The latter [Trout Lake] is a beautiful sheet of water, eleven miles in length and averaging 3/4 mile in width. Good fishing can be obtained, the lake and tributary waters being plentifully stocked with salmon-trout, bass and muscalunge. The bass fishing is exceptionally good. During the months of July and August, bronze-backed beauties bite well and are often taken weighing 41/2 pounds and over; trout weighing up to 18 pounds have been taken on troll at a depth of from 100 to 150 feet. There are ideal camping sites around Trout Lake.[47]
Although there was still lumbering, and a growing number of resorts and cottages, the impression from reading these guides is that one could canoe and camp through the area freely, and that it was still a wilderness. The railway guides of the period left little doubt that this was exactly the kind of area that sportsmen would enjoy. The following description of the region, taken from a general guide for the Grand Trunk Railway in 1911, is typical of the genre:
The unlimited attractions that are combined in the region known as the Lake Nipissing and French River District are fast becoming known to the sportsman, and each year sees and enormous increase of fishermen and hunters making these confines their objective point. The wild and rugged grandeur of the scenery, the health-giving properties of the atmosphere, the primeval wilderness of the surroundings, and its splendid fishing and hunting grounds are attracting those who do not care for the gayeties of the modern summer resorts, but prefer the untrodden forests and the pleasures to be derived in outdoor life. North Bay, on the line of the Grand Trunk, 227 miles north of Toronto, is the starting point for this magnificent locality, and the splendid train service operated by this company makes the district easy of access. Steamer is taken from North Bay for the head of the French River, twenty miles distant, at which point canoes or boats are taken for the trip down the river as far as the tourist or sportsman desires, even to the Georgian Bay. The fishing in this district is without a peer in the northern country, the gamiest of the gamy species of the finny kingdom simply predominating in the waters of the region. Maskinonge, ranging from fifteen to thirty pounds, black bass running up to six pounds, and pickerel tipping the scales at fifteen pounds are numerous, and at any time during the open season a ‘rattling’ fine day’s sport can be had. During the hunting season, deer and other large game abound.[48]
This text illustrates the contemporary view of a sportsman’s paradise. Historians generally agree that sportsmen were looking for challenges that would test or demonstrate their masculinity. While big game hunting in the west might be the ideal experience, and American President Theodore Roosevelt the ideal sportsman, a holiday in northern Ontario to fish, hunt, or canoe was more attainable, both physically and financially, to the businessmen and professionals who had only a week or two at most to enjoy such a holiday. The railways that would get them there helped to construct the image of northern Ontario generally, and the Lake Nipissing area in particular, as a sportsman’s paradise.
Chapter 3
Campfire Stories and the Experience of Place
The Stories and Photographs
The sportsmen who made their way to the wilderness areas of northern Ontario at the turn of the nineteenth century wanted to get away from the city, but they were not necessarily looking for solitude. Most arrived in the company of other men, friends, or fellow members of fishing or hunting clubs. These adventures were social in nature, and telling stories around the campfire at night was an important part of the experience. Practical jokes and nicknames for the duration of the trip were common as well. For hunters, bringing home a trophy was important, but fishermen were often satisfied if they could get a photograph of themselves with the “big one” they caught. Their stories continued to be told well after the trip was over. Anticipation and retrospection were as much part of the experience as the trip itself, but it was the actual experience that gave these meaning.[1]
The fishing and hunting stories available to us are not those told around the campfire, but those written by professional sports writers like Ozark Ripley, agents of the railway companies, and members of fishing and hunting clubs, and were published in the sports magazines of the day. These stories might incorporate advice about the supplies required, the best kind of lure to use for a particular fish, and the most modern equipment available, but they also describe actual trips, and the information they provide on the environment and the conditions encountered are accepted here as being reliable. Only a few stories that appeared to be fictionalized accounts written to drive home a point about conservation or sportsmanship were rejected from consideration. The only unpublished account of the time is from the recently published correspondence of Lord Minto. Reading between the lines as much as possible, these stories are used to understand how the sportsmen experienced “place” — in this case, the Nipissing area.
Photographs were an important part of the sportsman’s story. With the advent of the “Kodak” camera, everyone could bring home images of their trips. When they caught the “big one,” these fishermen sent their images in to their favourite sports magazine to be published. The Rest Easy Fishing Club always made sure they had one camera in their party in order to keep a club log of their trips. Some authors brought cameras with them and took photographs to accompany their accounts of their trip. Railway companies and magazines also commissioned professional photographers to accompany hunting or fishing parties in order to get images of particular locations and activities. It is useful to know when examining these photographs that the catch of the entire group was often photographed with each individual fisherman, making the catch appear excessively large. Hunting parties, on the other hand, usually showed the entire party with their trophies, but the absence of one or two members from the photograph would give a distorted impression of their take. Photographs, therefore, incorporate a bias toward showing the abundance of fish and game.
Reuben Sallows, best known for his images of rural Ontario, made at least seven trips to northern Ontario, at least two of which were to the French River, to capture images of sportsmen as well as scenic views of the area.[2] His images appeared frequently in the pages of Rod and Gun in Canada early in the twentieth century, and he was regularly featured on their cover from 1910 to 1912. The images that accompanied an account of a fishing trip to the French in 1910 successfully illustrate his ability to capture not only the natural beauty of the area but also scenes of the sportsmen and their guides in the natural setting.[3] Not surprisingly, many of his views became popular as postcards of the era. The trip to the French was clearly organized to allow him to get a series of photographs of the region, perhaps for the CPR. As well as landscape shots of the region, he shot images of the Wanakewan (sic) House; the CPR bridge; their first camp; their guide, Wellington Madwayosh, carrying a heavy load and an axe; a domestic scene of their second camp; and a night shot of their campfire. His scenic views often incorporated a person fishing or someone canoeing in the distance, thereby placing the sportsman into the landscape. His hunting images, as one might expect, showed hunters with their guns or with their trophies, but he also took photographs of hunters carrying a deer out of the woods or dressing a deer. While a modern urban audience might view such images with distaste, Sallows’s portrayal of the hunters in a favourable light was no different than his positive images of Ontario rural life in this period.[4] Historians have shown that some of these rural images were staged, and it is possible that some of the hunting images were as well, but his characters never appear artificial. In fact, in his “Happily Engaged in his Favorite Recreation,” the fisherman appears completely natural, and this is perhaps the best of his sportsman images. It was published in Rod and Gun as a full-page reproduction, with a credit suggesting that this particular image had not been commissioned.[5] He was the most prominent of the photographers to help paint northern Ontario as a sportsman’s paradise.
The North Bay to Mattawa area
Mattawa, described in a CPR guide as “a favorite centre for moose hunters”[6] was bustling with activity when Frederic Chutney Selous descended onto the railway platform in 1900:
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