by Nikki Rajala | Dec 5, 2024 | Voyageur
With snow flurries teasing us, and Christmas carols playing, and wreaths and decorations everywhere, I wonder about the voyageurs during this season. Mostly, they celebrated New Year’s with a dram or two, occasionally with a rival post (as I wrote about in a...
by Nikki Rajala | Nov 6, 2024 | Voyageur
A good idea always moves. Point blankets were used for more than sleeping by French-Canadian fur traders. To cope with being outdoors in the harsh winters, voyageurs fashioned a wool point blanket into long wrap-style coat with a hood by cutting off one end (for...
by Nikki Rajala | Oct 6, 2024 | Voyageur
The blankets we call “Hudson’s Bay blankets” are actually point blankets. They have threads sewn in from one selvage to indicate size (more about that later). Their rich history predates the fur trade — they were used in Europe and by English...
by Nikki Rajala | Sep 2, 2024 | Voyageur
I meet the most interesting people whose passion is the fur trade. Greg Ingram is one, a member of the Fur Traders and Explorers, centered around Alberta, Canada. As a re-enactor, Greg has developed several first-person characters named “Gregoire” — from voyageur to...
by Nikki Rajala | Aug 1, 2024 | Featured, Voyageur
“Je suis un homme du nord.” Not just any paddler could make that boast of being “a man of the north,” or full-fledged voyageur. He had to be baptized by a veteran canoeman. In “The Voyageur’s Highway,” Grace Lee Nute says that after the annual rendezvous, large...
