a canoe, a portage and a set of rapids (or two)

This time I am having a complete change of direction with my latest blog. Away from my childhood to something more recent.

My reasons for emigrating in 1981 were for the usual, new life, excitement, fresh start, new country, but most of all I wanted to get away, get away from everything I knew and start a new life with my wife Roz and experience adventure. Canada filled the bill, reasonably close as far as travel goes, English speaking and I had a job with a mining company.

For some time before our emigration, I had lost contact with some of my family members, I was never really close to my older brothers, after all the oldest, Trevor could easily be old enough to be my own father. I knew they were OK, but I had developed a life of my own and my own circle of friends, as all people inevitably do. Somehow I never found the pull of 'family' to be very strong. Maybe it was because we did not have a family of our own, or because I never came from a very loving family, I really don’t know, but lives are lived differently by different people, and that was my life.

The mining company I emigrated with, had been on a massive hiring campaign in England, and every person who emigrated at the time went through the same process, adapting to a new life, new country, new friends, it is harder than most imagine it to be. I think that now it would be easier, with the internet, emails and texting, when we emigrated in 1981, computers were the size of houses and texting was in no ones vocabulary. Telephone calls were ridiculously expensive, so it was  writing letters to people 'across the pond'. As anyone who has done it can testify the weekly letters become monthly, then three monthly then yearly. before long I was writing no letters, concentrating on my new job and new life. Flin Flon is vastly different from Burnley and it was exciting, I mean, how many bears do you see in Burnley, or Moose, Fox or Coyote. All these things took over my life and sadly my old life, and family seemed to be forgotten.



freighter canoes are big, and can carry 2000lbs



One weekend I was invited to join my late friend Mel Schiltroth on a camping trip to Dog Rapids on the Sturgeon Weir River. Mel was a Flin Flonner all his life, living in the bush was natural to him, and he loved the outdoors. Later in his life, at the age of 57 he started a new job working for a mining exploration company, who wanted to use his local area expertise, and was the happiest man you could meet. Dog rapids as a camping spot has been used by explorers, trappers and hunters for centuries. It is breathtakingly beautiful and what most people think Canada is like. To get to dog rapids is a treat in itself, launching a freighter canoe into Mirond lake. ( a freighter canoe is a big canoe, over twenty feet long, and was the mode of transportation used by the Hudson Bay Company for transporting their furs to market in the eighteen hundreds)



Mirond Lake is part of the Sturgeon Weir river system, you travel downstream, until you get to the very unpolitically named squaw rapids. These are long, fast, shallow and dangerous, so the experienced canoeists like Mel use a portage. (A portage is a path cut through the bush for the sole purpose of moving men, gear and canoe around a set of rapids. In years gone by the thought of losing your fur in a set of rapids was the worst thing that could happen to you. With months of backbreaking work lost in an instant.)



a lot of stuff, plus food for a week!



This portage is not simply picking up the canoe and carrying it, canoes have little structural strength when out of the water. It is emptying the canoe, picking it up, carrying it up a hill on a small trail, and down the other side to the waters edge. Then going back for the gear. It is hard work, thankfully this was late in the year, or else the bugs would have eaten us alive.



hard work!



Moving downstream from there I saw my first ever family of moose swimming across the river, pelicans preparing to migrate and bears looking for berries. It was perfect, there is no where in England where I have been that you can hear nothing, here was a spot where the only noise was us, the bush and the water. After a good six hour trip we came across dog rapids, these are not rapids, the name is wrong, it is a drop of about  five feet, more like a waterfall than rapids, with a small protrusion to the shoreline at the head of the falls that has been used by the early explorers and native hunters alike since man first found this spot. I checked out the rapids, the water above seemed so peaceful, and below so angry, a total contradiction in terms, it was easy to se how men could perish here years ago if their canoe capsized.



looks nice until you have portage around it!



We set up camp, I learnt a lot on that trip, hanging food by rope from a tree branch so that the bears, foxes and coyotes could not get at it. Building a fire and keeping it lit, most reality programs show someone lighting a fire, but few if any show what it takes to keep it lit, finding firewood, chopping it and keeping the fire fed. We pitched the tent, put the sleeping bags in and stored what I thought was a lot of food, as Mel said, "always take enough for a week, that's about as long as it would take to find us if the canoe was lost". Then we relaxed and listened to nothing, went fishing and ate fresh pickerel. The evening was just closing in when we heard a small boat motor, "hunters" said Mel, "must be looking for moose on the shoreline, but strange that they would use a motor, probably stupid Americans!".

The motor got closer and eventually we could make out a small canoe, with three figures, the front figure was my wife Roz, and Dave and Elaine Brown, I had a feeling that something was terribly wrong, this is not something that Roz would do, she likes the outdoors but not overnight in the bush. That is when I found out that mum has passed away. I was shocked of course, numb, all the emotions that you feel when you learn something like that. Mel was feeling my pain, having had the same experience only a short while earlier. But ever practical he also told us that it was too dangerous to travel back that night, we would strike camp first thing in the morning and get back to Flin Flon. Roz had already booked me on flight leaving Flin Flon at 4pm the following afternoon. Which is why she had found Dave, who volunteered to find me and take me back.



breathtaking sunset in the precambrian shield



At dawn we struck camp, cleaned up the site and loaded the canoes, the mood was sombre, but we also realised that we had quite a journey to get back, so we travelled upstream, getting to squaw rapids in mid morning, same thing unload the canoe, carry the canoe first  and the gear after to the other side of the rapids, the second canoe was smaller and lighter and Dave and Elaine made it up the rapids without a portage. Once we were on the other side we made for the shoreline of Mirond lake and our vehicles. Around noon we were loading up the trucks and setting off back to Flin Flon, this was a fairly short drive, maybe one an a half hours, I got in the house and my emotions finally gave way, I cried and hugged Roz, then got ready to fly to the UK. The flight from Flin Flon left on time, suddenly I was in Winnipeg, leaving there I flew to Toronto, then Heathrow than Manchester. Quite the journey, it is surreal how you can be in the middle of the Canadian boreal forest, retracing the paths of explorers, and less than 48 hours later be on a plane travelling form Heathrow to Manchester.

leaving Flin Flon you see the shoreilne
of Lake Athapapuskow

I got home and stayed at my wife's parents travelling the day after to see family, I saw Denis again, Kevin and Gordon, Trevor was travelling up later for the funeral, my dad was holding up well, and the first words he said were that he didn't think that I would be able to make it, thinking back it is amazing that I did, the next few days passed in a blur, before long we were at the church, and I was back in Burnley before flying back to Canada. I spent most of my time with my dad and Roz's parents, and spent some time with my brothers. My mother in law was not too well either, and even if it sounds awful nothing more than a  death in the family makes you realise that there will eventually be more. What I learnt in those few days is that even if you are engrossed in new things, a new life and new beginnings, there is always a bond to the mother that gave you life, I am glad that I could make it back. My feelings regarding family life and relationships with my own family started to change after that. Mum would have been proud.