Mainstreet Radio's Chris Julin visits Northern Great Lakes Visitor Center in Ashland, Wisconsin. The center turns tourists and school groups into voyageurs for a day, and takes them out on Superior in a huge, Montreal canoe.
These days, not many people are gutsy enough to take a canoe out on Lake Superior, but 200 years ago the voyageurs did it all the time. During the 1700s and 1800s, they carried beaver skins across the Great Lakes in giant, 40-foot canoes paddled by a dozen men.
CHRIS JULEN: This is an odd place to rendezvous with voyageurs It's a wayside rest just off the highway on the outskirts of Ashland, Wisconsin. From the parking lot, a sandy beach stretches 50 feet to the chilly water of Sheboygan Bay on the South Shore of Lake Superior. Half a dozen elderhostel students are rubbing in some final dabs of sunscreen when four women pop out from behind a park shelter, belting out a song in what seems to be French.
GROUP: [SINGING IN FRENCH]
[SPEAKING FRENCH]
CHRIS JULEN: The singers have cinched their baggy shirts at the waist with bright crimson sashes. They have red sashes around their heads too, and one tied below each knee.
KATHY TECKMAN: I'm Etienne Loire. I am the gouvernail, what you would call the stern paddler of the Dreamcatcher Canoe. It is a canoe of the Northwest Fur Company.
WOMAN: The best--
KATHY TECKMAN: The best fur company. Oui?
GROUP: Oui!
KATHY TECKMAN: It is much better than the Hudson Bay Company.
GROUP: Boo.
KATHY TECKMAN: [CHUCKLES]
CHRIS JULEN: Voyageur Etienne Loire's real name is Kathy Teckman, and she's an instructor with the University of Wisconsin Extension Program in Ashland. For the next two hours, her French-Canadian character will lead this band of pretend voyageurs on a trip from the year 1793 to the present as they paddle a 34-foot canoe along the shores of Sheboygan Bay. Teckman will tell stories of the fur trade and its collapse and then spin forward in time to talk about logging and mining and how they thrived and then struggled here on the shores of Lake superior.
But first, she has to prepare her crew. Each paddler gets a voyageur persona typed on a note card.
KATHY TECKMAN: I'm Cyril LaFleur. I've never taken a bath.
GROUP: [DISGUSTED RETORTS]
CHRIS JULEN: The new voyageurs wrap themselves in red sashes and red life vests and wade into the water for some practice paddling.
KATHY TECKMAN: And you're just going to reach forward with your paddle straight out in front of you and pull straight back.
CHRIS JULEN: Then they carry the 600 pound canoe into the lake.
KATHY TECKMAN: OK, [FRENCH]
CHRIS JULEN: They load the canoe with gunny sacks, representing the trade goods that these big canoes carried from Montreal to outposts in the North woods. That's where the voyageurs swapped the manufactured goods for beaver pelts.
KATHY TECKMAN: So we are going to be paddling the 2,500 miles from Montreal to the rendezvous with the trade goods. It is the metal, the pots, the pans, the beads, the cloth, tobacco, eh? And after we do the business of portaging the trade goods to their camp and bringing the pelts that they have to our camp at the rendezvous, we will have a big party, eh? We will party for about two weeks. We will drink the high wine. We will have fun.
[GROUP CHEERING]
I see these voyageurs are ready for this, eh? [CHUCKLES] They are ready for this.
CHRIS JULEN: The paddlers dig in, and the big canoe moves out at a surprisingly brisk clip. It helps that the lake is mirror still.
KATHY TECKMAN: And if you can think we will be doing this now for the next 16 to 18 hours today and start again at 3 o'clock tomorrow morning, eh?
CHRIS JULEN: Every few minutes, Kathy Teckman gives her crew a break and tells a story. As the canoe progresses around the bay, the stories move forward through the centuries.
KATHY TECKMAN: We are the only canoe here at all. There are no more voyageur fur trade canoes, eh? I do not see the little beaver. There are very few left in the swamps, eh? I think it must be some time, perhaps in the 1800s, eh? Are we ready, voyageurs?
[GROUP CHEERING]
KATHY TECKMAN: [SPEAKING FRENCH]
CHRIS JULEN: When the canoe returns to shore, the stories have reached the present.
KATHY TECKMAN: So you will take these lessons as you have learned them from us to be the new voyageurs, oui?
GROUP: Oui, oui, oui.
KATHY TECKMAN: You have done good, voyageurs, eh? You have done well.
[APPLAUSE]
CHRIS JULEN: This is the second season for the Paddle Through Time program in Ashland. Kathy Teckman says she's led crews of schoolkids and Four H'ers, retired folks, and extended families. In mid-July, the Northern Great Lakes visitor center is adding a second living history program that takes patrons out in a big canoe. This one's called Leadership Secrets of the Voyageurs. This is Chris Julen, Minnesota Public Radio, Ashland, Wisconsin.
[SINGING IN FRENCH]
KATHY TECKMAN: All sing.
[SINGING IN FRENCH]
Digitization made possible by the State of Minnesota Legacy Amendment’s Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, approved by voters in 2008.
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