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Bill Layman & Lynda Holland's 2002 canoe trip from
Lac La Ronge to Arviat
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| 55 Days and 1000 miles |
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| Lynda and I weren’t even
back from our last years Dubawnt trip 72
hours before I was ready to leave again.
The idyllic splendor of our canoe trip
was dashed to bits by a mountain of
bills, phone calls, emails, and faxes. I
deal poorly with this re-introduction to
what is perceived to be the REAL world by
most people, while Lynda does marvelously
and copes so well. And then all winter I
sit listening to the imminent World War
III scenario unfolding across the U.S.
with the planes crashing into the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon, the war in
Afghanistan, and the new Israeli
conflict. Sheer insanity as I see it
… so what to do ? Well, I start to
fantasize about the coming summer’s
canoe trip … just to get my head to
a place where I can cope. |
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I would like
to go back up to the
tundra but Lynda REALLY
wants to return to an
area that we have visited
twice before. Starting at
Wollaston Lake,
Saskatchewan in 1996, we
paddled a circuitous
route to Nueltin Lake, on
the Manitoba / Nunavut
border, ending at Hudson
Bay, 50 miles south of
Arviat. |
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| Aside
from a deep interest and love for this
traditional Dene area, she also wants a
somewhat shorter trip - in the 500 mile /
25 day range. |
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| - in the 500 mile
/ 25 day range. As the saying goes, "What
Lola wants, Lola gets." So it seems we
will go back to New-el-thin-tin Tu-eh (Nueltin
Lake spelled phonetically as best I can.) as the
Dene call it. This roughly translates as
"Lake of the Sleeping Island". |
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This
spectacular country has a wealth
of history about the 1930’s
fur trade when Dene, Cree, White,
and Inuit trappers and traders
scoured the land. The area was
unique in that all these groups
were there simultaneously, and
although we have been there three
other times, we both agree that
it is one of the best places we
have ever paddled. |
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| As it is largely
in the Dene’s "Land of Little
Sticks" we won’t have quite the same
intensity as found on the barrens, where the wind
and weather can make life VERY miserable. There
are almost always trees to find shelter in so it
is much easier to cope with the bad weather The
landscape is sand and open jackpine where you can
walk for miles … in my mining days we called
it "parkland". Just making a fire is
going to be a real different treat for us after
our last few trips! |
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I am going
to paddle right from La
Ronge with Tom
O’Rourke, a paddler
I met on the Thelon.
Lynda will fly up to the
community of Wollaston
and I will change
partners and hopefully
socks and underwear. |
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| Each spring and
fall I do some environmental monitoring work with
the people in Wollaston and other northern
communities so I will spend about a week working
when I get there. Its gonna’ be a riot to show up
for work by canoe after three weeks on the trail.
My Dene pals will LOVE this and it will cement
their opinion of me – and most all white
guys – of being a few bricks short of a load
(or as they would say; a few whitefish short of a
net-full). And get this. I can actually portage
my canoe to the trip’s start on Lac La Ronge
from our back yard. Can’t you just see it? I
finish breakfast, give Lynda a kiss, hoist up the
canoe and head off to work.
From Wollaston
Lake Lynda and I will paddle north, reaching
Nueltin through Putahow Lake and the Putahow
River. From a spectacular esker on Nueltin called
Simons Point, we will head north to Windy River
on the old P G Downes route. Then we follow part
of the 1912 route Ernest Oberholtzer and Billie
Magee ( you GOTTA’ read about their trip!)
to the north end of Nueltin and out to Hudson Bay
on the Thlewiaza River (said ‘Thlew
azzey’ and meaning little fish for the
grayling that are abundant there).
This will allow me
to avoid the clouds of confusion that hang over
me in town and send me back to my own form of
reality for at least 50 to 60 days.
And if you want
some GREAT reading about the area we plan to go
to, find the following two books at your library.
Sleeping
Island, P.G. Downes, Western Producer Prairie
Books, ISBN 0-88833-256-4.
When the Foxes
Ran, Gerry Dunning, self-published.
Toward Magnetic
North, The Oberholtzer Foundation, ISBN,
0-970318-0-2
The
"Oberholtzer" book is a must
have, you can get a copy by contacting
Jean Replinger at 507-532-5097 (jrep@starpoint.net)
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SPONSORS
Bill will be communicating
with us from the north, via a
GLOBALSTAR satellite
phone, linked by a
SOCKETCOM cable, to a
HEWLETT PACKARD
handheld "Pocket PC"
COMMUNICATION
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GEAR
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