When Christiane and I arrived in Wawa this year we had a fine picnic lunch near the huge goose overlooking the lake. We enjoyed 3 cheeses, cheddar, boursin, and brie. With coke we concluded with good reason, that life, at least for us, was good. Simple is good. We were very fortunate.
The area around Wawa was first developed by non-indigenous people during the fur trade. Indigenous people had occupied the area for thousands of years before that. I never considered that fact in 1967. I did consider it now in 2024. There is a fascinating history involving the relations of the First Nations people and the government of what used to be Canada West (Upper Canada). it is actually more than an interesting story. It is an incredible story.
This site was an important part of the fur trade route, at least until 1821 when the Hudson’s Bay Company and Northwest Company merged. After that the Lake Superior trade was diverted north to Hudson Bay via the Michipicoten River which we were overlooking when we enjoyed our picnic lunch, right beside the Wawa Goose. This area was a centre for fishing, boat building, small-scale manufacture and repair. It also served as a base for missionaries and surveyors. The two vital instruments of colonialism.
In 1897 gold was discovered on Wawa lake adjacent to the town, but that flurry of activity it generated only lasted until 1906. In 1914 the completion of the Algoma Central Railway started with 22 mineral prospects.
The North Shore of Lake Superior is magnificent. During the fur trade days travelling Lake Superior might have seemed simple. After all, could one not just follow the north coast? According to Barbara Huck, “even this could be hazardous for cliffs rise sheer from the water in a number of places, at times to heights of more than 150 metres. Skirting these walls of granite, the men had only to look up to see the power of the lake; in many places the cliffs were bare of any living thing for 10 metre above the water line.” Huck explained that to avoid the winds that heating during the day could usher in, “the fur brigades usually set off before dawn, and then stuck to the beautiful, deadly shore and aimed for the next safe landing site.”
Reverend George Munro Grant wrote, “Superior is a sea. It breeds storms and rain and fog like a sea.” Nipigon, where we had enjoyed breakfast, according to Huck is named after the “deep clear water” or “water without end” of massive Lake Superior. Huck also wrote this:
Paddlers still confront Lake Superior today, and still face the same beautiful, deadly shore. Thousands of years after humans first braved the water of the great lake, it remains as one chronicler wrote, “a place where man is and forever will be only a visitor.’ ”
The north shore of Lake Superior is more than just a beautiful coastline along the world’s largest freshwater lake. It is that, but it is much more than that. It is a place where a lot of important history has occurred. It was an important place in the history of Canada’s fur trade. That means it is an important part of Canadas’s history after Europeans made contact with the indigenous people that lived in the country.
The town of Wawa is also very close to the Magpie River. After lunch we continued travelling but stopped at High Magpie Falls. This was a gorgeous set of falls and I could not refrain from photographing them. There were 2 interesting plaques nearby. One celebrated the Michipicoten First Nation. According to their own website,
“we are Anishinaabeg who understand our responsibility to care for our Nation. Under the guidance of Creator, our ancestors, and our history, we walk with our people to mino-biimaadiziwin (the good life, the life of wholistic well-being).,,
The Nation (original Peoples’) in their own Creation Story relates how “Ojibwe or Ojibway (pronounced Oh-Jib-Way) are related to Original Man or Anishinaabe (An-ish-in-awb). The Ojibway are said to be the Faith Keepers; Keepers of the Sacred Scrolls and the Water Drum of the Midewinwin (Midi-win-win shamanic society forhealers). The fundamental essence of Anishinaabe life is unity, the oneness of all things; the belief that harmony with all created things can be achieved and that the people cannot be separated from the land with its cycle of seasons or from the other mysterious cycles of living things – of birth and growth and death and new birth. The people know where they come from; the story is deep in their hearts and it is told in legends and dances, in dreams and symbols.”
They were the earliest inhabitants of the Michipicoten River region. They explain that the archeological sites excavated at the mouth of the Michipicoten River make it evident that there has been a continued uninterrupted occupation of this region by the aboriginal people for 7,000 years or more. Some of those archaeological sites that have been identified from the period just before the arrival of the Europeans (between 700-1500 AD) and those sites showed that the Ojibway people whose “summer grounds” were located at the mouth of the Michipicoten River where members of tribes from the south and east who frequently intermarried The ancient canoe routes also showed that the mouth of the Michipicoten River and Magpie Rivers were a hubs of transportation and gateways to the interior as far north as James Bay with access to the vast interior of what is today northern Ontario and connecting it with the other Great Lakes and the inland sea of Hudson’s Bay.
After the arrival of Europeans, at the height of the fur trade from the 17th to 20th centuries, many Europeans who came to the region took Ojibway wives and their descendants lived the native way of life making a large part of their livelihood by fishing and trading furs with the Hudson’s Bay Company and other settlers.
There is another aspect to the history of this region to which I and my friends were entirely oblivious when we drove through it in 1967. That year was of course, the year Canada celebrated the first 100 years after Confederation. We used to say, we were celebrating the 100th anniversary of the creation of our country. That was just plain ignorant. It ignored the incredible history and culture of the people who lived here long before the “whitemen” arrived.
There is some incredible history that happened right here. It is a history that teaches us a lot about what Canada was really like and none of it had been taught to the 4 of us who had just finished 12 years of schooling. 12 years of schooling that had left us ignorant.