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.
Who’s in André’s newest canoe?
Meet the characters in my newest voyageur novel, “Uncharted Waters.”
Meet Postmaster Gregoire
Greg Ingram carves fur trade scenes and figures to enhance his understanding of the era and enliven his presentations.
Is that cash or credit?
Credit, a common resource today, was a brand-new introduction of the French-Canadian fur trade.
‘Indian’ is not the best word?
Terminology confuses us, especially with several issues to keep in mind as we pick the best words.
Eat like a voyageur — pemmican (and rubaboo)
Besides pea soup, voyageurs traded for pemmican, a high-energy food produced and traded by Great Plains tribes.
Eat like a voyageur — pea soup (Yum?)
Pea soup fed seasonal voyageurs twice a day. It staved off hunger but gave them a derisive nickname from winterers who often starved.
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.
