If the old writer’s adage “write what you know” holds any water, then Roy MacGregor had to do little more than dip his paddle into his own family’s past.
With Canoe Country: The Making of Canada, MacGregor explores the humble craft in depth – from its historical importance to the fur trade and exploration, to an oddly Canadian story of voyageurs heading to deepest, darkest Africa to rescue a British general, to luminaries like Pierre Trudeau, a master paddler in his own right.
MacGregor, a former Globe and Mail columnist who lives in Ottawa, launches bow first into his book with an explanation of how the canoe came to be named as one of CBC’s The Seven Wonders of Canada.
Bow Valley readers will be happy to know that canoes, which are often seen adorning the roofs of vehicles in this area, are chosen, along with The Rockies, as two of those seven wonders. Further, MacGregor has also been in this area scouting out the Bow River for an upcoming series on Canadian rivers for the Globe.
Although he’s been up to his gunwales in the canoeing life (the MacGregors go way back in the made-for-canoes Alonquin Park region of Ontario), the CBC contest really sparked the idea for his book.
“I could bullshit and say I’ve thought about it all my life,” he said, “but the truth is, it came about after the CBC contest. Then I started researching even more and looked into the Nile expedition (one of the greatest Canadian stories nobody’s ever heard of), the story of Bill Mason (canoe guru) and Pierre Trudeau and other topics.”
He also researched explorer David Thompson’s use and possible first construction of a cedar strip model, the life and times of the voyageur and many, many other canoe-related Canadians and historical references to the craft that has been compared in importance to the covered wagon in the U.S.
Launching the book during the federal election campaign may have been fortunate as there is a great detail about Pierre Trudeau, who, unlike the Conservatives, didn’t believe young son Justin “just wasn’t ready” for whitewater (a photo shows a very young Justin, paddle in hand, manning the bow with dad Pierre in the stern), and mention of Stephen Harper (“I can’t imagine him in a canoe”).
Canoe Country, said MacGregor, is not a “macho book about what a great paddler I am. It’s also not really an instructional book – it’s really a biography of the canoe, which was a real character in Canadian history.
“I grew up with canoes and right now I now have three of them, and five grandchildren who are learning to paddle. Canoeing is so pure and is such a Canadian thing.
“People from other countries are surprised to see so many canoes on the roof of cars. And unlike a book about politics, there is nothing antagonistic about the canoe, it’s a recreational teddy bear.”
Another Bow Valley-related reference includes Ralph Connor of Ralph Connor United Church in Canmore fame. Connor, MacGregor points out, in actuality was Charles Gordon, a Presbyterian minister and a paddler himself.
Connor, Canada’s best-selling novelist at the turn of the last century, is quoted in Canoe Country as purporting to believe, “It is one of the supreme joys of life to be thoroughly fit.
“Being as God meant you to be,” Connor/Gordon argued, could be accomplished as much by canoe tripping as by prayer. In his autobiography, he states, “It was worth all the agony of knees, ankles and toes, all the hotbox of the shoulder blade, all the staggering backbreak of the portage, all the long weariness of the unending swing of the paddle, worth all just to be fit.”
Having researched the Nile Expedition of 1884-85, where voyageurs and canoe-trained Manitobans were sent to the aid of General Charles Gordon, who was under siege in Khartoum, by First Viscount Garnet Joseph Wolseley, MacGregor believes it would make for a suitable movie script.
Wolseley had been in on the search for Louis Riel and had thought to use voyageurs to get his men from Ontario to Manitoba.
“It was quite the story,” said MacGregor. “They were drunk and pissed when they left Ottawa, drunk in Montreal, Quebec City and in Nova Scotia, but not when they got to Africa. Research was difficult because likely 95 per cent of the voyageurs would have been illiterate and there were no letters left behind; just a few clippings in newspapers.”
On the friendship of Trudeau and Mason, MacGregor said he wished he could have met Mason before he died, but talked to his daughter for the book.
“He found Trudeau to be unbelievably skilled. Bill was a happy go lucky leprechaun type of man and Trudeau was a powerful Montreal society man. They were polar opposites, yet canoeing brought them together.”
The canoe, writes Janice Griffith, past general manager of the Canadian Canoe Museum in Peterborough, Ont., is the perfect “metaphor for the Canadian character. It’s not loud, pushy or brassy. It’s quiet, adaptable and efficient, and it gets the jobs done.”
Canoe Country: The Making of Canada is available for $32 from Random House Canada.
