by Nikki Rajala | Oct 15, 2017 | Featured
Crane Lake, Minnesota, boasts of a historic site — René Bourassa’s Post built in 1736. So the fiberglass statue must be René, dressed in a nicely fringed long buckskin shirt with a red sash. (Yes!) Hanging from the sash is a red and green bag of “possibles,” almost...
by Nikki Rajala | Oct 14, 2017 | Featured
In the town of Ranier, Minnesota, Big Vic holds sway. Big Vic is a 25-foot fiberglass statue and he looks ready to take on the world. He has the typical voyageur build — wide shoulders. His beard is brown, his tuque is red and his buckskins are fringed — the garb of a...
by Nikki Rajala | Oct 12, 2017 | Featured
Guess what I finally found — the voyageur statue in Ely, Minnesota, plus the owner and the artist. (I’ve been trying to find it for a couple of years.) The Midwest’s massive monuments to their uniqueness are pure fun. My community has a large largemouth...
by Nikki Rajala | Oct 7, 2017 | Featured
This video about the Hudson’s Bay Company’s role in Canada, narrated by Ray Mears, was recommended. Mears is an authority on the subject of bushcraft and survival.*It’s SO worth watching! He speaks with the Canadian Canoe Museum in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada,...
by Nikki Rajala | Oct 5, 2017 | Featured
“How Indians Build Canoes” is a color movie from 1946 that shows an Algonquin man and his wife and son building a birch bark canoe using native methods. At the very beginning, a young man wields a long stick—which becomes his ladder to scale a tall birch tree! What...
