|
Quetico Park owes this unique character to its geologic history and its location just west of Lake Superior. About forty miles long and sixty miles wide, it lies at the junction of several ecological zones – mixed forest to the south, boreal forest to the north, and plains to the west. As a result, Quetico contains a wealth of flora and fauna: wild flowers and berries line portages and fill sunny clearings; sightings of moose, black bear, or beaver are common rewards for quiet campers; and it is still possible to hear wolves howling in the night. Campers pitch their tents under coniferous forests of white pine, jack pine, and black spruce as well as deciduous birch and aspen that blanket the Canadian shield – Precambrian bedrock exposed by glaciers 13,000 years ago. Smooth rock shelves sloping to the water at camp sites, parallel lines called striae etched across bare bedrock, and the parallel north-south orientation of long, skinny lakes like Agnes and the Man Chain along old fault lines all speak of the glaciers that once buried the region.
Place of Legends
In the quiet wilderness of Quetico Provincial Park it can be hard to imagine a time when logging or the sounds of Voyageur songs keeping time with their paddles permeated the solitude. But traces remain of the region’s vibrant human history.
Once inhabited by the Anishinabe, Quetico is home to 28 known pictographs. According to the Quetico Foundation, these small depictions of people, animals, canoes and hands were most likely painted within the last 500 years using red ochre. Most often found on cliff faces overhanging the water, they still hold spiritual and cultural significance for the Anishinabe, who believe they represent the spirits inhabiting the rocks. Out of respect for these beliefs, the Park allows visitors to make small offerings to these spirits by sprinkling sage, tobacco or cedar on the water below the rock. Visitors can also show their respect by refraining from touching (oils in human skin accelerate fading) or photographing the images.
Other reminders of the past can be found in lake and portage names that keep the legends of the fur trade alive. Rival trading companies, the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Northwest Company, trapped and traded throughout the region, and in Quetico and Beyond, Kevin Callan reminds us that the Portage des Morts, an alternative to the Grand Portage once used by the Northwest Company to disrupt the Hudson’s Bay Company trade routes, is so named because a voyageur was crushed by the weight of his own canoe and buried nearby. But modern day legends live on as well.
Rumors swirl among canoe camps that frequent Quetico, suggesting strange encounters in the dark nights of the Sturgeon narrows, including the eerie sounds of voyageurs singing in the woods and camp gear rearranged during the night. Campers tell tales that grow taller with every telling, reliving grueling portages into Pooh Bah Lake or slogging through muskeg up to the neck. But some of their experiences are simple sightings of relics from the past, when the park was logged and other natural resources were extracted for human use. Callan’s book sites several locations where the remains of old wooden barges and boilers can be found, and left over debris from a 1936 log jam can still be seen at Chatterton Falls.
In this way, Quetico Provincial Park remains a place where yesterday’s history combines with the beginnings of tomorrow’s legends. And in the quiet solitude of Quetico Provincial Park, it is easy to envision a wilderness that will remain forever unspoiled, a land of pristine lake and moose grazing near rocky shore.
|
