Episode 10: Back Country Canoe Tripping Part II

ALGONQUIN DEFINING MOMENTS

Episode 10: Back Country Canoe Tripping Part II

As noted in Episode 9 backcountry canoe tripping has been an integral part of the Algonquin Park, Ontario Canada experience since well before the Park’s beginnings in 1893. This follow-on episode focuses on what the landscape was like that our three canoe trip parties paddled through including majestic waterways, beaver dam filled rivers, and muddy swamps; how they overcame the pains of portaging, cooked over an open fire, and dealt with the bugs as well as the joys of a balsam bed.

Diaries and pictures and books by these canoe tripping parties that are the core references for this episode include one of the area’s first surveyors James Dickson, who brought a group of friends on a month-long fishing and canoe tripping holiday around 1885. They came in from Dwight up the Oxtongue and then continued on to Canoe Lake and as far north as Burnt Root. George Hayes undertook several trips in 1896 and 1897 and photographed them extensively. In 1903, three park ranger guides took Boston Architect Ernest Machado, his brother Jose and brother-in-law Alfred Whitman on a 12-day trip from Canoe Lake to Victoria Lake. They headed north from Canoe Lake to Big Trout and from there to Opeongo and then south down the Opeongo River through Booth Lake to Victoria Lake. The third reference is a fishing trip that John Robins and his friend Tom took on the east side of the Park as portrayed in Robins' book The Incomplete Angler.

I’ve also created a collage of pictures from the Machado 1903 trip and George Hayes 1895-97 trips, which can be found both on my YouTube Algonquin Defining Moments channel

https://youtu.be/QOS8uCXCoPo

and as a slide show on my website www.Algonquin parkheritage.com.

https://www.algonquinparkheritage.com/podcast-pics-and-vids.html

Enjoy!!!