For everything in life there is a perfect context

Theme: Coureur de bois

Someone once told me that most things in life can have greater meaning and clarity if given suitable context.

To that end; if one looks on my profile to this blog, one will find that I am having fun with it by setting out my career as Fur Trader. Indeed, that is my context!

Yes, I am moving with the spirit of my deceased son, but my vision is seeing the country through the eyes of a “coureur de bois” circa 1750, a “nor’wester” circa 1790, and a “voyageur” circa 1800.

I look forward, for instance, to looking at the north basin of Lake Winnipeg, not solely as a scarcely inhabited, desolate, feared wind and weather swept shallow unforgiving body of water, but as a necessary leg in the historic movement of goods and furs to and from Montreal and the interior.

The trip in its entirety has many daunting barriers of water which I believe will be overcome psychologically and thus physically with an assist from a perspective honed out of my context.

Given my theme, it is fitting that I will be starting my trip May 19 from the Rocky Mountain House National Historic Site of Canada which is located on terrain that formerly comprised forts of the North West Company and Hudson Bay Company (both in 1799). Similarly, I will be finishing my leg from Ottawa to Montreal at The Fur Trade at Lachine National Historic Site of Canada located on Lake Saint-Louis west of Montreal. Lachine literally translates as “to China” and reflects that initially fur traders, and subsequently other merchants, from Montreal chose to ship their goods to and from the Port of Montreal by land along this route prior to striking out westward by canoe or boat in order to avoid the Lachine Rapids. After its prominence as a fur trading transshipment center, the site became the westward entrance to the Lachine Canal built in 1825.

And finally, in keeping with my theme I will visit Fort Langley National Historic Site of Canada, a Hudson Bay Company fur trading centre from 1850, on the southern bank of the Fraser River just before entering into the narrows at New Westminster on my last leg, down the Fraser River from Yale to Vancouver October 10 – 13.

In order to help me keep to my context in the heart of my trip and to conjure up those peaceful yet haunting spirits of the past, I will use the music sheets of those ballads harmonized by the voyageur brigades to ease their toil as they made their way over lakes and portages. I can visualize myself singing as I make my way along the classic path across Lake of the Woods, Superior and Huron and up the French River and down the Mattawa and Ottawa Rivers. By my arrival in Montreal I should have lost my voice.