Weekend voyageurs
By Candace Savage with photography by Courtney Milne
A Saskatchewan canoe tour revisits a dark day in fur-trade history
THE STORM ROLLS IN under cover of darkness, unleashing
torrents of rain and bringing me bolt upright in bed with its flash
and fury. Only a few hours till morning, I think uneasily. Only
a few hours until I am scheduled to set out on a two-day journey
by car and canoe with a dozen other outdoorsy types from
storm-lashed Saskatoon to the village of St. Louis, 130 kilometres
northeastward down the South Saskatchewan River.
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Call me naïve, but bad weather has not figured into my
plans. All I want is a lazy weekend paddle, full of sunshine and
bonhomie, and a chance to bask in the romance of fur-trade
history. And then, of course, there is Cliff Speer's reputation for
spectacular camp cooking. Speer runs Saskatoon's CanoeSki
Discovery Company, a purveyor of fresh-air-and-adventure outings
and the organizer of our excursion down the river.
When I had talked to him about the trip earlier, it had sounded
like so much fun. We would drive from Saskatoon to Batoche
National Historic Site, launch the canoes, then paddle for three
or four hours to the location of South Branch House, an old Hudson's Bay Company trading post that had been in business
just over two centuries ago, from 1786 until 1794. What's more,
the famous fur trader and surveyor David Thompson spent the
winter there when he was a lad of 16, so we would enjoy a vicarious
brush with celebrity. Best of all, once we had settled into
camp for the night on a meadow across the river, there would be
bannock and buffalo stew and saskatoon pie for dinner. The next
day, another leisurely paddle would take us to St. Louis, where
vans would be waiting to drive us back to the city.
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