July 27, 2010

July 27, 2010

Last night we crossed the border from Wisconsin into Minnesota. This morning we drove the last leg to Voyageur National Park. This park commemorates the French fur traders who traveled the waterways of the frontier. Every spring the Voyageurs would transport trade goods from Montreal west and exchange them for beaver pelts with the Indians. The French Voyageurs traveled in giant birch-bark canoes packed to the gills with cargo. Thru the Great Lakes it was all paddle. Minnesota didn’t stop them because this is the land of 10,000 lakes. When necessary they would carry (portage) the canoe to the next lake or river and repeat the process. In this way they could travel all the way to northern Alberta in Canada, a distance of 3000 miles from Montreal. When the Revolutionary War ended, the border between the US and British Canada was placed along the main communication path of the Midwest: the route of the Voyageurs.

At one of the park’s Visitor Center, we listened to some excellent re-enactors tell us about the life of the Voyageurs. It was a little too authentic. Aimee and I were recruited to man a 10-person Voyageur canoe for a journey around the harbor. It was a lot of work. The Voyageurs had it much tougher. They paddled 50 strokes a minute, 50 minutes an hour, 15 hours a day, all summer.

In the afternoon, we were scheduled for a scenic canoe trip but it was cancelled by rain. Before leaving the park, we watched a second film about the life of Voyageurs. It was made in Canada. Appropriately so. The Voyageurs were usually French Canadians and it was their travels that explored and opened up the vast Canadian west.