by Nikki Rajala | Feb 4, 2019 | Voyageur
What’s a “voyageur”? Is it like a “voyager”? Voyageurs needed! Hardy men to paddle birch bark canoes from sunrise to sunset and haul heavy packs of trade goods or fur pelts over miserable portages. Even so, French-Canadian voyageurs were known for their...
by Nikki Rajala | Jan 8, 2019 | Voyageur
Voyageurs had pensions?! Who’d a thunk it? A while back I wrote a blog post about perusing a website listing info from 35,000 voyageur contracts. Near the bottom of some contracts I found this intriguing line: “s’oblige de contribuer d’ un par cent sur ses...
by Nikki Rajala | Nov 30, 2018 | Featured
Did voyageurs ever intersect with Quakers? In “Voyageurs: A Novel,” Margaret Elphinstone used that concept to tell the story of the fur trade, sharpening the differences between the two very dissimilar groups. The tale follows a young English Quaker who’s received a...
by Nikki Rajala | Nov 11, 2018 | Featured
The tag on my website is “Nikki Rajala: writer, speaker, voyageur descendant.” So, who are those voyageurs I descended from? More importantly for you, might there be voyageurs in your family tree? Confession: I haven’t yet pored through microfilms of...
by Nikki Rajala | Oct 26, 2018 | Featured
This post has been updated and combined with another post. It can be found at: Ste. Anne–and old lore–protected the voyageurs...
