Selwyn House School - Yearbook (Montreal, Quebec Canada)

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SELWYN HOUSE SCHOOL MAGAZINE MY CANOE TRIP I..-IST SUMMER Ii set out from Camp on July 28 with our destination Manowan, a Huds0n's Hay post about two hundred miles north of Montreal. Our party consisted of eight people, Nr. Greenlees, Mr. Doak, an assistant at Camp, ,Iohn Mappin, Hugh lNIcI.ennan, Arthur Nathewson, Fred Tees, Peter Hatch, an Ashbury boy, and myself. On the first day we drove from Joliette to St. Michel des Saints, a village about a hundred and twenty miles north of Montreal. IYe slept in the hay loft of a barn that night and started off up Lac Toro, a flooded lake about twenty-two miles long, the next morning. We stopped for lunch on a little island nine or ten miles from St. Michel. Ferdinand's Island was mostly sand with brush in the centre. The day being hot and sunny, we paddled the rest of the lake stripped to the waist. Ive came to our first portage about seven in the evening, and pitched the tent as soon as we arrived at the first camping- place. This was situated just inside the mouth of Hamel Creek, a swampy little waterway by which we were to get to Manowan. We ate our supper in the dark, throughout which, being damp, we killed mosquitoes in droves. The next day was also beautiful and it was spent travelling over long portages and short stretches of paddling. During the morning as we were rounding one of the many bends in the creek, Peter Hatch, who was the bow paddler in our canoe suddenly turned round and whispered loudly, Hey, Mr. Greenlees, look I Wie had stopped paddling by then but the canoe drifted round the bend, and I, being amidships, saw the topic of excitement. It was a huge bull moose standing in the water not more than fifteen yards away, eating the grass that grows under the surface. He lifted up his head, looking toward us with a mixture of wonder and amazement written on his face. I wondered for a moment if he were going to charge us. He then turned and trotted up the creek, not in any great hurry, as if he thought us weak intruders and rather contemptible. :Ks he trotted off, Mr. Greenlees noticed that he had large gashes or cuts on the backs of his hind legs, which, he thought, might have been caused by wolves. During all this, which happened in a matter of seconds, I had been trying to get my camera out, which of course stuck as might be ex- pected. That sort of thing always happens when one has just a few seconds in which to do a thing. That night the mosquitoes were again very bad. The next four days were uneventful except that on Friday it began to rain. That was the beginning ofa spell of bad weather which stayed with us throughout the remainder of the trip, so that we were wet morning, noon and night of almost every remaining day. Dk Pk fl: From Hamel Lake, which is the headwater of Hamel Creek, we portaged to Lac Croche, a lake about seven miles long, and from there we crossed to Lac Long, up which we paddled to at small island about ten miles away. Thar was our camp on Saturday night. On the way up the lake we stopped for our daily ration of chocolate at an old Indian camp, where we found a perfect set of moose antlers, about four feet in width. That night we all went out fishing near the island but didn't catch anything much. I24l

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SFLWYN HOUSE SCHOOL MAG.-XZINI-I i Un Sunday we paddled up the rest of Lac Long and made three short portages into l'etit Lac Traverse. We paddled into Grand Lac Traverse from which we portaged to Lake Sansinagog. We paddled up the latter without event except that there was a strong headwind that drove the waves up to three and four feet. We then made two short portages into a little lake called Lac Trap, from which we went on to Kempt Lake, the one on which the Post is situated. We camped there on Monday night, which endedithe fourth day of bad weather. On Tuesday morning we started up Kempt Lake against another very strong head- wind. About noon we stopped on a point where we had some chocolate and then started across the Baie de Poste, a huge windswept bay with Manowan seven or eight miles ahead of us. We arrived there at live o'clock, and, needless to say, I appreciated a real bed that night and a chance to dry my clothes and myself. We stayed in the Visitors' Lodge for the rest of the day, standing around the stove and keeping as hor as we possibly could. It is surprising how wonderful heat feels after being cold and wet over a period of days. The next morning we spent quite a time in the store, a building with all sorts of supplies for the Indians to trade for. A sack of Hour for the skin of some animal and so on. I bought a pair of moosehide moccasins, some mitts of the same stuff, and a pair of long woollen socks, all for amazingly low prices. After that we crossed the lake to the Indian village, a collection of small, squalid huts, each housing perhaps, a family of ten. There was a Catholic priest living there, and a new church was being built by some Indian work- men. W'e took pictures of some Indian boys, and on the way down to our canoes as we were leaving to go back across the lake, one of them tried to take my diary out of my back pocket. The morning had been fine, but, just our luck, it began to cloud over again about four as we started orf on our return journey. The Baie de Poste was much calmer than the hrst time we had crossed it, and what waves there were, were behind us. From Kempt Lake we reached Lake Sansinagog by way of Lac Morealis, a small and rather uninteresting body of water with thick bush around the edges. We camped that night on a windy point where we had stopped for some chocolate on the way up. Mr. Greenlees and Mr. Doak cooked some pudding that night with the remains of the bread, and it seemed to be about the best pudding that I had ever tasted. From then until the end of the trip we used biscuit which we had bought at the Post as a substitute for bread. df 292 Pk The next day was Friday, and as we intended to make the island in Lac Long that day, we tried to start early, but that didn't work. Somehow we never seemed to be able to break camp before ten-thirty or eleven o'clock. We stopped for a meal at the beginning of Lac Traverse and unfortunately stayed there too long, the result being that we had to make the three portages to Lac Long in semi-darkness, and when we reached the island it was as black as pitch. l26l