Voyageur Rendezvous

At Lac La Biche Mission I saw a flyer for the Voyageur Rendezvous, a reenactment/historical celebration of the history and culture of the Lac la Biche area. I just came by to look at canoes, but a few minutes after taking this photo I was asked "do you want to paddle"... um yeah! This would be my boat, a brand new 29' Langley.

Here we go!

This group all dressed in period costume. Of course they looked the best.

My boat had a very friendly crew of 7

There was cake for us when we got to the mission, but there was still more paddling to be done

The ending point was the town of Lac La Biche. In the town is this statue of David Thompson who arrived in this area in 1798 to set up fur trading operations for the North West Company. Along with Sir Alexander Mackenzie, David Thompson is one of the two greatest explorers of the fur trade era. But he is alone as the greatest cartographer in North American history, having mapped 3.9 million sq km of North America and putting it all in a beautiful map that is incredibly accurate by today's standards.

Lac la Biche

I went to Lac la Biche to visit another National Historic Site of Canada; Notre Dame des Victoires / Lac La Biche Mission.

The mission's boat dock. In addition to the great view this is also where I would learn about the canoe event the next day.

Hudson's Bay Company flag set up for the event.



It doesn't get much better than this.

Peace River in the footsteps of Sir Alexander MacKenzie

My first view of the mighty Peace River by the Dunvegan Bridge. I've been daydreaming about this river for a long time and here it is. I dropped off my boat in Dunvegan and drove to the town of Peace River.

Then some hitchhiking back to the boat. This is the highway up to Yellowknife, NWT. I may be back through this way again to go north, but for now I was headed west.

Dunvegan, my starting point, is a National Historic Site for the remains of it's fur trade fort. The church and chapel of the St Charles Mission can be seen across the river from where I put in. This is probably not too different from the view in the 1890's.

My two day paddle through the Peace River Valley was pretty awesome





I got to try out my sleeping setup on this trip. I sleep in the boat. It's like sleeping on a Coleman air mattress.

I put my bivy inside to stay dry. I've had this bivy for 3 years now and this is the first time I've used it. It works!

Then I cover everything with my Bulldog tarp. I've also had this for three years and this is the first time I've made use of it.

The day before the trip I visited Fort Fork NHS.

This is where Sir Alexander Mackenzie wintered before completing the first overland crossing of Canada in 1793

Like Jasper House the actual site is across the river

Again I wanted to walk on the actual site so on my river trip I stopped at the opposite bank, tied up the boat and went looking around.

I wasn't sure if anything was left. I had heard that most of the site had been eroded by the river. There is a modern flag pole marking something, not sure what location it represents on the actual site.

The fireplace I thought I might find at the site I actually found the next day in the town museum

As a nice bonus the museum also had the original plaque from the cairn now across the river from Fort Fork

I knew this plaque existed from this photo, but I'm still not sure if the original designation was National Historic Site, or National Historic Person.

camera guts

I tried to dry out and fix my camera

I got it apart, dried it out, and got it back together.

It now plays back just fine, and I was able to even take a few photos, but further attempts at taking photos with it were met with either jammed or damaged optics and an inability to focus. I could try it again but the optics had a blurry spot on them in the upper left corner even before this trip so I think it's time for a new (waterproof) camera.

Athabasca River trip

An early morning launch at the confluence of the McLeod and Athabasca rivers

The river was quite swollen with recent rainfall and snowmelt, so it was really fast.

There were a lot of downed trees in the river, and lots of big log jams.

This is logging country, and there are big paper and lumber mills in the area.

I was worried about the weather but it turned out to be a very beautiful day.

The main time it rained was when I stopped here to bail out the boat and make repairs. The rain foiled my attempt at cooking breakfast though.

The only problem I had with the high fast water was trying to land here. Seconds after taking this photo everything was in the water. The only casualty though was the camera.

Dumpster diving

Someone threw away a lot of good vegetarian food at a park in Edmonton the other day. The best was the vegan eggless egg salad sandwiches. I ate for 3 days on the contents of that one garbage can.

Canadian parks are for sale

Part of my research is finding old parks and it's been twice now that a park has not looked like it did on my old maps. This is or was Allendale Park, now called Mount Pleasant Park. This had been parkland for at least 100 years as it was on a 1912 map of Edmonton in the city archives. It seems that they have just recently cut away a corner of the old park and built these ugly condos (the place is brand spanking new and there are still building materials on site). I had seen this once before where a park was split in half to make an old folks home on one half. Not sure how this can be justified. I wonder if anyone else cares? Probably not.

Cooking for 12

Yesterday I had the chance to cook for a group of strangers. Their kitchen had three nice big stock pots and I brought along my little pressure cooker. I cooked my favorite recipe Pindi Chana.

Chickpeas, lots of onions.

lots of tomatoes

one huge pot of food. I loved the wooden paddle to stir it with.

It turned out well enough. Not the best batch I ever made, but pretty good. Not sure how well received it was though. It's hard to judge those kinds of things. I had an idea to sell street food to backpackers. I wonder if I'd be successful?

Armouries

Armouries in Canada are these early 20th century buildings. They are often associated with units that fought in WWI. I first visited an armoury last year in Calgary but didn't get to go inside as it is still a military facility (as well as a NHS). This armoury here is the Connaught Armoury in Strathcona, dated 1911.

I didn't get to go in here either. It's currently used as offices by a group dealing with homeless youth. At one time it was used as a nightclub.



Finally an armoury I can go inside, even though it looks like a construction site. This is the Prince of Wales Armoury and now is home to the City of Edmonton Archives. I will be going back there to do historical research as well.