These people who have followed Low's routes are largely urban folk who have written about their trips. It is their writings that have led us to them. But the first travellers of these rivers, the Cree, Naskapi, Montagnais,35 and Inuit, knew them intimately long before Low set foot and paddle on them. In recent times, these Aboriginal people are “rediscovering” some of the ancient routes, the routes followed by their ancestors and by A.P. Low. Their stories are still not written down and are found only by speaking to their friends and descendents. The region is so well-known to the Aboriginals, that we have avoided using the term “explorer” for Low and others as most of them depended on Aboriginal guides and their route descriptions.
One of the most significant of the people pioneering the rediscovery of their own heritage was Charlie Brien. He was born “on the trapline” on May 12, 1936, in northern Quebec near the now-abandoned trading post of Nichicun. His father, Billy Brien, raised him “in the bush,” wise in the ways of life in the boreal forest. One hot summer day in July 1954, Charlie married Janie Neeposh. Together, they raised 13 children. Every winter Charlie hunted and trapped near Lake Nichicun and, in the summer, he always returned to the village of Mistissini. Charlie walked with a limp and, in the early 1960s, his “gimpy” leg forced him to remain there over the winter. He worked for the Hudson's Bay Company and while there learned about running a business. By the late 1960s, construction was booming in the village and, in 1968, Charlie opened his first business, hauling a sled loaded with coffee, doughnuts and sandwiches to construction sites. Shortly after that he opened the first Cree-run business in Mistissini, a restaurant which he simply called “Coffee Shop.” Charlie wanted his operation to do more than serve up good food. He envisioned a community meeting place where friends and family could gather for good food, good times and good conversation. He bought the first television set in Mistissini, and on Saturday nights the restaurant would be packed for the hockey game. His spot was also busy on nights when the CBC series “Adventures in Rainbow Country” was shown. This series, made in the early 1970s, featured a character named Pete Gawa, an Ojibwe teenager, played by Buckley Petawabano, a Cree from Mistissini. No wonder the restaurant was packed, as friends and relatives crowded in to watch “Pete” thwart jewel thieves, kidnappers, hijackers and even the devil himself! The restaurant, now called Denise Restaurant after his youngest daughter and operated by his two oldest daughters, still does a thriving business.
But Charlie never forgot his close ties to the land. Late in his life, he took an interest in canoeing and, in 1988, he took four teenage boys on a summer-long trip from Mistissini back to his traditional home near Nichicun. He wanted to help the Cree teenagers understand their heritage and their past. He believed that only by knowing where they came from, could they see their way clearly to the future. Each day, he would teach his young charges a new bush skill and tell stories about the past. He hoped the program would continue, and it has. Charlie passed away March 8, 2002. On our trip from the James Bay Highway to Waskaganish in 2003, we met a group of Cree teens travelling with an elder, paddling upstream on the Rupert River to the small town of Nemiscau. They are the legacy of Charlie's vision. He would be pleased.36
What is the siren call that keeps us coming back to this boreal land? Perhaps, both for us escapees from our urban lifestyles and for the Aboriginal Peoples who live here, it is the unchanged nature of the land and its beauty. The Europeans who travelled in this land in these early days, remarked on how the hard life led by the Aboriginal inhabitants seems to result in a people who were happy, strong, kind and wise in the ways of living. “Nothing could be more strenuous than freighting on the Rupert River, but it is…natural work, the very strenuousness of it is decidedly beneficial to his [the Cree canoemen] moral and physical well-being.”37 In his book, True North, Elliot Merrick recounts the words of an Eskimo trapper named Bert Blake, “…there's nothing for me like travellin' a new river, seein' the beeg heels close in behind and the bends open up ahead, breathin' cold sunshine and seein' new country every day…I wouldn't want to go and live away…”38
Perhaps a people who live with uncertainty staring them in the face each day — uncertainty about whether they could find enough food to survive the harsh winters — the uncertainties inherent in a life that involves long, arduous journeys through wild country, brings with it a kind of freedom that we have lost in our highly technological world. A freedom that we glimpse on our trip through this land. Despite the rain, despite the wind, the cold, the portages — every day brings a wonderful sense of accomplishment. Every day is spent in beauty. Every day we feel so close to the land, the weather; every task seems worth doing. Every day and every action has a consequence that we can feel or see right away.
Leading a life of uncertainty has led to great gifts for these people including a freedom to move, a deep understanding of the forces of nature and the pride of self-sufficiency in a harsh environment. But the gifts run deeper than the water in the Rupert. A life spent living closer to the land than we can imagine leads to a kind of genius that we, with all our technological wizardry, cannot comprehend — an understanding of the relationships that bind the world together, the patience to accept what cannot be changed, the will and resourcefulness to change what can be, and, as that well-known epithet by Reinhold Niebuhr says, “the wisdom to know the difference.” These are gifts that are hard to come by, and easy to lose. Perhaps it is the quest for some of these same gifts that keep us, and others, coming back? Do modern wilderness travellers, equipped with Global Positioning Systems to tell them exactly where they are and satellite telephones to ensure that rescue is only a phone call away, lose these gifts that a greater measure of uncertainty gives?
3 Interlude: En Route Destination Lebel-sur-Quévillon
FOR A GUY THAT HAS GONE on a lot of long canoe trips, I'm still a pitiful jumble of jelly when it's time to leave. This trip has been one tough departure. It's hard enough leaving my dog, Mica, not to mention our three-year-old first-born son, Isaac, my very frail 89-year-old mom and, of course, my wife Connie. Of the four, I worry most about my mom, Rose. She is “as sweet as the flower, and as thorny.” She lives in a retirement home, and I know she will get good care when I'm gone. I explain to her that I'm going on a long canoe trip, and she asks me the usual questions:
“Where are you going to sleep? Are there any motels?”
“Well, not once we start paddling, but maybe we'll find a cabin now and then,” I say, with a hopeful smile.
“What are you going to eat?”
“You know, Mom,” I sigh. “The same stuff I eat all the time, but maybe we'll catch some fish and pick lots of blueberries.” And that perks her up.
“What about the bears and wolves?” she asks quietly. I have to lean close to her to hear, but talk very loudly for her to understand, as she refuses to wear her hearing aid.
“Mom, there's nothing dangerous up there,” I reply, trying to convince myself as well. I'm not worried about the bears, but I am worried about the bugs, the weather, and the rugged terrain. I'm not convinced I'm equal to the demands of this trip.
“I'll miss you,” she says. Her skin is so pale, and she looks so frail and tiny in her wheelchair. She is hardly there. I can see her physical presence diminishing day by day. In photographs she appears almost transparent, as if she's not quite all in this world. But she recovered from a bout of pneumonia in the spring, defying the predictions of doctors and nurses, and doesn't show any signs of departing from this world any time soon. “Don't worry about me,” she adds. “Just take care of yourself.” I kiss her on the cheek, and give her a gentle hug, so as not to break any of those frail bones. I didn't suspect that this would be the last time I would