The wilderness canoeing community lost one of its cultural custodians when Hugh Stewart died, in late January at the age of 80.
Hugh began canoe tripping as a young camper at Camp Temagami in the 1950s. It was the beginning of a lifelong passion for traditional wilderness travel and a dedication to its iconic craft– the canoe. He spent summers guiding canoe trips for the camp, and in 1975 left his doctoral studies in English Literature to move to Lake Temagami and start a wilderness travel business he called Headwaters, where he, along with several guides from Camp Temagami, taught summer and winter wilderness travel skills and led many northern wilderness expeditions. In 1985 he moved to Wakefield, Quebec, and established a wood-canvas canoe-building shop, also under the Headwaters name. In the early 2000s he returned to Camp Temagami as a co-owner, mentor, and canoe builder. Throughout his life he made numerous wilderness trips, continuing as long as he was able even after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s.
Long-time WCA members and Wilderness Canoe Symposium attendees will remember Hugh’s always interesting articles in Nastawgan and symposium presentations.
Hugh shared many stories and lessons about life on the trail and in the canoe shop in his book Canoe Trails & Shop Tales. In the final chapter he described his approach to canoeing and wilderness canoe tripping, and the role he thought history and traditional skills should play in the wilderness experience. It offers much food for thought:
I paddle a wood-canvas canoe rather than one made of plastic, kevlar, or aluminum. Why does one embark on a canoe trip? Is it a physical challenge, a social experience, an historical journey, a spiritual quest, an aesthetic undertaking, or, as in my case, all of these elements combined? The experience differs for each of us. Paddling is very much a sensory activity and travelling on the water in a wood-canvas canoe has always felt right. To me, canoes of other materials feel clumsy and slow to respond. Wood-canvas canoes are easy and efficient to paddle. Canoes of synthetic materials are popular because they are easy to portage and purport to be virtually indestructible. However, their invincibility has been oversold and the durability of wooden craft under-appreciated.
Travelling in a wood-canvas canoe that one knows is not indestructible leaves no room for sloppiness. While on the canoe trail I frequently notice that many people rely on technology to keep them out of trouble, their assumption being that since the canoe is unbreakable, there is no real need to keep it from hitting rocks, no harm in pulling it ashore while fully loaded. With too much reliance on materials, a wide range of traditional skills that involve more finesse become ignored and forgotten. Sometimes I worry that this expertise may be more in danger of disappearing than are wood canoes. At one time these skills constituted a trade practised by people called “canoemen.” The accounts of the Geological Survey of Canada explorations frequently refer to hiring these men at the small communities from which the parties departed. Canoemen were unequalled in their wilderness travel skills in lining and poling upstream, and in portaging, techniques that take years to develop and refine. Today our media and habits seem to promote short attention spans, and the concept of spending years to become skilled at something seems very old-fashioned. Many are unaware of the satisfaction to be gained by refining a skill over time. We have instant access to information, but information does not translate to skill. That takes time and practice. When one learns how to read the rapids well, line well, pole upstream and downstream, and portage efficiently, your surroundings speak in special ways. You notice the subtleties of currents, river bed structure, shore vegetation, and the larger forest and landscape. You become closely attuned to your environment. These rewards of the wilderness trail are not as accessible to the unskilled for whom travel is often a haphazard scramble.
I also feel much closer to the land I am travelling when my canoe is made from the trees of the forest that surrounds me. Wood and water are inextricably linked. Water makes the cedar trees grow, steam enables us to shape the wood, and when the canoe has been built, it is water on which it travels. When I go on the canoe trail, I wish to feel a part of the natural world, but I am also seeking historical empathy. A watercraft whose origin is in the petrochemical industry or tires of the auto industry tends to separate me from this experience rather than facilitate it. Modern canoe travel is often an escape from the highly industrialized and technologically advanced world, but bringing too much of that world into the woods is contradictory, making escape more difficult.
There are now many wilderness canoeists who assume that remote rivers and routes cannot be travelled in wooden craft. I worry here about historical amnesia. Well into the twentieth century, paddling by canoe was the only way to get around in remote areas; it was as much an everyday event as driving a car is today. Then, more time was spent going upstream and crossing big bodies of water than in going downstream. Today, most canoe trippers shun upriver work; for them river running has become a recreational sport largely separated from its historical context. It is well to remember that the North was criss-crossed by canoes in every conceivable direction by the Indigenous peoples and traders, almost none of whom left written accounts. This dearth of written accounts must not be interpreted to mean the country was not travelled. I cringe whenever a trip is described as the “first descent” of some river or the “first traverse” from A to B. We have reason, then, to prize those narratives and journals of earlier times which we do have. J.B. Tyrrell’s famous trips on the Barrens in 1892 and 1893 were conducted in solid wood Peterboroughs. Warburton Pike in 1892 and 1893 went up the Stikine, down the Dease, up the Liard, and eventually down the Pelly and Yukon to the Bering Sea [in a wooden canoe]. …
Society as a whole is poorer, however, if it allows craftsmanship and its hard-earned skills to die out.
Some might accuse me of being on a crusade to preserve the craft of building wooden canoes and to promote the skills required to travel in them. That could be a valid charge, but, as the years mount, I have come to see myself more as a custodian than a crusader. The word “custodian” has the connotation of caring for something but with the understanding the something will outlive the caretaker and be passed on to others. I have had the good fortune to engage with various other custodians, although it is only in retrospect I realize that is what they are. They are custodians of history, of building skills, and of the wilderness experience. I call them all cultural custodians.
I had the good fortune to travel with Hugh and share his approach and techniques on two wilderness trips: a canoe trip in Temagami, and a horse packing trip in Spatsizi in northern B.C. He was indeed one of the cultural custodians of both traditional canoe tripping skills and a thoughtful approach to the wilderness experience. He will be missed.
