by David Sedlock
“What sets a canoeing expedition apart is that it purifies you more rapidly and inescapably than any other. Travel a thousand miles by train and you are a brute; pedal five hundred on a bicycle and you remain a bourgeois; paddle a hundred in a canoe and you are already a child of nature.”
Pierre Trudeau, quoted in Nastawgan: The Canadian North by Canoe & Snowshoe
Background on Temagami, and Grey Owl.
Lake Temagami is one of the largest lakes in northern Ontario, and home to the Teme-Augama Anishnabai (Deep Water People). They call their world Daki Menan (Our Land). These people are traditionally nomadic. They created a network of summer and winter trails linking their waterways called the “Nastawgan”, which has been in use for an estimated 10,000+ years. It is now customary for organizations in the area to acknowledge their claim to the land. For example, this statement is included in emails from Camp Wanapitei: Wanapitei recognizes and acknowledges that we operate within Daki Menan, the traditional homeland and unceded territory of the Temagami First Nations/Teme-Augama Anishnabai.
Lake Temagami was Grey Owl’s first destination in the North after immigrating to Canada in 1906. Though without a trace of Indigenous ancestry, Grey Owl – born Archibald Belaney in Hastings, England – would fool the world, successfully passing as half-Indian for the latter years of his life. He wrote several best-selling books and became a celebrity in Great Britain thanks to two wildly popular lecture tours in the 1930s, which culminated in a Royal Command Performance at Buckingham Palace on 10 December 1937, when he lectured to King George VI and the young princesses Elizabeth and Margaret. His subject was always the vanishing Canadian wilderness and the need to protect what was left of it. He is particularly known for an uncanny ability to befriend beaver and his tireless campaign to protect them from exploitation. Grey Owl was at home in the Canadian bush and was a skilled canoeist. Glimpses of his skill can still be seen in his “beaver films”. (see canadianfilm.ca, and search ‘grey owl’)
“Remember you belong to nature, not it to you.”
Grey Owl
Our Journey in Temagami.
My son, Nicklas (30), and I (68) left Lake Muskoka on the way to Temagami in the pouring rain on Monday, 9 September. We had already put off the trip for two days, due to the horrible weather on the weekend. The outfitter in Temagami would tell us later that he was out rescuing people stranded in heavy winds, unusual cold and even hail. We were beginning to fear a scrub, but an hour north of Bracebridge the rain stopped, the sky cleared and the fine weather that would last, incredibly, the next eleven days began: We would experience day temperatures in the twenties (Celsius), nights in the teens, a lot of sun and a consistent light wind from the southwest starting about mid-morning, with just a spattering of rain one day. To top it off there would be a full moon and partial lunar eclipse. A canoeist’s dream!
We pulled into Temagami Outfitters, which did a great job for us. Eric provided a beautiful 16′ Swift Prospector (17 kilos, kevlar hull, aluminum trim). We secured the canoe to the car roof and filled up a 60 L barrel with food. We appreciated the excellent harness from Recreational Barrel Works, since we were starting out with about 22 kilos, including the barrel and harness. I figure on a base weight of around 800 grams of food per person, per day, providing about 3,000 calories and 100 grams of protein per person. We had opted for some backpacking meals and were quite satisfied with the vegetarian meals from Backpackers Pantry (https://www.backpackerspantry.ca). The rest of our gear consisted of two 90 L Sea to Summit dry bags, two 15 L day dry bags and two beautiful Grey Owl paddles. With camping gear and personal gear weighing in at around 35 kilos, our total weight, including canoe, was about 75 kilos, which meant that, at the start, each person was carrying about 18 kilos on the double portages. (This is probably a far cry from what Grey Owl called a “man’s load” in his essay “Rivermen” in Tales of an Empty Cabin. But then what he had in mind with a man’s load may have been a far cry from the old voyageurs’ man’s load, which was reputed to be 180 pounds or 82 kilos!)
We drove the short distance north to the start of the Red Squirrel Road and spent the next 2 hours driving the 30 or so bumpy kilometres to the first parking area, located 650 meters from the put-in on Sandy Inlet. The track to the second parking area, closer to the put-in, is notoriously bad, and three days of rain hadn’t improved it. Even the short distance from the road to the first parking lot required negotiating a few alarming puddles. The put-in is near Camp Wanapetei, about 500 m to the northwest. Both are on Sandy Inlet.
Our intention for the trip was to have a leisurely time and not worry about crushing distance. We wanted to enjoy the here and now, rather than to be always thinking ahead to the next portage and the next lake. We were canoeing through a very special land, which the Indigenous call the Spirit Forest. Why not slow down and appreciate it? Our route was based on Hap Wilson’s Route #6 (Diamond, Wakimika and Obabika Lake Loop) in Temagami – A Wilderness Paradise. We intended to travel through Bob Lake from Diamond and try to spend two nights on Chee-skon, also known as Spirit Lake, in the heart of the Spirit Forest.
Diamond Lake
[T]here is pure magic in that first moment as you push away from shore. The canoe seems to hang suspended above the dark water, momentarily floating in space, quietly separating from the land that has held you throughout the winter months. And now the noise and tumult and vibrations of the city 200 miles away begin to fade.
John and Janet Foster, quoted in Nastawgan: The Canadian North by Canoe & Snowshoe
Our first destination was Diamond Lake in Obabika River Provincial Park, where we planned to spend two nights. As usual, everything took longer than expected. After the portage to the put-in, we started paddling about 16:00 and soon realised that, with sunset approaching around 19:30, it made no sense to do the next portage and then look for a campsite, racing against dark. Instead, we headed for Peschabo’s Point, only a few kilometres away. The campsite was a bit scruffy, but okay for one night. We got potatoes baking in the embers of the fire and partook of our standard first night IPAs. After all the planning and preparation, we were finally in the Canadian bush, which Grey memorably described as “the land of shadows” in the opening lines of his first published article “The Passing of the Last Frontier”:
Side by side with modern Canada lies the last battleground in the long drawn out bitter contest between civilisation and the forces of nature. It is a land of shadows and hidden trails, lost rivers and unknown lakes, a region of soft-footed creatures going their noiseless ways over the carpet of moss, and there is silence, intense, absolute and all-embracing.
We proceeded to Diamond Lake via Napoleon’s Portage, the North Arm, Upper Narrows, Sharp Rock Inlet and Sharp Rock Portage. Napoleon’s Portage starts out with an uphill scramble for about 100 meters, then it levels out into a trail through an enchanted forest of birch, aspen, pine, spruce and cedar. All the portages were beautiful like that.
The central part of Lake Temagami is cottage country and even here in the northern part of the lake there are scattered cottages. The lake is on Crown Land (not provincial park) and open to motorboats. At this time of year Ontario lake life is coming to a close, so in general we had peaceful paddling, if not the “absolute and all-embracing” silence Grey Owl writes about.
We found a great campsite atop a five-meter-high cliff on an island in the central part of Diamond.
According to Hap Wilson, “The primal forest of Diamond Lake, south to the cliffs of the sacred Chee-skon Lake, is one of the largest contiguous pine forests in North America.” The high proportion of pine gives the forest a welcoming, open aspect that is often absent in the somber forests of spruce trees, which Grey Owl described as “stately trees, cathedral-like with their tall spires above, and their gloomy aisles below.” The Red Squirrel Road continues past Sandy Inlet and bisects this “primal forest.” We crossed the road twice, once at Sharp Rock Portage and a second time on the portage from Diamond to Bob Lake. The road is well-maintained and seems to be just waiting for a green light to support the man-made creation of a new forest, which Grey Owl called a synthetic forest.
After camp chores were done, we perched ourselves on the cliff as the sun set, making good progress with the camp whisky (Forty Creek Niagara Barrel Select Whisky). After dinner there was the obligatory campfire.
Unlike the weather for the rest of the trip, the next day was overcast in the morning and there were a few spatterings of rain. The plan for the day was to take a side trip to Small Lake. We paddled down the western arm, passing Chay Island, and located the creek along which runs the portage to Small. This brought us to a lovely, narrow lake, situated between steep shores, which has no name on any map. Hap Wilson named the lake “Wapaho” and built a cabin (without permission) there in 1973:
“We selected a lake between Small and Diamond, closer in fact, and much prettier, easier to get building materials in and, most importantly, with good cover to obfuscate our industry. Wapaho, the name we applied to our little lake, was a bastardization of the actual Ojibwa word, wapasons, or little rabbit; it was strikingly picturesque with high hills of Jack and red pine surrounding a translucent, narrow strip of water. We would build atop a one hundred foot cliff on the east side in order to get as much afternoon sun as possible, and to have a spectacular view of the lake.”
Hap Wilson, The Cabin
We paddled up to the portage to Small. Our scouting party reported a nasty trail full of blowdown, so we gave that up and returned to camp to enjoy a relaxing evening and further good efforts with the whisky. The campsite featured a deluxe thunder box, which exceeds the requirements of the most demanding bushman.
Spirit Lake
Our next destination was Chee-skon or Spirit Lake, where we again planned to spend two nights. The route took us through Bob (Chay) and Mud lakes. The portage trail from Diamond to Bob is well-trodden and straightforward. Good advice in the bush: keep a backup supply of birchbark. When it gets wet and cold, and you want a fire quickly, that supply is your ace in the hole.
Bob Lake is smaller than Diamond, but a lovely lake. We decided to spend the night at the very comfortable southernmost campsite, where we were treated to great views.
We broke camp early, intending to reach Chee-skon as soon as possible and snatch the only campsite before any contenders arrived. We passed by a lone canoeist who had been there the previous night but had pulled out due to tent failure. What luck! The put-in to Mud was boggy with an aspirational walkway made from tree limbs in various states of decomposition. Despite its name, Mud is a lovely small lake with interesting rock formations.
In the two days we spent there, we never tired of watching the play of light and shadow on the rock face and the reflections dancing on the water below. Our plan for the second day at Spirit Lake was to hike the Obabika Old Growth Trails. We joined the “orange” trail above our campsite and walked south along a ridge, arriving at the famous stand of old-growth white pines called the Three Sisters.
We then crossed the portage to Obabika and turned onto the “yellow” trail that ascends the cliff on the east side of the lake. At the top we got a majestic view of Obabika in the distance and Chee-skon below.
The next day we planned to paddle down Obabika to the portage to Obabika Inlet. The lake is fairly big water, and I was a little concerned about the wind, due to the north-south orientation of the lake. If the wind continued out of the SW, even a light wind blowing over a wide expanse of water would give us a choppy ride. So far, the wind had been calm up to mid-morning and then increasing through the rest of the morning and afternoon. Nothing major in the last days, but who knows what tomorrow would bring. We discussed the situation and agreed to get up early, get through the portage, and try to get as far down the lake as we could before the wind picked up. The terms of the agreement required me to put a cup of coffee in front of my fellow paddler’s tent in the morning!
Devil’s Mountain
I crawled out of my tent at 5:30 in the dark. It was actually nice to be up that early and see the dawn gradually arrive. On departing we made a traditional tobacco offering (with 2x effect due to Spirit Rock) and said goodbye to Spirit Lake in the mist. We got over the easy portage to Obabika in good order and the lake lay before us.
The wind proved to be no problem after all, and we quartered the light headwind down the lake to reach the Obabika Portage in good time. The portage was easy. I read somewhere that it was built to transport supplies to a mine further to the west. There is reputed to be a model T relic somewhere along the trail, but we didn’t see it.
Our original plan called for us to take a campsite near the portage to Le Roche Lake and then explore that and Grey Owl Lake (no known connection to Grey Owl) as a side trip the next day, but the two campsites were not attractive, certainly not for a two-night stay, so we decided to scrub that plan and head further down the inlet. We found a good campsite, bordered by birch, and dominated by a towering, and unusually bushy, red pine.
We headed east, past the entrance to Eye Lake and pulled up at the portage to Devil Bay, on Lake Temagami. Jeff’s Map marks the bay as “particularly windy”. The wind continued the same, light from the SW, and we stuck to the south shore as we paddled east, but I doubt that going along the north shore would have been a problem. However, we then needed to paddle about 2 km across the width of the north arm, with the fetch of Granny Bay producing a bit of swell. With a quartering tailwind, we gently surfed over to the lee of Granny Island and then continued to Camp Keewaydin on Devil Island, which I wanted to visit.
The camp has an interesting history. It was born from the mania of the late 1800s to the early 1900s to get boys out into the woods. At some camps, such as Keewaydin, they would engage in made-up “noble savage” ceremonies, inspired by writers such as Fenimore Cooper. However, due respect must be paid to the camp, which had an annual tradition of sending a group of the most accomplished boys on a multi-week trip over the height of land and down to James Bay – no mean feat!
Camp Keewaydin was also the place where the young Grey Owl worked as a guide in the summers of 1910 and 1911. It must have been bizarre for Archie to experience the made-up ceremonies of the camp while he was spending time with the real Ojibwe wife he married in 1910 and her family at Bear Island, 12 km to the south.
Supposedly there is a plaque on the wall of a building at the camp listing the early guides, including the name A. Belaney. We found the camp shut for the year and no one was around, so we returned to our canoes and paddled between the island and Devil’s Mountain to our next campsite on Angus Point, at the foot of the Devil’s Mountain Trail.
We would stay there for two nights, but the next morning we scrambled up the trail to the lookout on the cliff, which afforded a spectacular view of Lake Temagami. The campsite was a great place to hang out and bathe in the scenery, with Upper Kokoko Bay to the right and the North Arm to the left.
I did see an incredible sight at this campsite. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted a dive-bombing bird. I turned to look and was in time to see an explosion of feathers and hear a squawk as an eagle (I presume) took a bird. It lost hold of the bird but dove again to catch it just before the water. It then carried its prey away up to the cliff behind us.
On our menu for the evening was lentils masala (rice, lentils, onion, tomato sauce, coconut milk powder, garlic paste, masala spice mix), which got rave reviews. We also feasted on the Canadian backcountry staple, bannock – with maple syrup of course.
We weren’t far from Sandy Inlet in Ferguson Bay, where our trip would end the next day, but we decided to push on closer so that we could reach the take-out and be able to get to El Publito in Bracebridge for our coming-out-of-the-bush blowout in good time. There was another reason to move on: we had had little contact with members of our species during the trip, but a party of teenagers had camped close enough to us the previous day that we could hear their yakety-yak into the night.
We couldn’t manage to determine what their plan was, but the logical place for such a group to go would be the campsites on the beach at Sandy Inlet, so we decided to look for a campsite on the other side of Ferguson Bay or on Pickerel Bay – as far away from the noise as possible.
We finished off the emergency supply of whisky that evening. I retired to my tent after dinner and campfire time and was falling asleep when my son was suddenly talking to me in agitation. Something like the following dialog ensued:
him: Did you hear that?
me: What? I didn’t hear anything.
him: I can’t believe you didn’t hear that.
me: I didn’t hear anything.
him: It sounded like a big animal.
me: What did it sound like?
him: Emits a cross between a moan and howl.
me: Could have been a moose.
him: I heard something big crashing through the bush, then I heard something that sounded like something swimming, then like something climbing up on shore and shaking itself, then more crashing, but it sounded farther away.
me: Moose can swim. Maybe a moose swam over to the other side of the bay. Don’t worry.
him: I’m a little freaked out!
me: Do you have your bear spray?
him: Yes.
me: Keep it with you. But if you use it, spray the animal, not yourself. Goodnight!
In the morning we awoke to another fine day in our moose-less campsite, and then paddled across Ferguson Bay to the take-out at the aptly named Sandy Inlet. After portaging to the car, we headed back along Red Squirrel Road to the outfitters. The children of nature had returned, purified and looking forward to bucket-size margaritas at El Publito!
As far as wildlife sightings go, we had slim pickings. A fair number of loons, thank you. A few eagles. Of Grey Owl’s favourite bird, the whisky jack, aka Canada jay, not a trace. Squirrels. The friendly campsite chipmunks, always anxious to get their share of a meal. A few otters. No beaver, no bear, and no moose. But the bush is very thick: the lakes could have been lined with animals, but if they were 10 meters back from shore, we wouldn’t have seen them.
One might ask what has changed along the route we paddled since the young Grey Owl’s time there? The short answer is – not much! Though there are some cottages on islands that probably hadn’t yet been built, they don’t line the shores of the lake as they do in, say, Muskoka. Nor are there any “cottage mansions”. The extensive stands of pine are still there, despite the threat of logging. There were no motorboats or houseboats on Lake Temagami in Grey Owl’s day, but there were numerous steamboats plying the lake. Of course, there were no planes or helicopters flying overhead. Though Camp Wanapitei in Sandy Inlet hadn’t yet been established, Camp Keewaydin already existed. If we had been transported back in time for our trip, we probably wouldn’t have noticed much difference, except that our canoe, gear and food would have been different (and heavier!), and instead of driving to Sandy Inlet we would have taken a train to Temagami station and then a steamboat up the lake.
On the Trail the soul of a man is stripped bare and naked, exposed for all to see, and here his true nature will come out…
Grey Owl, “The Trail”
We never quite reached the state that Grey Owl warns about above, largely due to the great weather. Everyone knows that camping in wet and cold weather is different from camping in dry and warm weather, especially when your mode of transportation places limits on what you can bring to counter the elements. But we had planned well, chosen good equipment and the right food, and we had, therefore, created at least the preconditions to keep our “true nature” under wraps. Of course, our route was not the most challenging that Temagami has to offer. But then at 68 I’m not as steady on my pins as I was on my first canoe trip in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area with my father, 55 years ago.
I visited the wonderful Canadian Canoe Museum in Peterborough after the trip. Grey Owl’s preferred canoe was the ‘Guides Special’, a 16ft canvas covered canoe from the Chestnut Canoe Co. The canoe must have been very similar to Bill Mason’s famous Chestnut Prospector, on display at the museum.