Voyageur’s Blog
Ask a voyageur a question
Here’s a blog to answer your questions, like what was life like during the 1800s in French Canada? Like who could or couldn’t be a voyageur? How big the canoes were? What trade goods they carried? What different furs were worth? What they used for medicine? I’ll answer these and more in the “A Voyageur’s Life” blog. Click on the button below to ask your question or go to the “Contact” section of this site — I’ll find the answers.
Read “The Voyageurettes” for a giggle
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...
Canadian canoe pilgrimage nearly there
The paddlers of Canadian Canoe Pilgrimage, traveling along the Ottawa River to the St. Lawrence River, near their final destination in Montreal, Quebec, Aug. 15. At the end of the pilgrimage is a stop at the Shrine of St. Kateri, Khanawake Mohawk Territory, a First...
A pilgrimage, not just a fun paddle
This 25-day-long, 850-kilometre canoe trip was organized in response to the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. The TRC, which was part of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, began in 2009 and spent 5 years uncovering...
Canoe pilgrimage more than halfway there!
The Canadian Canoe Pilgrimage I've been following has now traversed the Mattawa River to the Ottawa River. (This leg of the journey might have taken a week or more battling the upstream current in spring, when the water was the highest.) Fortunately the pilgrimage is...
A Canadian Canoe Pilgrimage!
A Canadian Canoe Pilgrimage, with 30 Indigenous, Jesuit, English and French-Canadian paddlers, left Midland, Ontario, July 21. The voyage followed the shores of the Georgian Bay of Lake Huron to the French River. Then they headed upstream on the French River to Lake...
Blog adds a new focus
As I continue to research (and fact-check) for Book 2, I come across fun information. It's not only the questions that people ask me at presentations or online, which was the topic of Voyageur's Blog. But the new stuff interests me greatly — and I want to share what...
No wonder Nikki Rajala writes about voyageurs—her French-Canadian ancestors paddled birch bark canoes on many fur trade brigades. One great-great wintered for 16 years in fur posts west of Lake Superior and threads of family stories infuse this book. On Girl Scout canoe expeditions as a teen, she explored Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and Ontario's Quetico Provincial Park. Nikki loves rendezvous re-enactments, reading fur trade journals, visiting museums, tasting voyageur foods.
