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.
Celebrate Christmas like the voyageurs?
Christmas holiday traditions for French-Canadian winterers were far different than those ways we celebrate now.
Discover Prairie du Chien in the 1800s
An excursion to Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, offers wide-ranging information on how fur traders lived—homes, furnishings, clothing, land, music. A WOW experience!
Beads: tiniest of the fur trade goods
Beads were important in the fur trade, but rarely mentioned in journals.
Rediscovering the Continental Divide
Though I’ve crossed the Laurentian Continental Divide numerous times, I’ve only recently considered its significance to voyageurs.
Immerse yourself in French-Canadian heritage @ Prairie du Chien
Explore French Canadian heritage in a location that’s steeped with lore.
Make $$ — become a voyageur! (How much did they earn?)
For these wages, would you become be a voyageur?
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.
