by Nikki Rajala | Mar 24, 2019 | Featured
Peter Pond, a larger-than-life voyageur, is responsible for the deaths of three men. Death wasn’t uncommon back then, but murder was rare. And three of them? On the credit side: Pond is one of the founders — the only American — of the North West Companywhich...
by Nikki Rajala | Mar 3, 2019 | Voyageur
Roadkill can become a beautiful, valued pelt. Yes, it can. And here’s how one incident played out: After hitting a small beaver on the road with his car, my dad had it tanned as a “made beaver.” FYI: From the mid-1600s for a couple hundred years, a “made beaver”...
by Nikki Rajala | Feb 17, 2019 | Voyageur
The John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon just ended. The Iditarod is coming soon. And I’m hooked. Those pictures of dogsleds careening around sharp snowy turns get me itching to try it. But jaw-dropping scared as well. How in the world do they handle those dogs?...
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 | 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...
