by Nikki Rajala | Nov 1, 2026 | Featured
Q: What’s the secret for welding voyageurs into a unit? A: Singing. For centuries, when people did unbearably hard work — in America, those enslaved, coal miners, railroad builders, haulers of canal boats, prison chain gangs — they sang to coordinate their...
by Nikki Rajala | Jun 5, 2026 | Featured
John Macdonnell’s brigade is working their way upstream since May 25, 1793. It takes them about 3 weeks to reach the Mattawa River, a tributary off the Ottawa River, which they call the Grand River. Eventually they reach the height-of-land, and, with a big...
by Nikki Rajala | Feb 16, 2026 | Featured
For youth, Bigfork’s tiny public library had one short shelf of biographies, jacketed in red and yellow, illustrated with black and white drawings. After finishing the life stories of all the women (maybe 7 total), I kept on, reading about men like Lewis and...
by Nikki Rajala | May 12, 2025 | Featured
French-Canadian voyageurs had one signature piece of clothing — their colorful wide woven sash. Voyageurs exuded joy and verve. But, working on the lowest rung of workers in the fur trade hierarchy, they had few resources to express that lively style. Their shirts and...
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...
by Nikki Rajala | Mar 3, 2024 | Featured
Readers have asked for maps of Andre’s travels. To make it easier to locate him, I included a map in Book 3. And because I love maps and perused them extensively while writing “Uncharted Waters,” I’m sharing my favorite sections of those maps, with...
