There is sometimes good wisdom on the back roads, and Canadian society is learning that change is needed.
Cultural appropriation is when members of one culture adopt elements from another culture in a way that's considered inappropriate or unacknowledged.
After things occur in history, we often get different interpretations of what it was, sometimes we are misled. Lots of examples of this particularly with the advent of Truth and Reconciliation, it has proven otherwise. We are learning.
The other day a young “romantic,” filmmaker Oliver Mecure from near Madoc (Moira River, upstream of Bend Bay) arrived at my Canadian Ecology Centre doorstep to pick my brains on canoeing from Ottawa to Thunder Bay and particularly the La Vase portages in North Bay. It is something I know about, what is termed the Nipissing Passageway often highlighted within my published books and maps. The map link will help to view the approximate historic routes, three are water one is overland.
He is preparing and researching to do an “authentic journey” as a voyageur along the route. I asked him if he was taking toilet paper, a GPS and freeze-dried food. And if he had a little red canoe like Bill Mason.
A mirror came to mind, I explained to this younger idealist there were/are several ways to portage your way across the height of land at North Bay to access Lake Nipissing and beyond. Early Indigenous communities utilized these before the arrival of the colonial explorers, missionaries and fur traders. These are called nastwagan.
Sharing information is what Back Roads Bill does and I was pleased to do so since I am convalescing with a new right hip highlighted in last week’s story. Oliver’s presence was therapeutic – more Vitamin N.
There are several parts to this story - leading us to consider more of what we think we know.
Part one – La Vase
If you are driving just east of North Bay on Highway 17 you will see water on both sides of the Trans Canada Highway, that’s Trout Lake on the north side of the height of land marking two very distinct drainage basins.
On the south side near the water (called Brandy Lake) is one of those dark blue bronzed historical highway plaques. It says in part: “…the great canoe route via the Ottawa and Mattawa Rivers Lake Nipissing and the French River…which was followed by early explorers and missionaries and fur traders…” It lists “…Among many famous men who passed here…” including Samuel de Champlain in 1615 (probably not). There is no acknowledgement of Indigenous peoples.
For years passersby have come to think this was the way the early explorers/voyageurs made their westward across the height of land to Lake Nipissing.
Given its contextual location, the La Vase Portages is one of the most historic places in Canada. It is a 14-kilometre section of the historic voyageur canoe route, which connects Trout Lake and Lake Nipissing.
The route was used thousands of years ago by First Nations as part of what was termed colonially as the Amerindian trading network before and at the time of European contact.
During the age of exploration and then the fur trade, the Nipissing Passageway was soon established as a major artery into the interior of North America as the Mississippi River was too long and Hudson and James Bays were not always ice-free.
How do we know this route was utilized? Well, there is archaeological evidence. There was also a public consultation phase, in which I participated, and Indigenous communities were consulted.
There are other interesting aspects. When in North Bay (south end) walk 100 m from Lakeshore Drive (golf driving range) on the Kate Pace Way, south to the first pedestrian bridge, you will see the sweeping bend in the river. From this vantage point, look eastward (left) you can see the bend in the river and the field depicted in the painting. If you walk along the edge of the north bank, you will see two locations where rocks were piled for landings. This location is significant.
There is no doubt of the existence and location of the upper, middle and lower La Vase Portages. But one of the carry-overs retains two very different pieces of remaining evidence of voyageurs’ impact on the landscape.
“These portages were described many times in writing between 1620 and 1845,” says the late local historian Roy Summers, who has unearthed many maps and studied the literature and diaries of those leaving behind records, as well as images of the portages.” I accompanied him on several field excursions. He was a retired civil technician and a local historian. A very thorough researcher and an aficionado of historic maps. Roy was also a member of the Friends of the La Vase Portages. (The group have been working to keep the trail open and protected for future use, further work remains to be done to see the historic route receive more complete and long-term protection and recognition as a heritage canoe route. Good maps under the Routes tab. )
“ I have been able to unearth several very accurate maps done by various government agencies over the period from 1845 to 1970 that define these portages and their precise location, “ Roy recalled. “ Almost all of them have the documentation (maps, field notes and journals) stored in various archives. “
Two of the better and more accessible examples of evidence are found at the lower portage closest to Lake Nipissing, Summers said. At the downstream (west) end, you can recognize the location depicted in the John Elliott Woolford watercolours.
These are the 1821 paintings of Major Woolford, who accompanied (as the official draughtsman) Governor General Dalhousie as he travelled up the French River, across Lake Nipissing and up the La Vase River following the voyageur canoe route.
Woolford recorded much of what he saw with watercolour over pencil and shared these images of the Canadian frontier with the governments of Canada and Europe. There are two specific La Vase river paintings, Voyageurs portage canoes at bend in narrow river and First Portage on Little River. (You can see these prints at the North Bay Museum.)
The second piece of compelling evidence is the proliferation of hawthorn trees all along the bank and there are many lining the bank’s edge. Hawthorns are small sharp-tipped branches that arise either from other branches or from the trunk.
“These hawthorn trees are telltales. The hawthorn tree is unmistakable for its long, sharp thorns. The haw berries are important for wildlife in winter, particularly thrushes and waxwings. These birds eat the haws and disperse the seeds in their droppings. Humans consume the berries, as well,” Summers said. “These trees are the leftovers of undigested hawthorn berry seeds from the voyageur’s pemmican.”
Indigenous wisdom advised new arrivals to consume hawberries, an insular low bush fruit, to prevent scurvy. Basically, the proof is the “poop” from the regeneration of these trees.
Part two - other routes
If you journey to the west end of the La Vase portage on the shores of Lake Nipissing (Lakeshore Drive to Premier Rd. to the municipal park called Champlain Park) you will find several historic plaques commemorating Samuel de Champlain and the voyageurs (lacking Indigenous content).
So, are the monuments commemorating Champlain’s visit in the right location?
On July 26th, 2015 it was 400 years since Samuel de Champlain appeared somewhere on the shoreline of Lake Nipissing. Here is the BayToday story of the day the story says: “The celebration will take place on Sunday, July 26th, the exact date of Champlain's passage, at Champlain Park (North Bay).” I then talked about this on the CBC. There is a difference in opinion.
There is good evidence the famed French Canadian explorer may not have come this way.
Roy Summers thought so. Years of dogged determination helped Roy piece together what was in this area from a geologic and historical perspective.
He thought Champlain took the historic portage from Trout Lake to Lake Nipissing was along Ski Club Road, crossing Chippewa Creek and turning southwest towards Timmins St. and the present North Bay waterfront. There is evidence; it is identified as a historic portage on an 1883 survey. (Some think Cassells St. to Trout Lake Rd. may have been the direct route but its roots are later in North Bay’s history; it was the development road to Trout Mills [a working lumber mill] at Armstrong Beach.)
Roy unearthed and showed me many, many maps, and studied the literature and diaries of those leaving behind records and images of the Nipissing Passageway, which includes several ways to reach Lake Nipissing. The La Vase portages is a 14 km/8.7 mile trek, in length, with three portages totalling 2.7 km/1.7 miles, it is one of three possible routes. Parks Creek, 10.7 km/6.7 miles, has five portages of 1.9 km/1.2 miles; (known as Ojibwaysippi) via a series of small lakes, (the “Cove” beach/Camelot Lake), is another. And the shorter, but not forgotten North Bay and Trout Lake Rd. (Ski Club Rd.) historic portage, 6 km/3.72 miles with no portages; including Chippewa Creek as another complementary seasonal waterway to Lake Nipissing.
Roy said, “These different routes were used by first, the extensive Amerindian trading network and then the French and English explorers and the voyageurs. These routes were described many times in writing between 1620 and 1845. Almost all of them have the documentation (maps, field notes and journals) stored in various archives, but there is no evidence of Champlain using the La Vase portages.” He points to the “league,” a historic unit of measure (which varied in definition) as another piece of evidence for an alternative route. “In many notations where the portage length is in leagues the distance more closely matches the historic portage route along Ski Club Rd. to the waterfront.”
The North Bay Board of Trade (now Chamber of Commerce) started promoting Champlain’s arrival through the La Vase portages as early as 1925. That was the year North Bay became a city (2025) an early milestone. The celebration was called “Old Home Week” and the extensive program acknowledged the prestigious explorer’s visit and the La Vase portages. The first commemorative plaque erected in 1925 (and since refurbished) is on Lakeshore Drive near the garden/bait enterprises. The hoopla continued, fast forward to 1961 and the next historic plaque on the east side of Highway 17 at Dugas Bay (there was a roadhouse there at one time, attracting many tourists). Then in 1975, the Chamber published Murray Leatherdale’s ‘Nipissing form Brule to Booth,’ a book highlighting the age of exploration and development within the Nipissing Passageway.
As noted other plaques and a cairn have been erected at the end of Premier Rd. at Champlain Park. For years, since the early North Bay Board of Trade, through to the present, a variety of community groups have tried to promote, protect and conserve the La Vase portages.
In reality, the heyday for the utilization of the La Vase portages was for approximately forty years when the North West Co. (NWC) operated La Ronde House on the small island at the end of Premier Rd., before amalgamating with the Hudson Bay Co. in 1821. It was during the time of Alexander Mackenzie of the NWC, one of Canada’s greatest explorers. He did use the La Vase portages. The fur trading company maintained a water control dam at the upstream end of the third portage to float the large freighter canoes. The post was then transferred to the mouth of the Sturgeon River on the north side of Lake Nipissing.
The translated diaries (by H.P. Biggar) of Samuel de Champlain survive in his ‘Voyages,’ a detailed chronological narrative, edited for the French public. (And that is part of the mystery, what is lost in the translation?) In the early 1600s, the ‘Voyages’ were public relations documents aimed at keeping Champlain’s activities in the forefront of French imperialism. The French were actively exploring many other areas of the world and New France was not the most important of their ventures. Champlain does not identify or describe what would have been the La Vase portages. But maybe he didn’t want to, he was tasked to promote the potential riches of the land. The crossing of the muddy portages is an arduous task at the best of times.
In Champlain’s Voyages (journals) he says: “We passed through several lakes, where the savages carry their canoes.” Champlain is describing the then 14 portages along the Mattawa River. Upon arrival on the shore of Lake Nipissing, he starts his journal entry with: “Where we rested two days.” There is no mention, other than the distance, of the portages or where he rested.
Champlain previously had heard of the Nipissings from one of his guides, Étienne Brulé (1610). This tribe was known by others as the “sorcerers,” and were well known for their supposed magical powers for creating lasting curses. “They gave us a very kind reception and were in goodly number, they are a race who cultivate the soil very little.”
He describes the natives’ existence and relationship to the landscape. “During the time I was with them, the chief of these people and others of their head men (medicine men) feasted us on several occasions, according to their custom, and took the trouble to go fishing and hunting in order to entertain us as daintily as they could. There are a great number of very pretty islands (Manitou Islands) and the north side of the lake is very pleasant (Meadowside); there are fair meadows for pasturing cattle and many little streams discharging into the lake (Duchesnay, La Ronde, Little Sturgeon Creeks).” He was definitely not describing the La Vase area there was no mention of the inhospitable mud across the three historic carrying places.
Alexander Niven was an all-star surveyor for the Province of Ontario. There is a historic monument dedicated to his achievements just west of Cochrane. His meridians became the legal boundaries for townships in northwestern and northeastern Ontario. He surveyed Widdifield Township (which amalgamated with North Bay and West Ferris in 1968). The Ski Club Rd. historic portage is on his survey.
Niven’s biographer, Kim Emerson, was contacted. “Despite the times and rudimentary equipment, his surveys are incredibly accurate. He was a stickler for details and his survey notes prove why he was such a great surveyor.” Niven also identifies the La Vase portages in his West Ferris Township survey.
The amount of detail is very evident on the 1883 survey including the precise location of the escarpment and the expansive wetland below that still exists, surrounded by homes, today. Most of these roads do not fit a standard grid pattern and are indicative of what was a trail.
Specifically from east to west, in a WNW direction, the historic route reflects the starting point at Armstrong Beach through the pedestrian culvert, it follows Ski Club Rd., through O’Brien St. to the McKeown/Milani extension, where it crosses Chippewa Creek (here it changes direction from NE to SW) at its narrowest and most tranquil location. (As an option, during the spring runoff Chippewa Creek could have been navigated by the smaller canoes of the time; these were not the larger voyageur canoes.) Turn on Mary, Doran and Murphy Streets and the route would have crossed Highway 11/17 onto Highland to Algonquin Ave., turning somewhere onto Vimy St., to Beattie St. through the Bourke Playground where you can see the trail running from NE to SW, on to Bloem where it meets Jane St. (see the steps of the trail). On to Cormack, descending the series of glacial beaches where it meets Main St. W. You are close to the condominiums at the waterfront. Along the shoreline, in front of the condos, you will see a large boulder and a small beach. On land there is a cutaway or dug bank where the trail/tote road emerged; in the water, you will see the natural rock groin, more visible in the spring, ideal for accessing the lower water levels of Lake Nipissing.
Because of the upper French River Chaudiere dams, Roy Summers said Lake Nipissing was two metres lower than present-day levels. The beaches closer to the “government dock” would have been expansive and would have been better habitation areas when compared to the surrounding lowlands of the La Vase outflow.” The Nipissings in the area did not summer at the La Vase River, they stayed near the pickerel spawning grounds of Duchesnay Creek and this nearby portage.
Historic depictions of Champlain have him looking towards the Manitou Islands in the middle of Lake Nipissing, a better vantage point from the north shore of the lake and the historic overland portage.
If you ask any avid canoe trippers whether they would want to unload/load their canoes three times over a longer distance (14 km) where the conditions were “muddy” (French translation for La Vase), get their feet wet because of beaver dams or a route that was high and dry and shorter (6 km) you would not be surprised with the preferred choice.
We can say the Nipissing Passageway can be defined as several historic Indigenous routes; there is little doubt about that. The best evidence is that Champlain’s route to Lake Nipissing may not be as portrayed today but he was guided by the First People(s). Anyway, his statue in Orillia has become controversial. It is all interesting conjecture but logical.
That’s a lot of colonial history condensed in general terms.
Indigenous sense
Dr. Jonathan Pitt is an Indigenous knowledge keeper and is of Anishinaabek and Haudenosaunee heritage. Cultural transmission is part of his research and the courses he teaches at Nipissing University. He also works as an Independent Consultant for post-secondary organizations as an Indigenization Advisor.
After the query of making sense of it all, he started off by saying, “This is an important topic, both historically and culturally speaking, there are a number of viewpoints on this, often influenced by monolingualism and other colonial ways of understanding, e.g. that there was only one portage route between Trout Lake to Lake Nipissing and it must’ve been X. In my experience, X never marks the spot.”
He said, “We know from various records there were likely multiple routes, i.e. La Vase, current Ski Club Road pathway, as well as possibly what are known today as Chippewa and Parks Creeks. These routes likely depended on `the seasons, e.g. higher water levels in the spring and fall, use of lock systems by companies, etc.
“Translations of names of water and land varied based on the language of the colonial interpreter/surveyor. Nastawgan in Anishinabemowin, meaning the routes of the past or the ways for travel through the land (Aki). In academic terms, an understanding of etymology underpins the knowledge today. The origin of the words, along with their historical development or etymologies is often linked to colonialism, such as changes to words in Anishinabemowin, an example being we used to say Nanaboozhoo which is today shortened to Boozhoo (hello) due to colonialism with the Wemitigiizhi (the French) who said Bonjour, and it was shortened to Boozhoo."
He explained, “The word Portage derives from the French ‘porter’ to carry. In Anishinabemowin, depending on the dialect, the word Onigam, is a portage. Name places such as Grand Portage or Gichi-Onigaming, such as the great carrying place near Lake Superior."
The Onigam of the Nastawgan was used by the Original People and later during the colonial experiment, beginning with the Wemitigiizhi (French), fur traders in this territory used this and other routes. One route was the height of land route which was in proximity to Trout Lake Dreamer’s Rock, roughly along present-day Ski Club Road, as there was swamp in the low-lying area (e.g. where the North Bay Jail is located) across to Lake Nipissing (Nbisiing, the original name of what is known as Lake Nipissing, meaning little water, inland in comparison to the larger Great Lakes).
I have seen this route on old maps which belonged to my great-grandfather referring to it as the Indian Trail – this route would have gone along Algonquin and over towards St. Alexander Catholic Elementary School near the old Pinehill Coffee Shop and down to the beach (North Bay waterfront condos.) See the map link again.
The Anishinabek used to travel to winter grounds spread out through the area in smaller family units to practice sustainability of harvesting and early forms of self-isolation for illness. In the summer, they came together at larger summer grounds on the shores of Nbisiing.
Perhaps this is, in part, why Ferguson (John Ferguson – colonial founder of North Bay) picked the location for settlement in 1882 for present-day North Bay. Dr. Pitt points out it was only a couple of years ago, that Marathon Beach was renamed Shabogesic Beach (Shaabgiizhig Jiigbiik in Nishaabemwin) to honour Chief Shabogesic who was a signatory of the Treaty of 1850, Robinson Huron.
Chief Shabogesic signed the Treaty of 1850, Robinson Huron Waawiindamaagewin (meaning a promise or mutual promises) as the 10th signatory Nation, in that today as Nipissing First Nation No. 10. “In Nishnaabemwin the term Nbisiing Shkongan is used to describe the land base. Shkongan meaning those lands left over from the Nipissing traditional territory and homeland.”
He recalls, “I remember back in the 1990s, there was an archeological field school at the La Vase site with Dr. Patrick Julig, which I visited in 1996 in the search for Laronde House (Post/Fort) as there was a great of local interest (e.g. Leatherdale’s book, Woolford painting), where the La Vase empties into Lake Nipissing. This route has received a great deal more attention than the others due to tourism dollars (e.g. like the Dionne quintuplets) historically, and the placement of plaques to contemporary times with the Friends of the La Vase, etc."
Later, during this period, the trading post was moved to the mouth of the Sturgeon River at Lake Nipissing.
“Often, we see a celebratory narrative in Canadian history of European explorers and the fur trade deeply embedded within the historical, societal and political colonial-nationalism, which is not Reconciliation.”
“Jody Wilson-Raybould and Roshan Danesh remind us in their new book Reconciling History: A History of Canada that as Dene leader George Erasmus noted that a 'common memory must be created' – before Reconciliation can begin, the Truth must first be spoken.”
This article was not to refute or prove one historic route over another. The story is a simple gesture of respect, it is part of the awareness and change continuum about creating more memories.
It is the City of North Bay’s one-hundredth anniversary in 2025, maybe a new legacy plaque or monument?
There is a lot to learn on the back roads. Change is within us.