Camping and Native Guides

by Mark Chochla

            The most distinguished fishing part outfitted by Robert Crawford, chief trader at Red Rock’s Hudson’s Bay Post, was Lord and lady Dufferin. The governor general and his wife had only been in Canada for two years when, in the summer of 1874, they toured Lake Superior on the steamship Chicora. Lord Dufferin was an experienced fly fisherman and Lady Dufferin was enthusiastic about the Nipigon. When the Chicora docked at Red Rock warf, an exuberant vice-regal party rushed to the store to outfit themselves with everything from blankets to trout flies. The next morning, after a sound sleep, the party met their native guides, who then paddled the five-canoe flotilla upstream. Lady Dufferin’s canoe sported a Union Jack on the bow and led the party up-river, over the lower portages to the trout pools. The vice-regal travelers experienced the river, as would many others in the nineteenth century. After ascending the river by canoe, portaging by foot or ox cart (later horse cart), the weary tourist welcomed a good night’s sleep on a bed of fir boughs under a canvas tent. The angler was awakened by the smell of morning coffee and greeted by a hearty breakfast at the campfire. A day of traveling and fishing also included a shore lunch of trout, a large evening meal, and a bonfire before bed.

chairs with high backs for you head, glass bottles of tomato catsup and other liquid condiments and hundreds of other knick knacks which no experienced woods traveler ever expects to see anywhere but in a sporting goods dealer’s catalogue.”  Tourists had such genteel camping experiences because of the physical efforts of their native guides. In account after account, the guides received praise for their knowledge, intelligence, strength, cooking skills, and desire to give satisfactory service. “I once timed an Indian guide whom I accompanied over this mile and a half [portage],” wrote a sports angler. “He covered the distance in twenty-five minutes, never stopping, while I weighed down with a couple of rods and a few light traps, came puffing and panting inside the distance flag. His load was a full one hundred and fifty pounds.”

            Sportsman Charles Hallcock was impressed with the punctual arrival of Pooray, his native guide, who exhibited a flair for motivating his party of angers. Pooray brought a four-and-one-quarter pound brook trout, “which caused our eyes to dilate and our nerves to thrill with pleasurable anticipation … the genuine Salmo Foninalis [brook trout] gleaming in royal splendor.” The Nipigon River guides were native and Métis men of considerable intelligence and education. Some guides participated in sportsmen’s shows which were held in larger North American cities to market and promote the Nipigon sport fishery. Several guides received special mention. Andrew Laxie, a tall and handsome man and the mayor of Red Rock, was “one of the most innately refined and cultured companions any man could ask, besides being a master of woodcraft.” The Bouchards, a famous family of Métis guides, also worked the river and the remarkable “Old Johnny” Bouchard cooked and portaged for tourist anglers at age eighty-two. The most noble and renowned family of the region was the de Larondes. They could trace their ancestors back to Tours, France, in 1599 and they had been involved in the Nipigon fur trade for about eighty years. Charley de Laronde, an experienced, insightful guide, was “cautious enough to be trusted amid the danger … and knows the spot in which to drop your lines.”

            Once the tourist’s canoe entered the wilderness, the tourist placed his/her trust in the guides to provide food, lodging, transportation, and a pleasant and safe vacation. This lack of control by the tourists over the pace of travel and deportment of the guides was sometimes a cause for concern by some writers of tourist guidebooks. Nonetheless, the native presence was part of the romantic attraction of Nipigon and Lake Superior tourism. There was timelessness about this region’s dark, mysterious forest and secret waterways which were know only by the land’s original inhabitants. The Victorians assumed that native culture would be altered beyond recognition by European civilization and so should be experience before it was lost.

Camping on the Nipigon could hardly be described as “roughing it.” There were “folding cots, folding wash basins that stand waist high, enameled butter dishes that pop out at every meal … great loads of canned goods, lanterns with glass chimneys, fresh eggs in immense crates big enough to carry the chickens that laid them all, canopies for the dining table, folding

Framed picture perfect brook trout

Excerpt from “Victorian Fly Fishers on the Nipigon,” Ontario History, Autumn 1999, Volume XCI Number 2

Camping and Native Guides