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...
by Nikki Rajala | Oct 3, 2017 | Featured
Meant to watch Dan Boessel’s video a second time, it was so interesting. But I accidentally clicked on “Birch Canoe Builder.” This 7-minute film was made in 1973 about Bill Hafeman, who began his canoe- and boat-building venture in the 1920s. He demonstrated the...
by Nikki Rajala | Oct 1, 2017 | Featured
In researching Book 2 of “The Chronicles of an Unlikely Voyageur,” I learned a classmate, Bob Davis, was the great-nephew of Bill Hafeman, founder of Hafeman Boat Works in Bigfork, MN. Hafeman began building canoes in the 1920s. Bob’s wife Diane alerted me to a...
by Nikki Rajala | Sep 4, 2017 | Featured
We visited North Dakota’s Heritage Center and State Museum in Bismarck a few weeks back. I was admiring a Dakota lodge when a guide came by to offer more information. We then talked about tepee construction. What a gold mine he was! He said me the lodge I was...
by Nikki Rajala | Aug 26, 2017 | Featured
Interested in a goofy read? “The Voyageurettes” is a giggle, especially if you’ve canoe-camped. The book fits delightfully in the tongue-in-cheek category—all the female characters are named Marie (the guys were mostly Jean Baptiste) and they are smart. To appeal to a...
