It was a perfect Canadian image: the canoe, the wild rice bog, the portage used 150 years ago by Voyageurs opening Canada's savage Northwest. Being proudly nationalistic, I savored the moment as my canoe snaked through the rice, seeking the portage entry point. Plant shafts hissed along the boat's fiberglass sides. Seed-heads slapped our faces. Wild rice bounced onto our hat brims. Finally nudging shore, I hopped out too early and sank thigh-deep in rice-bog slime. My stern partner threw his weight sideways for balance while I grabbed the gunwale and sucked myself up from the bog. I floundered ashore, helped land the canoe and, shouldering my share of the load, squished onto the narrow, stony path. I would rinse off at the other end of the portage. Voyageurs weren't clean all the time, either. We were paddling the Canadian Shield, an unthinkably huge, wide-open wilderness used by fur traders, or Voyageurs, for hundreds of years. Many of the paths connecting their canoe routes have been kept clear by tour operators, giving modern-day, Gore-tex-clad Voyageurs a glimpse of the fur-trading past. The trails can be obscure; 10 yards to the right or left and we'd never have found the mushy ground signaling our portage point. Half the world's fresh water flows through Canada, most through this vast region, and some of the more distant tributaries, lost in boreal forests far from civilization, have likely never seen a paddle. But in their heyday, routes like this one were busy commercial water-highways—at least for a few months of summer. If the United States was founded on horseback and covered wagons, the map of Canada was charted by canoe, unfurled first by early explorers, then by salaried employees of two companies battling for dominance in the fur industry—Hudson's Bay Company and The North West Company. The first of the explorers had no idea what they were getting into. La Verendrye, Henry Kelsey, Radisson and Groseilliers—among the earliest names recorded in Canada's history—all paddled the Shield's crazy spider-web of waterways in the 1600s and 1700s, using birchbark canoes modeled after those made by Ojibway and Algonquin Indians, their bark pieces held together with spruce-root lacing and boiled pine gum. Those first explorers gave way within a century to skinny Voyageurs, most of them under five-foot-six—shorter than your average 20th century 12-year-old. Short was best, because the small Voyageur took up less space, needed less food, and could easily use the standard four-foot, three-inch paddle. Hardy fools with a taste for adventure, Voyageurs were little more than indentured slaves to the companies that employed them. They usually paddled 15 hours a day, five to six men to a boat, their freight canoes larger than those the explorers used. Voyageurs had to handle boats measuring up to eight yards in length and by the 17th century, the canoes were made of wood, a sturdier material for whitewater encounters. By trip's end, with winter setting in, Voyageurs dipped their blades in ice slush around the fragile boats. Loaded with provisions and trade goods on the way into Canada's interior, the boats were now burdened with a ton or more of stinking furs—and every day's journey meant portages, sometimes a dozen or more, hauling the fur bundles over rock-and-swamp forest trails. The Voyageurs used tumplines, or portage collars, to carry their loads along the trails, trotting along at about three miles per hour, up to 200 pounds on each bent back. The tumpline wrapped around a bale of fur and rested across the Voyageur's forehead. Settling the first 80-pound bale into place behind him at roughly hip-level, they then piled a second pack, sometimes even a third, atop the first. Voyageurs lived on pemmican (animal fat mixed with dried meat and berries), rubaboo (water, flour and pemmican soup), or gruel made of dried peas and bacon. If they ran out of real food, they ate tripe de roche (a moss soup, useless nutritionally but effective at staving off starvation pangs), moccasin leather, parchment, and, occasionally, their dogs. They called the men who came from Montreal to collect furs at Lake Superior's Grand Portage "eaters of pork." It was an insulting term, meaning that those men were fat and soft compared to the tough, half-starved lads who braved the savage Canadian interior. In the early years of the fur trade, the Voyageurs often had to fight off attacks by Indian tribes. Local aborigines quickly saw the advantage in trading with these strange little men, and began guiding them through the more confusing areas of the Shield and supplying them with food, furs and canoe repair materials in exchange for trade goods. The relationships between Voyageurs and native people became solid commercial friendships and often led to Indian-Voyageur marriages, out of which the Metis, or mixed-blood children, were born. Explorers in birchbark boats, and early traders and Voyageurs in wooden canoes, may have opened the Canadian Northwest to the concept of commerce. Yet the place remains as empty now as when the rivers were first paddled, populated only by the occasional fishing lodge or scattered reserve. During the short but glorious summers here, canoeists can paddle hundreds of wild, unspoiled routes including the original "Voyageur highways," comfortably coddled with ample, upscale provisions, light canoes, and cozy tents— all provided by tour companies. Outbound groups register with Royal Canadian Mounted Police posts near the provincial or national parks. Many trips begin at Lac La Ronge Provincial Park, a four-hour drive north of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. This is where we began, spending the first night at a Lac La Ronge campground with privies, docks and a sand beach where we gathered around a picnic table to survey our route map. There were five portages on our four-day jaunt, the longest five-eighths of a mile, and about 40 miles of straightforward paddling. This would be the scenic route; a pleasant, relaxing trip through a series of scenic vistas, from large lakes to narrow, marshy channels and quiet streams. The area offers more than just easy routes, however. Treks range from easy flatwater canoeing to Class IV paddling, with much of the hard stuff located along the Churchill or Hayes Rivers. By the time we arrived at the end of our trip at Stanley Mission, we too gained a semblance of what it must have been like to be a Voyageur, camping under the stars and traversing untouched wilderness. Of course, there was an obvious difference. While they covered more than 80 miles a day, our group, lazily contemplating the history and surroundings, averaged a happily-mediocre nine miles per day, giving us time for slow breakfasts, two or three swims and long lunches followed by light naps. But like the Voyageurs hundreds of years before us, we never saw nor heard evidence of another human—no two-stroke engines, no planes overhead. Nor did we see so much as a bottle lid to indicate any other humans had been this way. We could have been original explorers here, bartering and delivering furs while charting a virgin course through an undiscovered world. Boundary Waters/Voyageur Waterway If sheer cliffs, river gorges and stair-like waterfalls aren't enthralling enough, there are plenty of portages to tackle—though none are much more than a mile. It's roughly 180 miles all the way to Rat Portage, but it's possible to bail out for burgers in towns like Fort Frances and International Falls. Saskatchewan's Voyageur Highway/Churchill River Hayes River/Middle Track Winnipeg River/Whiteshell Provincial Park Assiniboine River Route
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