“Canoeing the Churchill: A Practical
Guide to the Historic Voyageur Highway”
by Greg Marchildon and Sid Robinson
Published by University of Regina Press
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$34.95
ISBN 9-780889-771482
Call me unusual, but activities that
require great strength and endurance, are potentially fatal, and involve the
outdoors are my idea of a glorious time. Thus it’s not inconceivable that at
some point in my life I may participate in an extensive canoe trip, ie: the
Churchill River. Now that I’ve read Canoeing
the Churchill: A Practical Guide to the Historic Voyageur Highway, I
couldn’t imagine that undertaking without packing along this book, though at a
hefty 476 pages, I might be cursing that decision during the many portages on the
1000 km route between Methy Portage and Cumberland House.
In this tour de force the authors merge historical fact, journal entries,
maps (with all-important entry and exit points), photographs, paintings,
legends, a packing list, safety tips, camping suggestions, and so much more
while also delivering a veritable stroke-by-stroke (or at least
section-to-section) account of what one can expect on this epic journey,
including what current services one might find in the various small communities
along the route. (If you’re from northern SK, names like La Loche, Buffalo
Narrows, Patuanak, Dillon, and Île-à-la-Crosse
will already be part of your lexicon.)
The Churchill was an important route
for fur traders and voyageurs dating back to the 1770s, and the authors
introduce us to several of these characters, including Connecticut-born fur
trader Peter Pond – murderer, map-maker, and the first white man to cross the approximately
19 km Methy Portage: ouch. The grand Peter Pond Lake (largest lake on the Churchill
route) is named for him. Explorer David Thompson’s “special connection” to the
route is also cited: in 1799 he met and married his 13-year-old Métis
bride, Charlotte Small, in Île-à-la-Crosse.
In 1986 Marchildon and Robinson canoed
the entire journey over seventy days in an aluminum Grumman Eagle, and they’re
to be thanked for many of the book’s photographs. They were excited about
“camping on the same rocks and portaging the same trails as the early traders
and their voyageurs.”
There’s so much to appreciate here,
from the fine writing, ie: “Regrettably, much of the early history is lost in
the mists of time” to the map of sites where Aboriginal rock paintings can be
found; from a short history on beaver hats to current information (ie: “a few
independent fur buyers [still] buy fur in the old way,” including Robertson
Trading, in La Ronge); from clear directions to Cree legends, ie: the Swimming
Stone near the northern tip of Wamninuta Island, where it’s believed a medicine
man gave the flat-backed boulder the ability to swim. All this, and much
humour, too, ie: they’ve written that Face #7 at a rock painting site “suffers
from a natural exfoliation or flaking of the rock.”
Aside from an invaluable resource for
canoeists, this book also makes for a well-written read for anyone who enjoys
history, adventure, and armchair travel. The fact that this slightly-revised
edition is actually the fourth printing of this title speaks well of its
popularity. These men know of what they speak.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL
BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
__________
“These Are Our Legends”
Narrated by Lillooet Elders,
Transcribed and Translated by Jan van Eijk, Illustrated by Marie Abraham
Published by University of Regina Press
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$24.95
ISBN 9-780889-773967
University of Regina Press is to be
commended for its series, First Nations Language Readers, which allows a broad
spectrum of readers to enjoy the wisdom, humour, word play, and moral lessons
inherent in traditional oral stories and legends. Now the press has added These Are Our Legends to the series, and
thus preserves seven short Lillooet legends, originally narrated by four Lillooet
(Salish) elders from British Columbia’s interior and painstakingly transcribed
and translated by Jan van Eijk, a Linguistics
professor at Regina's First
Nations University who’s dedicated forty years to studying the Lillooet
language.
The volume offers an
interesting juxtaposition. The academically-inclined will appreciate van Eijk’s
depth of research, evident in his opening “On the Language of the Lillooet,” in
which he discusses phonology, morphology, and syntax, and in the extensive
Lillooet-English glossary that follows the bilingual stories. His methodology
re: collecting the stories – or sptakwlh,
which translates as “ancient story forever” – via tape recorder between 1972 –
1979 is also included.
These particular
stories initially appeared together in a 1981 collection – Cuystwí Malh Ucwalmícwts (Lillooet Legends and Stories)
– and van Eijk imparts the revisions made for the reprint. In explaining how
one of the oral storytellers could not provide the precise meaning of two words
in a story told to her by her grandmother, the author writes: “Sadly, one
almost sees old words fading away before one’s eyes here, a fate that has
befallen too many words in too many First Nations languages.” This is why a
book like These Are Our Legends is
critical.
Linguistics aside, I am guessing that
the majority of readers will be most interested in the seemingly simple
animal-based legends themselves. “Coyote” is a major force here. This
Trickster’s antics reveal both the high (ie: intelligence) and low (ie:
carelessness) of his (and human) character. In the first story, “The Two
Coyotes,” a pair of coyotes are “going along” and one claims that he is a
coyote, while the other is just “‘another one’”. The former slyly proves his
point via a humourous bit of word play. Another example of that original First
Nations’ humour appears in “Grizzly Bear and the Black Bear’s Children,” in
which a black bear-eating grizzly is encouraged to sit on an ant hill and “open
[her] bum”. (Interestingly, the glossary includes the Lillooet verb npíg̓wqam̓ – “to open one’s bum”.)
What I most appreciate here is the
“real” - and sometimes surprisingly contemporary - way these stories have been
documented in text. A coyote colloquially says “No way,” for example, and in
“Coyote Drowns,” the speaker ends thus: “He kept on doing that until he got
carried away by the water, and he died, I guess.” Another story includes this: “Gee,
when they got there, were they ever amazed …”. Two stories end with the
storytellers concluding “That’s all”.
I have the strong sense that I am
hearing these stories legitimately, as if the tellers have been drinking tea
with me in my kitchen. That, my friends, translates as success.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL
BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
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