Credit: Canadian Public Archives
As we read the history of expeditions into the New World, we
find a nearly unending string of deaths and failed expeditions, especially into
the Arctic regions, because the explorers were determined to use European gear
and clothing, and stubbornly convinced of their superiority. The prejudice was indeed spoken out loud that
certainly no uneducated indigenous populations could know more about surviving
on the barrens and tundra than the Europeans.
Success in exploration and survival didn’t come until the white men
finally decided to try local ideas on clothing, footwear, and shelter. One of these local innovations that the
Europeans had no match for was the canoe.
The word canoe comes from the Carib Indian (Caribbean and
South Florida) language for the dugout, the ‘kenu.’ The Spanish in the area called it a ‘canoa.’ While there is archeological evidence of a
canoe-type craft in the Netherlands dating back 8,000 years BC, the craft was
never refined or developed there for continuous use. The much lighter and more versatile birch
bark canoe, however, was a refinement from the First Nations people of North
America, or what became known as Canada in 1867. Since nearly half of the region’s geography
is fresh water, about 400,000 square miles of nothing but water, constantly
crossing lakes and rivers, hunting for food, warfare, and being able to move
from one body of water to another, made the light birch bark canoe essential
for survival.
The personal canoe was generally 14-16 ft. in length, and
weighed up to about 50 lbs., which is still quite competitive with the weights
of canoes out of modern materials. To
build a country and create its commercial trade, however, a work horse was
needed, and that was the Montreal canoe.
Few people think about it, but there is virtually nothing
you can touch today that did not get to you by truck. Many items are moved totally by truck, from
raw resource, to manufacturer, to distributor, to store, and to waste disposal
after consumption. Our lives would not
exist as we know them without the tractor-trailer, and for that period in
history, the 1600’s until the 1900’s, and in some regions until the 1960’s, the
Montreal canoe was the region’s tractor-trailer. The Voyageur, or shipping canoe crewman, was
the truck driver and lumper of the day.
They carried European and East Coast supplies into the wilderness, and
exchanged them for hides, which were carried on the return trip for shipment
back to Europe.
Montreal canoes were 35-36 feet long, with a beam of up to 6
feet. The shipping trips would commonly
involve 3-4 canoes traveling together.
Each of the canoes were crewed by around 10 voyageurs, and carried 65
bales of goods, which with the crew and their gear could total as much as 8,000
lbs. The voyageur started his day before
dawn, and generally without breakfast.
Breakfast would wait for one of the day’s early rest stops. They paddled 14 or more hours a day, averaged
50 miles a day, and maintained a 45-55 stroke/minute paddling cadence. After each hour of paddling, they would make
a rest stop, which was measured by the time needed to smoke one small-bowl pipe
of tobacco, and often without getting out of the canoe. When they couldn’t paddle because of rapids,
they would line, pole, track, roll the canoe across short land obstructions on
log rollers, or more commonly portage with 4-6 voyageurs. All hides and freight were pressed into 90
lb. bundles, and each voyageur was responsible for portaging six bundles from
take-out to put–in, carrying two bundles at a time. While most portages were more reasonable
distances, one was eight miles and another 12 miles long, in which case the
voyager carried for a half-mile, and rested while walking back for the next two
bundles, and was expected to complete the round-trip in an hour. Thus the longer portages were made in stages
across the total distance. The voyageurs
commonly wore colorful sashes around their waists. Voyageurs had little room in their lives for
fashion statements. Many think the sash
wrappings were to help prevent hernias from the heavy loads, as strangulated
hernias were an agonizing and not uncommon cause of death for these men.
The early French trapper/traders were usually independent
and solitary operators. In 1670,
however, the Hudson Bay Company was created with a one-and-a-half million
square mile grant from Charles II. That
is 40% of the land mass that became Canada.
Unlike the French trappers who received little or no support from the French
government, the officers of the Hudson Bay Company were well connected both
politically and financially. The beauty
of the Hudson Bay Company was that their ring of forts and posts around Hudson
Bay and westward into the interior cut the time needed to complete a round-trip
into the wilderness and back by half as opposed to going all the way back to
the St. Lawrence River.
Voyageurs were now HBC employees. The Voyageur signed a five-year contract with
the company. To fill these positions,
the Hudson Bay Company needed to find men that were used to being close to
starvation, living on a diet of half lard and half corn, accustomed to
hardship, miserable weather, lives of privation, and very limited resources. They looked to Scotsmen from the Orkney and
Shetland Isles on the Northeast coast of Scotland. During the Napoleonic Wars roughly a third of
their male populations were pressed into the military, most into the Navy. More were pressed into service on Arctic
whaling ships. The collapse of local
fisheries, the failure of crops, and the eviction of farmers from their lands by
rich land owners left few resources for their survival at home. During this period, roughly a quarter of the
islands’ populations emigrated to North America, Australia, and New Zealand. Many who found their way to North America sustained
themselves with canoe paddles.
