Like many places on our globe, the tract of land between the Ottawa river and Lake Huron has its share of stories and people to tell them, but like so many places on our globe, the shrinking of the world through the internet has flooded us with information lacking context and connection. I write this blog to help ensure that at least some of those stories do not fall by the wayside and that the memory of both land and people can be more than just markings on a map or written in a dusty book that no one will read. This will be a very ancient story, hopefully one I can share details on as far back as possible, though my knowledge is limited.
This is a story about countless generations of native peoples who have seemingly vanished into obscurity in a society more concerned with financial numbers and land titles than with hearts and minds. That particular issue, it turns out, is hardly new, and the people who now seek to reclaim some of their ancestral land have been dealing with being left aside for over two centuries. I stand with the Anishnabe (known as Algonquins) in their ongoing desire to be recognized as more than just a passing element of the land. I do not come to this standpoint from some romantic ideal of native peoples and culture, but rather as an outside observer that has grown up among Anishnabe and Kanonsionni (known as Mohawks) friends and acquaintances and as a student of history who has long been interested in pre-European North America and hopes to share more than just the single chapter in books that this history receives.
This is a story about my French-Canadian ancestors who were the first to bring abrupt change to the land, but managed by and large to integrate into both landscape and people here in something of a blending rather than conquest. Of course, this story has political drama involved in it as well, to say nothing of fantasies and romance that mesh dreams and reality in ways that obscure more fascinating truths; then again, as I have been told by some Anishnabe friends, dreams and reality have ways of fooling us into thinking that one is more than the other. I come to share this story from several generations removed from anything properly called French-Canadian, speaking English as a dominant language and living far from my roots on that side of the family in eastern Ontario.
This is a story about current and recent residents of the land between the Ottawa and Lake Huron, of CN rail workers and families, cottagers, rangers, and visitors to their lands. This too has political drama involved in it, and like the other two story mentions, will have me now and then posting news about what is currently happening to the people there. These stories, stories of towns called Brent and Kiosk, railroad stations like Achray and lumber depots like Odenback, are actually what inspired me to want to find out and share as much as I can about such disappearing worlds. I am fortunate to have friends and family who are very much in favor of my exploration and helpful in getting details and angles about stories of little societies that have vanished. I write about them because, well, many of us would like to be remembered.
Perhaps above all else, this is a story of the land itself, far more ancient than any humans or even animals that have ever walked upon it. I'll try not to get too excited about rocks, trees, sand, and lake, like I tended to in my other blog about the larger continent, but truth be told, stories without setting are very much lacking. History cannot be properly shared without geography, and as I learned long ago from the priests and brothers of the Society of Jesus (known as Jesuits), there is no substitute for putting oneself in the scene, be it in terms of prayerful reflection or cultural studies alike. The Ottawa-Huron tract, and Algonquin, in particular, is the setting for these stories.
So where does my own Algonquin story begin? Many long years ago, my grandparents set out from the docks by the Portage store on the south end of Canoe lake.
This particular scene has changed over the years, but I dare say this was largely the same view they had as they looked north before starting their long journey to Cedar lake. My grandfather was long before interested in going to see where my grandmother would go to see her relatives on Cedar, early cottagers of a plot on the end of a long beach on the windiest part of that windy lake. He was from Dorset, and thus no stranger to the north country, but his heart and soul would not be prepared for what he found on the north end of Algonquin. She was from many places by then, but also a northerner who had lived in Capreol, the center of life for the CN railway running from farther west and traveling through the land between river and lake through the heart of northern Algonquin. He fell in love with what he found so much that he built a home upon it, on a stabilized sand dune on the other end of that Cedar beach, in a pine barrens perfectly devoid of any tree that would need to be cut. The spot was decried as too much in the direct fury of Cedar, and yet was built precisely with that dilemma in mind and has stood now for nearly 75 years.
The spot, it turns out, was the probable wintering site of many Anishnabe chiefs, who chose Cedar for its plentiful moose population. The beach in this place is broad enough to fit a flotilla of canoes pulled up past the point of grinding ice, as the chiefs never travelled alone or in small groups. I would like to think that the people who wintered there also chose the spot out of a love of the beauty of the land there.
I find myself now far from these grounds, far from the landscape that holds such a grip on me as I enter my 36th year of life. I miss my country, living in southeastern Michigan, but more than that I just miss my forest and lake. I'll end up talking about a lot of things related to the north country of the southern Canadian Shield, but truth be told, this will be a blog about Algonquin, a majestic place that contains the most important place of geographical places in my heart. Thank you for reading!
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