Where did Ojibwe get canoe birchbark?

There are moments in winter that are just spectacular

When we came to Thunder Bay in 1979 one of the first things I learned was that Nipigon, 100 km to the northeast, had exceptionally large white (or paper) birch trees and that native people came from all around to get it when they were making birchbark canoes.

Other than those word-of-mouth stories, I have never been able to confirm this. But if it is true, then did people from far-off places like Red Lake -- 575 km away by road but much farther by canoe routes -- travel all that way just for birchbark? Did they trade for it up closer to Red Lake? Did they go to Nipigon and then make the canoes on the spot? Was there a canoe-making industry in Nipigon who sold/traded canoes to other First Nations?

Does anybody know?

If only we could make a buck on homeless

 If there was money to be made on homelessness, it would vanish overnight. It sounds stupid, but that is in fact the case, isn't it? Our world revolves around making money, making a profit. So, as crass as it sounds, as it truly is, how can we get rich off the homeless? There is the question to ponder this Christmas season, this Giving Season.

Let's just look at what we've done for the homeless so far:

We have given them a meal. But they are HOMELESS.

We have given them socks and underwear. But they are HOMELESS.

We have vans of first-aiders treating their frostbite and giving them rides to emergency rooms. But they are HOMELESS.

Free coffee, free water. But they are HOMELESS. 

We have a couple of shelters where a few of them can sleep cheek-by-jowl at night if they can pretend their fellow residents aren't screaming at mental demons or are threatening to kill them. A frozen tent on the side of the road seems a better alternative for many. 

Here in Ontario our premier, Doug Ford, has hit upon a solution.

"Enough is enough," Ford thundered this week, a nice three-word slogan repeated by his fellow Conservatives. Slogans work best if they are three words it seems. "Axe the tax," are about the only words federal Conservative leader Pierre Polievre says these days and apparently, according to the polls, he will become our next prime minister.

Anyway, Ford is going to show he is tough on homelessness. That is the old dichotomy right-wing thinkers like to pose for every social predicament. "Are you tough on crime or soft on crime?" Same thing for the homeless now.

"Enough is enough!" Either stop being homeless or face a $10,000 fine and up to six months in prison!

You can't make stuff like this up. People who don't have enough money for a room in the cheapest rat-infested accommodation are going to be threatened with $10,000 fines. That will show them!

Ford has also shut down safe-injection sites, including here in Thunder Bay, and believes all homeless people are drug addicts who simply chose that as their lifestyle. And to show he isn't really the Grinch, he is promising to increase drug treatment facilities in the future. But the homeless are here now. We need answers now.

Thunder Bay almost made a decision that would have made a difference. City administration who were tasked with finding a solution recommended using a vacant city block as the site of temporary individual homeless shelters. These would be small, box-like structures that would have a door, window, bed and not much more. But they would be heated and would have a door that could be locked. They would be arranged around a central comfort station with flush toilets, showers and washing machines. 

And that, according to the homeless themselves, would be a huge help. Here is what they say is so important to them: a place to be secure, a place to get warm, a place to safely store their belongings, a place where they can charge their cell phones, a place with an address.

You can't get a job if you don't have an address. You can't get a job if you don't have a cell phone. You can't get a job if you and your clothes aren't clean.

What about addiction? There is no hope of moving out of addiction if you don't first have safe shelter. Period.

Lots of people became homeless because of marital breakups, lost employment, illness or a combination of these things. Most of society today is living pay cheque to pay cheque.

Hardly anyone wants to be an addict. But when you are living on the street here are the cold, hard facts: you don't have $2,000 for an apartment; you don't have $200 for a motel room; but you do have $20. A bottle of alcohol or a hit of fentanyl is the only way to make life tolerable.

The Thunder Bay plan got squashed when businesses in that area had a fit. They don't want to see a homeless village in their area. There's no money to be made from them.

Merry Christmas.

An incredible survival tale from 1869

 I ran across this story in the Nipigon Museum blog. It's about an old, handicapped Ojibwe woman named A-GAT. The story comes from a Hudson Bay Company trader.

Click here for the whole story.

Ok, I've found a reason to believe

Something cheery, this 300-pound deer was caught on my trail cam in Nolalu this week

 I've been looking and looking for something positive and I've finally found it. Of all things, it's nuclear waste!

After 14 years of exploring geologic formations and consulting with communities, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization has selected Ignace as its future site for a $26 billion deep geologic repository. Ignace is an hour's drive east of Dryden.

It will be the first of its kind in Canada and will create hundreds of jobs both during construction and in operation. It has the approval of Ignace and Wabigoon Lake First Nation residents. I believe it will be the largest economic venture ever taken in Northern Ontario.

I'm sure many of my friends and neighbours will be shocked to learn that I support the creation of the repository. All over Northwestern Ontario, including here in Nolalu, people have "Say No to Nuclear Waste" signs in their yards. 

Am I not an environmentalist? As a matter of fact I am. Then what gives?

Let me start by asking this simple question: Is there nuclear waste in Canada? Yes. Ontario has three nuclear power plants, all in Southern Ontario. Quebec has a decommissioned plant that might be revived and New Brunswick has an operational one.  Where are spent nuclear fuel rods now stored? In pools of water and in above-ground vaults right at the plants. If you knew nothing else about the process, which sounds safer? Surface storage or a mile deep in granite? It's a no-brainer, isn't it?

Opposition to the repository comes from fear that somehow radioactivity will leak or there will be accidents in hauling the waste. The NWMO people have spent the past 14 years explaining to town councils, environmental groups, First Nations, and anyone else who is interested why that won't happen. Their system of packaging has multiple layers of redundancies that prevent intrusion by water, breakage by physical force, rust and everything else. The Ignace site was chosen for its particularly stable rock formation.

If anyone refers to the repository as a nuclear waste dump then they are fear mongering. The site will be an underground city. 

This is a permanent solution to a major environmental threat that has existed since the creation of nuclear power plants. 

It will be 10 years before work begins on the repository and 20 years before it begins operation. This is what responsibility looks like.

Attention now turns to the best way of transporting the used nuclear fuel in the safest manner. I would suspect rail will be chosen over highways. 

There are lots of environmental studies and permits to get and people to be trained. But let's be clear, this is a real solution, a major environmental victory for Canada.

 One reason I have been so bummed out came a couple of months ago when I read something from a young woman who was also fighting what is called climate fatigue.

"Individual actions are important," she said, "but they are not the solution." Solutions require systemic change.

I realized that I am a solutions guy. I don't do things that make me or other people feel good just for the moment. I want to fix the problem.

If you ask me to catch "the mouse" in your house, I won't stop until I mouse-proof the building because I know there is no such thing as one mouse.

Electing Trump and his anti-knowledge mob means all progress stops on climate solutions, just when there is no time left for inaction.

I found hope in the least likely person -- Canadian environmental guru David Suzuki. I had the misfortune of interviewing Dr. Suzuki one time when I was a journalist. He had been one of my heroes as he advocated for environmental awareness and protection on his radio and television shows. Then I met him in person and discovered he loathed all white people but Americans in particular. He picked up on my American accent and tore a strip off me. I wasn't the only one he disappointed that day. He had just addressed the graduating class of Lakehead University where he said that thanks to people like them, the world was going to hell. Happy graduation.

I never watched or listened to him again but recently began reading some of his newspaper columns. It was there he said that Trump's plan to destroy everything about green energy is not going to succeed. The cheapest way to produce electricity is by wind and solar generation, a fact not lost on American energy producers. Texas, for example, has an enormous green energy sector. "Drill, baby, drill," is meaningless when no one wants the oil.

Finally, I looked up one of the most insightful columnists I know, Gwynne Dyer. Now living in London, England, but originally from Newfoundland, military historian Dyer said that Trump's election does not mean the fall of the American Empire, at least not immediately. The Roman Empire survived for four centuries with rulers like Caligula and Nero -- men pretty similar to Trump. His election means nothing but bad tidings and some of the worst of those will be for Americans. 

As Thomas Jefferson famously said, "The government you elect is the government you deserve."

So Americans are about to get what they deserve. That's not my business. I don't live there although I have family that do.

Unfortunately, I feel Trump will also bring world chaos. I would say there are about even odds that he will bring about a world economic depression and a world war. I think there are only slightly less odds that he will invade Canada, something he brought up yesterday in a meeting with Prime Minister Trudeau. Aides said he was joking but Trump doesn't have a sense of humour.

The best possibility would be that he will be so busy burning Democrats and former Republicans at the stake that he won't have time to attack Canada. That's taking the glass half-full view, at least for non-Americans.

Probably end of the line for the blog

 

I had pledged to only talk about things on this blog that were hopeful and positive. Well, after the U.S. election, I've got nothing.

Beautiful skies morning and night

 

I am charged-up about electric chainsaw

 

MSA 60 Stihl is now my go-to chainsaw

I just came inside after a morning of clearing survey lines with my battery electric chainsaw. At just eight pounds, this 12-inch bar saw by Stihl is just a pleasure to operate. It cuts quickly and quietly. After about 1 1/2 hours of sawing through downed poplars and balsam and upright alders and willows it still was only half discharged.

Up at the cabin I used it for construction -- cutting 6x6 posts -- and firewood cutting. I cut down one dead jackpine and then bucked it up into 12-inch lengths -- about a week's supply of firewood in cool weather -- again on half a battery. 

The battery itself charges rapidly. When starting with a half charge it finishes topping up in the time it takes to eat lunch. I would recommend not purchasing extra batteries. You just don't need them and when bought alone, they are expensive.

It's a sweet saw and for $350, a bargain.

Loons, spruce seeds and fishing

 

Black spruce seed

Perhaps the best news of the summer is that the loons successfully nested on Red Lake. The resident pair near our cabin had two young. They were nearly full grown when we left. We saw loons with young in many other parts of the lake too.

I am stumped on what makes a good loon nesting year. Our pair had not fledged any young in five years and that seemed to be a common condition around the lake. Last spring we had very high water and very cold temperatures. I guess that's just what the loons wanted.

It was also a great year for the conifers to produce cones. Both the black spruce and balsam fir around our place were so top heavy with cones that the tree tops were nodding. When the spruce cones opened in early September their single-winged seeds rained down for weeks. 

Alas, the cold start to the fishing season screwed things up all summer. Walleye never seemed to come into the shallows to spawn and when the water did warm up in July the fish just stayed out in the deep.

I caught only three walleye off the dock all summer. Normally I would catch dozens. I probably only caught a half a dozen pike and just two bass. I did have a small lake trout follow my lure in June.

Brenda and I did manage to get a couple of pike to eat by taking to the boat about six times. On our last trip we were skunked.

The best fishing always comes from early warm springs. That's what the fish like and what we want too.

Warblers are feasting on fall sweets

The weather here in Northwestern Ontario has been incredibly hot for this time of year. We have had daytime temps of 28 C which is in the 80s F. That anomaly is probably why we are still seeing warblers. In fact our yard here in Nolalu is abuzz with the little guys shown above. 

If you are a birder you know how difficult it is to distinguish warbler species in the fall. My bird book has an appropriately-titled page called "Confusing Fall Warblers." I frankly quit trying years ago but the ones we are seeing all over the lawn are pretty easy. The clue is the birds' rear ends. Yellow-Rumped Warbler. 

The other dead give away comes from where these warblers are feeding -- the ground. To my knowledge, they are the only warbler in these parts anyway that catch their prey on the ground. It would be nice to think they are eating the cluster flies that are just everywhere at this time of year but as I was manning the barbecue the other day I could see that at least some of them were picking off the white-coloured fruit flies that are very difficult for humans to detect. It usually takes bright sunlight with a dark background to see these minute flies.

Up at camp we saw ring-billed gulls catching the same tiny flies in mid-September. 

The fruit flies are found wherever there are asters which are  late-summer flowers that grow almost everywhere. They must be super nutritious for big birds like gulls to bother catching them out of the air. I would imagine the Yellow-Rumped Warblers are using the flies to fatten up before they head to Central or South America for the winter.
 

So close to finishing but we came home

 

The front room just needs the kitchen stove and fridge moved into it and all the trim.

Scene off the deck the night before we left.

We are sleeping in the big cabin and can heat it with our wood stove which we did a couple of times. But we planned from the start this summer to button up the place and go home to Nolalu on Sept. 16 and that is what we did. We have things at home that need to be done in the fall and they have gone by the wayside the last five years while we were building the cabin on Red Lake.

It seems to me that we have been building this place for a decade but Brenda proved to me before we left that it has actually been just five years. We began by pulling a dock loaded with lumber all the way from town in 2019. From there we built a landing for the dock and a 12x24 cabin which we call the dockhouse and in which we have lived until this September.

Then we had the covid setback in 2020. I just finished the dockhouse that year. I started the main cabin in 2021 and got the foundation and subfloor completed. In 2022 I built the walls and roof and put on the steel siding. In 2023 I completed the interior walls and much of the interior paneling and plumbing. With help from my brother-in-law, Ron Wink, we installed the solar system and wired the joint.

This year I finished the paneling, installed the kitchen cabinets and put down the finished floor in about two thirds of the building. Only the two bedrooms still need the finished floor. 

Brenda and our neighbour Kim Austen have painted all but one bedroom. The flooring is just waiting to be put down. We have gone with 9-inch luxury vinyl planks.

I anticipate finishing the move from the other cabin, hooking up the main bathroom, including hot water, in two weeks when we go back next spring. And that is taking into account my formula for how long things take now that we are older. I take the estimated time and multiply it by pi.

Striving to move into new cabin

I have the deck built on the front of our new cabin now and next will make the stairs that allow us access to the front door. As soon as that is done we can begin to move from the dockhouse.

Is summer finally making an appearance?

 The forecast shows highs in the lower 20s C. If true, it will be the first of the season. We have been plagued with rain and cold. Daytime highs have been more like 14 C. A few nights ago the low was 2 C.

The lake now might be a foot higher than when we first came and the water is way colder than normal.

This must have impacted fishing success but I only have a couple of reports to go on. In Red Lake, walleye fishing heats up with the temperature in the spring. I've always been stumped why fishermen refuse to believe this but they don't. They believe with all their might that fishing starts out red hot and gets continually worse as the season progresses.  In reality, it starts slow and gains momentum until mid-July and then stays about even until the weather starts to cool off in late August.

It also has been abnormally windy which limits where and how you can fish. Why is it always cold and windy but hot and still?

Nature notes so far this spring

A couple of friends from camp spotted a cow moose in Gooseberry Bay, just a hundred meters north of our cabin, a couple of days ago. This is a known moose calving spot so I hope that is what she was doing.

A bald eagle attacked three common merganser ducks right in front of us yesterday. The hen is using a nesting box I placed on a tree about 15 years ago. The eagle singled out one of the drakes and was gaining on him when they went out of sight.

A ruffed grouse has been drumming every 10 minutes, night and day, since we've been here. Where does he get the strength?

I've seen a meter-long garter snake twice.

Blackflies have been a problem obly a couple of days. It's just too cold.

Long underwear weather so far

We had a couple of sunny days at the cabin since arriving last week but mostly it has been cold and wet. There were even snow flurries yesterday.

The lake has risen a couple of inches.

The good news is forest fires won't be a possibility for a couple of months.

Making a landing strip for white pine seeds

I scratched up some bare dirt alongside my trail

 We have six white pine on our 65 acres in Nolalu and I would like to have more of these majestic trees. 

Five of the trees have seeded-in naturally from one big tree growing on a ridge toward the western side of our land. Three of the young trees are growing in a line, about 50 yards apart, northeast of the mother tree. In other words, a southwest wind -- pretty much our prevailing wind -- carried the seeds in this direction. 

I'm trying an experiment this spring to bring forth more Pinus strobus or perhaps I should say P. strobi which would be the plural, I think.

Nearly all of the seeds dropped by trees like the white pine don't grow because they don't land in a suitable spot. Seeds that lay upon moss or leaves or grass might germinate with moisture but will dry up and die before their tiny roots reach soil. 

Seeds that land on bare dirt, on the other hand, start growing immediately. There is a term for creating areas of bare dirt in the forest industry. It is called scarification and foresters don't call it dirt but mineralized soil.

So this spring I went around some of the areas that I have created clearings by firewood cutting in the past and have pushed off the grass thatch with my tractor bucket to reveal mineralized soil. All these spots are to the east of the mother tree. Let's see if any white pine seedlings appear in the next couple of years. 

I haven't tried this in the past because whitetail deer would have eaten every pine seedling. Following the enormous snowfall here in the spring of 2023, I estimate the current population of deer to be just 5-10 per cent of what it used to be. So there's a chance pine can get a head start and grow high enough to be out of the deer's reach before the population rebounds.

Making affordable moves to electricity

Stihl MSA 60 battery chainsaw cost $350

We will only be taking one vehicle to Red Lake from this point and that will be our eight-year-old Dodge Grand Caravan, not our 16-year-old pickup truck. That means we will have our chainsaw inside where we are sitting. Our great old Husqavarna leaks and reeks chain oil and gasoline so we have purchased a new battery electric chainsaw for the cabin. It is the Stihl MSA 60. I was able to get this for $350 which includes the battery and charger.

It is a small saw with a 12-inch cutting bar but it should do the job for us at the cabin. Mostly we will use it for cutting up wind-blown trees but we will also probably cut about a third of a cord of firewood each year.

In other electric news at our house, our Rinnai on-demand propane hot water heater has stopped working after just six years and there seems no one in Thunder Bay interested or capable in fixing it. So, it has become the most expensive piece of artwork we have on the wall and we have gone back to our electric hot water tank which we still owned.

Finally, the electronic oven control in our propane kitchen range died. We will be replacing this in the future with an induction stove top and electric oven.

We are a ways off replacing our vehicle with an electric one. For one thing we are not going to pay double what a gas vehicle costs and will wait until mass production brings the costs down.

The only thing left after that will be how we heat our home. Currently we do it with a propane furnace and a wood-burning stove. The furnace is over 20 years old. When it dies, we will need to come up with an electric alternative.

Red Lake ice-out was May 7

 Warm temperatures and, more importantly, a high wind took out the ice on Red Lake and all the other water bodies except Trout Lake on May 7. 

Satellite photos showed Trout to still have some ice yesterday, May 8. Trout Lake is higher than other area lakes and that extra bit of elevation means the air temperature is cooler. It's also a bigger, round-shaped lake and deeper. All those things can make ice-out five days or so later than Red Lake.

Ice-out Red Lake -- it's happening

 

EOSDIS Worldview pic today, May 6. Ice mostly gone

Brian was able to fly from the river, over the ice and into open water in the narrows at camp on Saturday. He said there was lots of ice remaining in the lake but with the warm temperatures in the forecast it would seem total ice-out is just days away.

Once the ice has melted away from the shoreline, which it has, it starts shifting with the wind and crushing against the windward shore.

Hooray!

Wooden lure maker now has website

Nolalu wooden lure artist Dwayne Kotala has started a website where you can see and order his lures on-line. The site is still under construction but does display a few of his hand-carved wooden lures and gives you a way to contact him.

The URL of the site is fuddyduddystudio.square.site

You can find him by typing that into your search engine window or just by clicking here on lures.

 

Where the heck have I been?

EOSDIS Worldview

 Sorry folks, I was out of the country for nearly a month and was not able to update ice-out conditions on Red Lake. 

The latest that I have heard is that the ice is still shore-to-shore, is 16 inches thick but is candled and ripe for breakup.

I wish I had left my first prediction at May 8 as that is likely close to actual ice-out.

The last few weeks of April turned out colder than normal and that set back ice melting. Again, it is only the weather in April that matters. It was the warmest winter on record but it played no part on ice-out.

You can see daily detailed satellite photographs that show ice melt by going to this site EOSDIS Worldview. The satellite passes over Northwestern Ontario about 3 p.m. EST each day. All it takes to see what is happening with the ice is a clear sky. Unfortunately, the last day that happened was April 24, a week ago. In the screen shot of EOSDIS Worldview above, you can clearly see that Middle and Sadler Bays -- small water bodies at the west end of Red Lake -- are still frozen.

 Zoom Earth also has near real-time imagery but it is not as detailed.

You can also download the free apps for both of these satellites to your smart phone. That is what I have done.