpool. Instead, here I am, travelling farther and farther away from my sister. I paddle in silence, alone in my thoughts, and don’t notice the approaching village until the canoes glide to shore on the outskirts of Sainte Anne de Bellevue, shaking me out of my dark mood.
“What about the rum, Luc?” asks a voyageur, referring to a duty the men have been anxiously waiting for Lapointe to complete. Rum, nearly a gallon per man, is traditionally distributed at the start of every trip to celebrate the voyage and to boost morale.
“Ce soir — tonight, but first we have spiritual matters to attend to.” Leaving one of the paddlers behind to guard the canoes, we walk along a little path to the village. The track widens and turns into a street that leads to a small grey-stone church. I’m surprised at the reverence that sweeps through the men of the brigade as we enter the chapel through the heavy wooden doors.
Although Catholic from birth, the voyageurs hardly ever act in a manner a priest would approve of, but now they’ve turned into different men altogether. At the front door, Lapointe removes his cloth hat respectfully. “We pray to Sainte Anne and ask her to keep us safe. Do you have any money, mon ami?”
I’m not sure why I would need money in the wilderness. “Nae. I left all my money with Henry Mackenzie.”
Lapointe hands me a small copper coin. “Place it in the alms box when we go in. It’s bad luck not to.”
I do as I’m told and line up with the others to receive a blessing from the priest, a gaunt old man with thinning white hair. When each man has received his blessing, we leave the church and return to the canoes. “Are you Catholic, Duncan?” Lapointe asks as we walk back along the path.
“Aye,” I say, “though my family only went to the kirk fer St. Andrew’s Day and Christmas.”
“The only time I step foot in a church myself is here in Sainte Anne,” confides Lapointe.
“So why do ye go at all?”
Lapointe smiles cryptically. “You’ve never travelled in the wilderness, mon ami. I know what can happen in the wilds, and believe me, there’s nothing wrong with asking for a little intervention divine. Out here, a man can use all the help he can get.”