The Birch Bark Canoe: Navigating a New World

Terrific 20 minute documentary on this incredible craft.

Birchbark Canoe Building

A few videos I found showing the process of building a birch bark canoe.

A Canoe For The Making by Maryke Mcewen

I saw a show on TV about a dozen years ago, on APTN, and would LOVE to see it again.

A motorized canoe brings three (native) men to an island in the boreal forest. Two of them get out and start to unload supplies. The canoe takes off leaving the two men stranded. The younger of the two is freaking out, but the older man calmly announces that they’ll just build a canoe.

They build a birchbark canoe and while doing so the dynamic between the two men is explained. The older man is the younger man’s grandfather in law. The younger man is very much used to modern life, where as the older man is still into the old ways. It becomes clear that the younger man is also an alcoholic. The time they spend building the canoe allows him to dry out. There is a bottle of booze sticking out of the top of a stump out in the water. Initially he can’t wait to get out there and get at it, but when the boat is done, he has the chance to paddle out there and get it. But opts not to take it.

Deciding that they will head back in the morning, they fall asleep. He wakes to see the older man in a drunken rage, bottle in hand, kicking at the boat. He runs over asking him what he’s doing, that he’s destroying the boat. The old man it quickly becomes apparent is not drunk at all. He turns to him and says:
“I can fix this boat or make a new one. I can’t replace my granddaughter. If you ever hurt her again, I’ll kill you. I could easily have killed you, and buried you here, and people would believe me when I told them it was an accident. And then I would come back and build a boat over your corpse year after year.”

The half hour show was called A Canoe For The Making, and it was a 1995 CBC production by Maryke Mcewen, and directed by George Bloomfield. The grandfather was played by venerable Canadian actor Gordon Tootoosis, the younger man was played by Kennetch Charlette .

And wouldn’t you know it, it is impossible to find anywhere.

Dogrib Birchbark Canoe

Some photos and each section is accompanied by a video as well.
Lessons From The Land

And a publication from the University of Calgary.
The Dogrib Birchbark Canoe Project – Thomas D. Andrews & John B. Zoe (1998)

Birch Canoe Builder

Film from 1970. The quality of the visuals isn’t great, but the quality of the content is.

http://archive.org/details/BirchCanoeBuilder

Building a Reproduction 1860’s Ojibwe Birch Bark Canoe

This ranks high on my list of things I would like to do – build a birch bark canoe.

César's Bark Canoe

This documentary shows how a canoe is built the old way. 67-years old at the time of filming César Newashish, an Attikamek of the Manawan Reserve north of Montreal, uses only birchbark, cedar splints, spruce roots and gum. Building a canoe solely from the materials that the forest provides may become a lost art, even among the Native peoples whose traditional craft it is. The film is without commentary but text frames appear on the screen in Cree, French and English. 

Ray Mears Builds A Birch Bark Canoe

I have the book that accompanies this series, and while it is cool to see a pictorial depiction of the process, watching the whole episode and the entire process is both incredibly inspirational and dare I say, quite a spiritual thing to witness.

Birchbark Canoe Display in Kejimkujik

I gave a bit of a glimpse into this beautiful display in my writeup on my trip to Kejimkujik.

I’m really kicking myself for not taking many more pictures. But I thought I would isolate some (missed a few) of the photos from the displays and show them in addition to the scant photos I took of the actual canoe itself. I figure some people would like to see a glimpse of what’s there. If you have a love of canoeing, and an interest in birchbark canoes, Kejimkujik is worth a look.

Kejimkujik, NS – Summer 2009

So I finally managed to get out to Nova Scotia to see my family there. My brother and sister in law run a really fine establishment out in Smiths Cove, just outside of Digby, the Basinview Motel. (And I just want to interject, if you’re wondering where to go for a vacation, Nova Scotia is spectacular.)

I’ve heard about Kejimkujik National Park for a long time, and I really wanted to go and check it out. Glad I did.

My intent was to do a circumnavigation of the park. I asked at the visitors centre how many people did this trip each year.
“One year two people did it, on average about 18 to 24 people a year do it.”
Wow, is that all.
“It’s a pretty rough hike. Most of the trails here are great, but the Liberty Lake Loop is to be honest, brutal. But you won’t see a soul.”
Okay then.

As it turned out geographic and weather conditions thwarted my plan. Didn’t mind at all though, since I had a fantastic time regardless.

 

The visitor centre has a beautiful reproduction of a traditional Mi'kmaq birchbark canoe. It’s long been a dream of mine to build one, and just getting to inspect one is a treat in and of itself.

I wish I’d spent more time getting photos of it, but I needed to get moving.

The Mersey River.

Shroom with a view.

The first part of the hike is through some absolutely gorgeous old growth forest. Nova Scotia has been logged extensively and repeatedly. By the time of the Napoleonic Wars that province had been cleared at least once, probably twice already. Why this area hadn’t been is beyond me. Not that I mind.

400 year old hemlock forest is a truly awe inspiring thing to behold, and very rare as well. Old growth forest on one side, beautiful lake on the other - creamy!

Hemlock forest are climax forests, having outlived and outgrown everything else. The shade tolerant moss that grows on the floor beneath them is its symbiotic partner. Seedlings dropped by the hemlocks can survive for a long time in that moss, and when one finally dies, the seedlings that have waited patiently immediately go into action, in an effort to thwart any other species from gaining a foothold.

Torment Brook. One of many I was to pass in the days to come. Accessing water was to be no issue at all on this trip.

Another thing I would see lots of on this trip was mushrooms. Dozens of different ones.

Thomas Meadow Brook. Virtually all the water in the park is stained by tannin, a result of all the streams having run through bogs first. Even the biggest lakes have water that is brown. Tastes fine though.

Frozen Ocean Lake at night. Where I stayed the first night.

The second day however, a reasonably maintained trail gave way to what could be described at best as a rudimentary track. It's here you realize that very few people ever walk this way. Much of the area is very low lying, swampy at best, and due to very heavy rains in the preceding weeks, even more so. But what really made it hard was the eskers. Eskers are areas of glacial deposition. Glaciers leave behind rocks, some the size of a potato, some the size of cars or houses. Covered in moss, walking over kilometer after kilometer of esker is less walking than it is acrobatics. Step to one, balance, step to another, balance, and on and on. After a dozen slow, exhausting kilometers of this, my knees were really feeling it. I do a lot of walking, and a lot of walking with a pack on, but this kicked my ass. Just not used to that sort of terrain.

The above picture gives a little sense of what the terrain was like. This was one of the many spots that had a stream running towards the brooks and on to the lakes. 

Whhoooo....arrre....youuuu? The only thing he needed was a hookah.

I had been told by a park ranger that in all likelihood, due to the heavy and sustained rain, the West River, which is generally impassible in the spring, would likely be washed out again at this time. I figured I would at least go and see for my self. And he was right. In places wide areas were flooded, and the river was a raging mass. To try and find a better spot to cross would have entailed wading through some really shitty terrain. And by what I could see, it didn’t seem all that likely. With a group of people, with ropes, it would have been hairy to try and cross this. Being by myself, I decided the prudent course of action would be to wuss out.

So at about the half way point, I went back the way I came. I decided to stay at Liberty Lake again for a couple of nights. Totally secluded lake, with not a sound to be heard save for the lapping of the waves against the shore, the wind in the pines, the loons calling to one another from lake to lake, and the whirring of dragonflies buzzing around my head. It simply doesn’t get any better.

Mosquito’s final moments.

I swam out to some rocks out in the lake, my camera, clothes, prepared dinner, and after dinner aperitifs in a dry bag. Great spot to enjoy the sunset. The mosquitos were a nuisance, but the (way bigger than I’m used to here) dragonflies came to my aid. I sat there one night and snapped about a 150 pictures in the hopes of catching some images of them flitting about. This was one of those happy accident occurrences. The flash caught not only the dragonfly, but also the mosquito. Awesome.

Hillock Hammock. One of the places I hung out at. 

I have to say the camp sites in this park (the first National Park I’ve ever been in) are pretty slick. There is a little covered shelter stocked with wood. You’re asked not to pick up any sticks or bark off the forest floor or to take any dead branches off of any trees. Instead you’re asked to use only the wood provided. While the wood shelter looks a bit odd on the landscape, it does mean that the surroundings are more “natural” looking. Unlike a place like Algonquin where every last scrap of burnable wood in a 20 meter radius has been taken. There’s also a full on outhouse, not just a kaibo. Tent pads and a picnic table are also provided. The last two I could live without, although the picnic table is admittedly pretty handy. Two features I really liked though were the fire box and the bear bag hanging system. The fire box is maybe 20by30by50 centimeters, has a grate across the front which can be flipped up and a flat bar across the back to put pots on. The great feature of the fire box though is that it can be swivelled 360°. There is also a cable strung between two trees, at least 10 meters up, with two looped cables leading up to it, each with two clasps. Unhook one clasp, pull the top clasp down, hook on your bear bag, pull it back up and reconnect it to the ring in the tree. The last two are features I would love to see in the provincial parks in Ontario I go to.

Part of the fun of being out in another part of the continent is that lots of the flora and fauna is similar, but lots of it is different. Like this. Never seen this before in Ontario.

Here’s another example. I’ve never seen one of these little critters in Ontario.

Scova Notia is a mycophiles paradise.

Here’s a scene that repeated itself many times over the course of the trip.

Channel Lake.

Big Dam Lake.

Just as there were lots of fungal specimens, there were also many amphibian specimens.

First person I saw in 6 days.

 

Mills Falls.

Great trip. Got to walk with a pack on, test out some new gear I designed and made, try out a new stove I built, hammock in truly awe inspiring surroundings, be totally alone in a magical setting, take lots of pictures (1900 in 2 weeks), all in all – fantastic!

I’ll be back. But I really want to see the place from a canoe at some point.