Remembering Winter

This past winter has really done a number on the people of eastern North America, and perhaps the most insane among us on this first day of not-so-Spring are otherwise known as gardeners.  While most long for warmer weather and the end of things such as road salt and scraping off the windshield every morning, the gardener is a different sort of folk who simply longs for a return to leaves, flowers, and matters vegetable in general.  This time of year, both people thus long for the coming of that which is not winter (even when they might otherwise miss Spring in the process) and fail to notice that even back in late December, any amount of snowfall and cold was welcome and sought after.  Indeed, in a few more months we will most likely all be complaining about the heat instead, and then long for heavier meals, holiday things, and even a nice bracing chill to the morning air.  In California and much of the desert southwest, people definitely wish they had our snowpack and colder air so as to moderate the powerful effects of prolonged drought.  People in the American southeast definitely mock northern types with tantalizing pictures of blooming spring flowers, but trust me, I saw many of them get very excited up high in the spruce forests of the southern Appalachians wishing that they could grow such things as spruce and fir in their yards.

Historically, people actually liked winter in the frigid north.  The mild winters of the European homelands of the Second Born often contrasted sharply with what they had back home.  The French in Quebec often complained about it, but they also found that it toughened them up and made them into a culture of adventurers and explorers.  The various folks of the eastern American seaboard delighted in having common festivals of snow and ice play that were far and few between back in rainy England and Holland.  Everyone in general loved being able to make maple syrup and sugar, especially in Vermont, Quebec, and Ontario, where sub-cultures actually developed around the noble maple species and it's economic boons.  The annual rite of tapping the maple tree was a harbinger of Spring, but this was not possible without the frigid winter to precede it.  Very well, you say, winter then is a sacrifice to be had to enjoy the more colorful periods of the year.  Perhaps, but winter is far from lacking color.  Bare earth, evergreens both needled and leaved (rhododendrons and certain ground covers keep their leaves even in the north, and some oaks retain their fall color until the following Spring!), snow, seed heads, bare branches, and berries conspire to create some of the most amazing scenery of the entire year.  Since winter seems to keep dragging on in some places, I offer that we take a look at some of those Northern wonders which make the winter scenery up here something even the magnolia and palm clad Southern folk can drool in envy over. 

And don't worry, these winter blues are going to make us feel even more fantastic when things do warm up nicely!  Let's face it, if the seasonal cycles were truly that terrible, no one would still be living here.

"I Don't Understand You": A History Of Linguistic Diversity In Colonial North America: Part Three, Canada Continued.

These days we tend to hear an annoying little voice calling out for Quebecois liberty.  This voice has shut up a bit ever since it might have come to its senses and realized that things could be much, much worse for the otherwise fine people of Quebec, which probably has something to do with the fact that a decent majority of her people feel that they are being treated well enough as part of a united Canada and all of them know that they have the right to not only speak French and exist as they otherwise wish throughout the nation.  More on this towards the end of the post, along with the other side, which it turns out is just as bitchy as the Francophones are over "my rights".  First, just how did we manage to get to this point, anyway?

Well, the Canada of the 1770's was a very uncertain place, full of French-speaking people expecting deportation/cultural annihilation.  French anything was certainly not in vogue back in London, to say nothing of how it was openly hated and feared in the rest of English-speaking North America.  Think about things from the American perspective, especially from the viewpoint of a backcountry Pennsylvanian or Virginian: the French were the enemy, sending those terrifying Indians to attack you for no other purpose than to either kill you outright or terrorize you into leaving your land to the beavers so they could just... profit.  That's right, they did not even want to settle down in your vacated clearing and cabin.  Maybe their allies would retake some of that property, but even they would be more than likely to return to ancient lifestyles rather than set up shop in your hard-earned dwelling.  1763 was supposed to have changed all that.  1763 was supposed to be the time where London could tell France to pack up and move on and let people freely expand into that desirable western frontier.  New colonies could even spring up along the St. Lawrence and Great Lakes, where they could connect economic opportunities with the distant Hudson's Bay Company. 

Why would the newly appointed authorities of New France, be it in Quebec or Louisiana, want anything else?

Well, for one, London wanted control.  Liberty was all well and good, but imagine how it looked from an office overlooking the Thames when confronted by the image of a set of colonies slowly growing into something far more expansive than merry old England.  If nothing else, imagine how the people in such offices viewed the revenue potential of such a vast enterprise.  Such income could easily pay for any war that these colonies would get into in the future, let alone what they had already cost the motherland in that war leading up to the victory of 1763.  Now, imagine that if the colonists got their every wish and could expand as far they wanted to across the continent.  Levying a tax on such a vast population would be difficult, and the freedom-minded people might even say no...  In fact, they already had been not even 10 years after that victory had been achieved.  More than this though, mother Britain knew that she could not indefinitely keep the winning streak she was on without a nation getting a bit overwhelmed by almost constant fighting.  She needed to keep large reserves of the American prize open as potential bargaining chips down the road.  After all, Canada was won only at the cost of turning down an even more profitable prize: Guadeloupe and Martinique in the Caribbean.  Canada was just an option, and not a trophy or a purpose, for London.

So for control, for an open hand to play, for so many things, Canada was not just given to the Americans in its entirety.  Provided that they give allegiance to a new crown, the French-Canadians could remain as they were, and this was, and has ever since been, because of the vision of one man:  Lord Guy Carleton.

Unknown artist, public domain, reference number C-002833 from the National Archives of Canada.

As I said, he is the savior of the entire concept of French-Canada, and next to George Etienne Cartier is probably the only reason that there are any French-speakers left on the continent.  He made the Quebec Act of 1774 possible, and he also saved our behinds from being taken over by the Americans during the invasion of Quebec that was one of the first strategic offensive moves of the American War for Independence and the first official take-over attempt by Americans to dominate Canada.  You would not figure Guy to be fond of anything foreign, however.

You see, Guy was Protestant, and he was Anglo-Irish, meaning that he was the product of centuries of an imperial attempt to impose English dominance over the island next door.  He was also a veteran of the Jacobite wars over in Scotland, yet another exercise in said imperialism.  By all accounts, nothing French or especially Catholic should have been in any way appealing to him to let live.  That said, we know little of his earlier conviction and personal beliefs regarding English cultural sentiments, but we do know that he was a social climber and cared very much about his military career.  Even if he was not interested in an imperialistic patriotism, he was very much interested in making the right moves.  To speak out on behalf of the conquered French-Canadians was a risky move that one would not expect of a career obsessed officer.  In the end, however, he did just that.  In the end, the Protestant Anglo-Irishman asked London to let the French-Canadians not only speak French and be Catholic, but even to judge themselves according to their own civil laws.  He also put his life on the line to defend Quebec from American attack.

Now the next part is very important.

But wait, you say, Americans of the period soon learned to love the French, especially after they would come to save the day at Yorktown and later even embrace a revolution of their own.  True, but also remember that prejudice built up over generations and hundreds of years is not something to be so easily reversed.  For anyone of British, and then by extension, American, heritage, things French were the rival at best and the enemy at worst.  When we get to language in the United States, we will also cover feelings about things Spanish, but rest assured that in Anglo-American history, both cultures were not exactly well-loved ever since the reign of Henry VIII, and yes, religion complicated matters further.  Why bring this up in a topic about language in Canada?  Well, the battleground on the topic has already existed there for much longer, and now to look at the results, we turn back to Canada.

One can pretty much be certain that loyalty was almost then guaranteed in this new Canada.  In 1775 and again in 1812, any notion of joining the crusade for freedom with the Americans was pretty much junked.  Why take chances with, at best, an unknown foreign government in the colonies, and at worst, a government that would echo the sentiments of her citizens and expunge anything French from the land?  Guy offered security and potential profit: whereas Paris once controlled the economic destiny of New France, she was now joined into a network of free-enterprise with an empire that spanned the globe.  If we consider the Quebec Act to be the political birth of Canada, then we would also have to say that the Quebecois of 1775 where positively thrilled to be Canadian, and in 1812, they pretty much confirmed that notion to curious Americans.  By 1867, when Canada came into an official existence more along the lines of what we know her to be today, French was alive and well in a Canada that had since come to also embrace English and manage to somehow not extinguish languages spoken by her native peoples.

As I have rambled on a bit in this post, we will continue down this track, which does get a bit bumpy, next post.

"I Don't Understand You": A History Of Linguistic Diversity In Colonial North America: Part Two, Canada.

The French came to North America for profit, just like the Spanish did, but they were not interested in a complicated venture of mining and looking for cities made of gold.  For one, there were no grand empires denoting any sort of mineral wealth in these parts, whether they landed in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Florida and the Carolinas, or later along the Gulf Coast.  They did, however, find that if they demonstrated that they could play nice with the locals, the locals would offer them the other fruits of the interior, namely pelts.  Later on, settlers would come, just as they did down in Mexico, and just like what happened in Mexico, the settlers found they had an easier time of living when the neighbors were at peace.  Colonial policy thus took on a role of negotiator rather than exterminator, at least as long as the other side was willing to talk.  French settlement, however, also never really took off with the intention or effect of transforming the entire land; New France was a thing mostly of the river ways.  The backcountry was reserved for commerce and exploration.

This is not to say that the French language did not spread there.  Here, as in Mexico, missionary efforts found that the people were more responsive to their own language in which abstract concepts could better be disseminated.  The lust for Latin which was becoming part and parcel of Counter-Reformation Catholicism only played a ritual role here in a land of very different patterns of belief.  What's more, the Jesuits were the primary troops deployed in the effort, and the teaching philosophy of Matteo Ricci had now been widely introduced into efforts to spread the faith through the Society beyond the tried and trusted techniques favored by the other orders back in Europe.  On the commercial front, the voyageurs and fur-traders agreed that business went smoother when they decided to learn the language of the market rather than induct the other side into the fine art of French.  The imposition of French language and culture never became a legal mandate by the authorities, if for no other reason than it never had to be imposed; things just worked too smoothly the way they had since the 16th century.  That and, well, as had been noted above, the spread of French anything into the heart of the continent was a mix of small scale settlement and large scale commercial operations.

Thus instead of coming as a conquering force, the French world entered the scene as a new partner at best, and a manipulator at worst.  Since the primary efforts, if not goal, of the settlers was commerce, French expanded far faster than any other European language did anywhere in the New World.  By the end of their first century in Canada, Frenchmen could be heard speaking their native tongue from the Atlantic north to the treelines and across the breadth of the land to the Rockies, perhaps as far south as Tejas.  Remember how they got along well with the locals for the most part?  Well, they got a long really well, and those exploring and trading men often adopted both the lifestyle and even family of the folks they came across.  Just as was the case in Mexico, where two worlds met in a marriage and produced a new people born of both, the Mestizos, here were born the Metis.  As was the case in Mexico, these children did, and still do, speak the languages of both parents.  In the American westward expansion of the 19th century, frontiersmen and settlers would often encounter French speakers, the Firstborn among them, as far afield as Utah and Idaho.  More on the Metis in another post.

Public Domain.  The painting, The Trapper's Bride, is a work by Alfred Jacob Miller, an American artist who had a fondness of the subject matter of the northwestern frontier.  While a lot of 19th and early 20th century historical paintings have an extreme air of Romantic illusion to them, this one seems very real.  You have a bunch of the locals amused by the French trappers who are positively enraptured by their rugged and free way of life.  That, and a pretty face.

Unlike in Mexico, fortunes changed hands for French-speakers relatively soon after foundations had been laid for a permanent presence there.  The English won sovereignty of the land after they chose it as a victory prize in the French and Indian War.  Something remarkable happened, though, that had never before occurred in Anglo-French rivalry: tolerance.  In 1763, when Quebec, Montreal, Detroit, St. Louis, and New Orleans had to officially raise the British flag, everyone expected that deportations would occur, language and customs suppressed for those who remained, and the place would start looking a lot more New York than New France.  This is what went down when the Acadians were forcibly removed from Nova Scotia not even a year prior, and back in Britain cultural transformation of a defeated foe had long been in vogue, especially in Ireland, and more memorably in 1745 in the Scottish Highlands.  Just as what had happened in Mexico, however, something in the individualistic, idealistic North American air got to someone and made them say no.

His name was Guy Carleton, and he is the savior of my people's culture. 

Come by next post for more!

Our Great Ancient Highways: The Ottawa River (Human History)

As I have experienced so painfully in the last few days, eastern North America, especially her northern reaches, is a fickle mistress when it comes to the weather.  Here in sunny southeastern Michigan we have been blessed by unseasonably warm weather with highs in the upper seventies and lower eighties for the last two and a half weeks... except for a brief night in which we were cursed with a sharp drop to 29 degrees!  My native plants handled everything fine, as well they should, but the cultivated plants shriveled in horror.

The first born of the continent knew this sort of weather for centuries before Europeans ever heard of these shores, and for the most part they did not cultivate much.  Game was plentiful, especially among the grassland areas, where it was also very accessible.  Further north, into boreal country, game was usually the only option on the table; crops were unreliable and restricted to a mere few months of growth to be of any lasting value.  Winter tends to be a dominant presence from September to even early June north of Lake Superior.  In the shelter and moderate climate of the Great Lakes area, however, corn, tobacco, tomatoes, and even "wild" rice, as well as berries and squash were cultivated.  From New Jersey southwards along the coast, the growers once again found a water-moderated climate and spent far more time growing than hunting.  Further north, and again back along the lakes, some fished as a way of life.

Still, the conditions of life did not mean that tastes were forced into particular patterns.  The first born traded among themselves for the fruits of the earth and hooves.  The relatively short Ottawa River allowed for trade between much of the continent.  How?

The Ottawa is remarkably well connected.  First and foremost, it provides a wonderful short cut to the Upper Great Lakes, by over 500 miles in fact.  While hardly a smooth river like much of the waterways further south, the Ottawa was a simple matter to traverse and decidedly easier to serve as a paddle and carry river than the Niagara.  The Ottawa also had the benefit of being in land that a powerful, yet politically open people controlled.  The Algonquins and Nippissings were Moose and Caribou hunters, and the supplemented their diet with freshwater fish and berries in the spring and summer.  They were not as much into settlement and land control as the Iroquois/Haudenosaunee were who lived south of them, and perhaps it was their status as gatekeepers of the river that kept other roaming peoples, like the Ojibway and Cree, generally off their turf.  For the most part, a trip up or down the Ottawa was a safe venture.  A trip on the Great Lakes could be met by many encounters with war canoes or, much worse, storms that rival anything encountered on the open ocean.

This sort of thing appealed to the French, who unlike the Spanish and English, were initially more interested in exploring and trading across the land rather than settling it.  Further south, even if they could dislodge the English presence, the Appalachians and a lack of penetrating rivers stood in the way, as well as various tribes who were already satisfied with their existence and did not find foreign trade as exciting as more northern peoples did.  The other option, which the French did take up at the end of their first century on the continent, was to use the Mississippi to make their way into the land.  The problem with that was that the Spanish were too close for comfort, and the distance to get to the center of the continent was much greater from Louisiana than it was from the huge estuary of the St. Lawrence.  The Ottawa also provided an adjacent access to the far north, as its headwaters are mere miles from the Hudsonian drainages.

So what sort of stuff went up and down the river?  For the French, a lot of fur.  For the Algonquins?

-Saltwater species for food and decoration from the Atlantic.
-Exotic furs from the far north, including Polar Bear and Seal pelts and hides.
-Freshwater species for food from the Great Lakes.
-Produce from the agricultural heartland of southern Ontario, Michigan, northern Ohio, and western New York.
-Copper from Michigan.
-Buffalo and Elk from the central grasslands.
-Salmon from as far as the west coast and everywhere else.  Salmon meant a lot back then!
-Pottery and wares from as far away as the Pubeloan peoples of New Mexico, by way of connecting trade through the Mississippi.

In short, a few hundred miles of well-placed, easy water opened an entire continent and served as a grand marketplace.  So how about more of those rivers?  Maybe the Mississippi?

Our Great Ancient Highways: The Ottawa River (Natural History)

The Ottawa River is a no-contest winner for being the most important river in Canadian history.  From its beginnings as a great glacial drain to its current predicament as a border between Quebec and Ontario, this river has served as a conduit for quite a lot of energy, both natural and human.

While are not exactly sure how old the Ottawa River is, we do know that it sits within a 175 million year old rift, the Ottawa-Bonnechere Graben.  The rift lies within much older rock, the Grenville Province of the Canadian Shield.  While some parts of the Shield include the oldest surface rock on the planet, dating back to four billion years ago, the Grenville portion, which includes the Laurentian and Adirondack Mountains, is actually much younger, at a "mere" 1-2 billion years of age.  The edges of the rift are pretty easy to come across, namely on the southern edge, which forms rises of elevation nearly 1,000 feet in height along the middle Petawawa River, one of the largest tributaries of the Ottawa...

The tallest portion of the southern edge of the rift can be found alongside Cedar Lake in Ontario.  The peaks of the range are nearly 1,000 feet above some of the surrounding lower elevations.  At this latitude, what would account for only minor changes further south becomes an interesting collection of transitions within the boreal world.  The ridge also causes a slight rain shadow and alters weather patterns on Cedar Lake, a very turbulent body of water for its size.

As well as the northern edge, which can be seen all along the Ottawa River, particularly in the Gatineau Hills north of Ottawa, and the peaks of the Laurentians across from Mattawa and Deep River, Ontario...

The Ottawa River in a more or less natural state at the confluence of the Ottawa and Mattawa Rivers.  The opposite shore is the north fault wall of the rift.

The Brent road, near  Deux-Rivières, Ontario, looking north.  The ridge in the background is the north edge of the Ottawa Valley.  Seen here are typical pine forests of the lower elevations of the valley.  White (Pinus Strobus), Red (Pinus Resinosa), and Jack (Pinus Banksiana) Pines thrive in the incredible masses of sand which are found here.  The pines formed the backbone of the early Canadian logging industry.

Going forward to about 10,000 years ago, give or take a few thousand years, the Laurentide Ice Sheet was melting.  As she gave up her immense volume of water, she first found outlets in the ancient Mississippi River system, and then in the primordial Great Lakes, where she also left much of her aquatic bounty.  Eventually though, the warmer world defeated her persistence in a conflict that continues to this day between the Gulf of Mexico and Hudson Bay, a conflict which gives eastern and central North America some of the most regularly dramatic weather on the planet.   Her last major drain before emptying back onto herself and into far more northerly realms was the Ottawa River system.  Where once a continental glacier had emptied its meltwaters into the vast drainages further south, it was now forcing itself into a comparatively minor river system.  One can only imagine what that much water, "a thousand Niagaras", would have been like gushing through the Ottawa, Petawawa, Barron, and Bonnechere Rivers.  So much water emptied out here that the Atlantic Ocean briefly stretched inward as far as Pembroke, Ontario in an arm called the Champlain Sea.  We can only imagine...

We do know one consequence though.  The ice sheet left us sand.  A LOT of sand.

The best sand on earth, in your author's opinion, and he has taken in some fine sand in the tropics and deserts.  I even wrote a post about it.  The Ottawa Valley is full of it, especially from Mattawa and downstream, as well as along its major rivers named above.  Even down past Ottawa where the river gets a bit more broad and even slightly "southern" looking, in parts even refusing to expose its granite underbelly, there is sand to be found.  This sand, in fact, supports some of the easternmost natural prairie in North America.  The pines like it, the birches and aspens tolerate it, but nothing can handle large, flat, hot stretches of sand like grasses and friends of grasses.  Well, I suppose the pines like it as much as the grasses.

The Brent road, one of the many wilderness roads that one can take to easily explore the dense pine lands.  

That's pretty much what is underneath the Ottawa, and what it flows through.  Sand and lots of Canadian Shield stuff, mostly granites, gneisses, and even gabbros.  Down between Ottawa and its mouth near Montreal one runs into some limestone, but for the most part this is a Shield River through and through.  The water is as black as tea in many reaches, a gift of the dense forests and bogs that feed it, very much different from many of the silt laden rivers that drain the rest of the continent.  Like them, however, the river is very wide for much of its length.  The Ottawa passes through a variety of landscapes as a result, including the boreal forest, the transitional forests, pine barrens and remnant prairies, urban and rural areas, and some desolate looking sand spits and beaches that remind the explorer that even with all this water around, we tend to remain a somewhat drier continent.  For the most part, a trip up or down the Ottawa is a trip in the north country, with a few tastes of the rest of the northeastern continent.

Over her short 790 miles, the Ottawa only descends about 1,100 feet, (a descent over a comparatively steeper gradient than the Mississippi's, albeit of equal elevation) but she used to have some pretty intense rapids in places until they were dammed over in the last half century or so.  As such, the Ottawa was never really an ocean-accessible river like the Mississippi or Colorado were, at least not for larger vessels beyond canoes or logging rafts.  For the canoes and rafts, though, it was a very, very attractive road indeed, which we will explore in the next post.

The (Anti) Quebec Separatism Post, Part Two: Why? Just... Why?

In 1980, the people of Quebec were given a chance to vote on independence for Quebec, and 60% of them rejected it outright.  Not content to give up their lease on life, the Parti Quebecois refused to acknowledge that the people of Quebec really did not care much about some illusory need for "freedom".  Several summit meetings were held between the separatist politicians and the Canadian government, notably failing to come to any sort of ideal break away from Canada should Quebec ever secede.  What these brilliant people did figure out was that they wanted:

-A free Quebec...
-That uses Canadian currency and is integrated into the Canadian economy in what is called "economic association"...
-That has the full protection and support of the Canadian military...
-That continues to receive money from the Canadian government!

This sort of song should also be familiar to Puerto Rican politicians, who have been working for the same thing in relation to the United States for a while now.  That, however, is a different story for another post sometime this week.

Anyway, my question to these politicians would be, well, why?  Yes, French-Canadians are a distinct culture within the country, and since the 19th century have pretty much been a sizable minority within Canada, but we are hardly oppressed these days.  In the first post on this matter, I did acknowledge, especially from examples in my own heritage and family history, that the relationship between Les Canadiens and The Canadians has been a rather rocky one at times, going so far as to truly make us into second class citizens.  That said, we also owe our continued existence as a culture to an incredibly amazing shared history with Les Anglais.  In fact:

-In 1763 we could have easily been packed up and shipped up as the Acadians had been, but were allowed to remain in Canada.
-In 1774 the Quebec act guaranteed us freedom of religion, language, and culture.
-In 1867 we were a necessary ingredient in making the country even happen in the first place, and everyone on both sides knew it.  Until nearly a century later, in fact, Montreal was the crown jewel of the whole enterprise, and the place where our economic vitality in relation to the wider world came from.

Yes, those pesky English-speakers were rather tolerant and mindful of us after all!  So how is it that we stayed put in Quebec?  We did not!  French-Canadians can be found in sizable communities in New Brunswick, Ontario, Manitoba, Labrador, and in smaller communities throughout Canada.  Northern Maine, not even a part of the country anymore, also has quite a few of us hanging around.  The truth of the matter is, Quebec does not have the rights to an entire people as their politicians claim.  It is not a shock that they would try to claim rights to us in general, however.  French-Canadian prosperity has often been sold out by our leaders, notably Sir Wilfred Laurier, who is almost single-handedly responsible for preventing a westward spread of Canadien culture.  The man gave a firm no to requests by Franco-Manitobans to appeal to the crown for rights to French-language public schooling in majority Canadien districts.

Perhaps the most depressing and powerful example of what life would have been like under continued French, rather than British (and eventually Canadian) rule is the Louisiana purchase.  We would have been dismissed and sold by the supposed superior nation.  1763, in my opinion, is not a year of the demise of our people, but our true birth.  Quebec needs Canada.

Does Canada need Quebec?

Absolutely:

-In 1814, with no British regulars available to safeguard Montreal and Kingston, the Americans had a clear path at the conquest of Canada.  Fortunately, and perhaps to the amazement of the loyalists and English-speakers, our people took up arms at Chateauguay and repelled an American invasion force four times the size of the defending Canadians and Canadiens.
-In 1867, Canada was born because John A. MacDonald found a powerful and lifelong friend in George-Etienne Cartier.  Quebec was the glue holding together the very different pieces of Upper Canada and the Atlantic provinces.
-Our present society, while an immigrant destination country much like the United States, is distinct in being one of the few in the world in which two seemingly hostile cultures are held together in unity by mutual consent.  Canada owes her existence to government by consent.  We don't exist without it.  We don't exist without Quebec, Ontario, or any of the other provinces.  We have acknowledged that we are divisible, and yet have always found a way to make things work and are a model of effective regional government under a federal system.
-How could we live without Poutine?!
-Bilingual road signs topped with small crowns are perhaps the best way to tell you have left Michigan and New York and are in a different country.

So here we stand yet again, watching as we did in 1995 for the people to get ready to come to a decision.  This time, however, Madame Marois, we are ready for your rhetoric and pointless drama.  You do not represent the sum total of Canadiens, nor even of your province for that matter.  Much of your land in the north belongs to the Cree and Inuit, who happen to generously provide their ancient lands for the generation of your hydro-electric needs.  Your distinct society is only distinct inasmuch as it contains the majority of our culture's population.  Quebec is far more amazing than your plans or that of your party.  May her rights, shared with her by Canada as the whole, endure far beyond the short-sighted reach of your political ambitions.

I hope to NEVER look across and see this as a foreign state:

My homeland, Ontario in the foreground, and my ancestral homeland, Quebec, across the river.  Taken at the confluence of the Mattawa and Ottawa rivers in Mattawa, Ontario.

And I never will, because we already have what we need and want as a people, and the voters will show you that once again, should you decide to waste OUR time again.

Signed, a French-Canadian in love with Canada.

The (Anti) Quebec Separatism Post, Part One: Historical Background

On September 4th, 2012, the people of Quebec elected Pauline Marois as the new premier (provincial leader, like a governor) of Quebec.  Madame Marois is also the current leader of the Parti Quebecois, a provincial party in Quebec dedicated to the cause of Quebec sovereignty.  She has already blamed Prime Minister Harper for promoting Queen Elizabeth II as a symbol of Canadian nationalism and motioned for the removal of the national flag from swearing in ceremonies of provincial legislators.  Quebec nationalism, it seems, has emerged like a diseased bear from a burnt out forest it was supposed to have banished to in 1995.

Before I go on, a little background on your author is necessary to understand his biases.  My father's side of the family is largely highland Scot with Canadian ancestry dating back at most a century if less, while my mother's side is Irish and French, with the Irish presence being here since the 1880's and the French presence pretty much having arrived on the ships with Champlain as far as we know.  This is where things get complicated...

Ever since time began, English folks and French folks have not really gotten along.  Sure, England was almost constantly at odds with other powers, especially their Celtic co-inhabitants of the rainy islands, but the arch-enemy of all things English has largely been considered French.  During the Protestant Reformation, when things French tended to stay Roman Catholic for the most part, this rivalry turned into bitter hostility.  While racial and cultural bigotry that grew into the Black Legend pretty much focused on southern European, and particularly Spanish culture, the people of England and English-speaking North America learned to despise the "freedom-hating, overly Catholic" French as if such hatred were a religion.  The Catholic-centric policies of absolute ruler Louis XIV and his would be allies among the deposed Stuarts did little to dispel the Franco-Black Legend, and Americans, to be fair, had every reason to be concerned about French competition in North America, as it hemmed them in and threatened their nice colonial existence with possible annihilation, if not by the French, then by their native allies.  Even after the French were defeated, the Quebec act of 1774 still threatened to make the thirteen colonies prisoners of their lands.

Fortunately, the French came to the aid of the Americans in the American war for independence, and Britain now became the grand enemy.  Things French slowly became more acceptable in English speaking North America, more so when the country changed hands and became a European bastion of democracy (stop laughing, I know that the Revolution and Napoleon made a mockery out of this).  Of course, try telling your average American or newly minted Canadian loyalist of 1800 or so that things French in North America were not still the enemy.  Les Canadiens, you see, were still Catholic and might even be out to help France get a new foothold on the continent should the tables ever turn back in Paris.  The loyalists in Ontario were particularly concerned that any freedoms that the habitants of the lower St. Lawrence valley might get would somehow undermine their own existence, less an actual concern (because, you know, the government in charge was British) than a continuation of some old bigotry.

As time went by and English Canada became more of a dominant feature of British North America, this fear and bigotry, which should have simply evaporated, grew stronger.  Though insurrections by some elements of French Canada did occur in the 1830's and later in the century under Louis Riel, they were usually accompanied by a general dislike of the ruling government (English Ontario also saw rebellion in the 1830's). By and large, French-Canadians, Quebecois included, knew that their survival as a culture depended on the existence of Canada.  Had they remained under French control, they (we) might have been sold out as easily as Louisiana was in 1803 (to say nothing of what would have happened to Catholic Canadien culture under Revolutionary rule)!  Had the United States ever gained control of Quebec either in the invasion of the 1770's or the War of 1812, well, we can see how well things went over for Californios and Tejans when Mexico lost a lot of her territory.

For a while, then, French-Canadians, including Quebecois, knew that they had a good spot for themselves.  Confederation had even been really kind to Quebec, what with all the strong provincial powers being given to help maintain her unique status.  Still, resentment, especially on the English side of the Ottawa river, remained.  Now, remember back up there where I said things were going to get complicated?

My maternal great-grandmother was as French-Canadian as French-Canadians could ever hope to be.  Back at the turn of the 20th century (and until the 1960's), however, French-Canadians outside of Quebec could expect little advancement socially.  She married one of the Anglais, actually a Scottish-Canadian gentleman, Mr. Wilson of Smiths Falls, Ontario.  Smiths Falls, like much of eastern Ontario, is about as high United Empire Loyalist as any part of the old empire outside of Britain could hope to be!  Needless to say, in order not to "create scandal" or make things rough for the family, my great-grandmother had to stop going to Mass, work on flattening out that accent of hers, and was expected to fly the Union Jack off the front porch. She was, however, a little too proud of her grand heritage to abandon it completely.  To some of her children she secretly taught a Catholic catechism and spoke French with, one of whom was my grandmother.  Though my grandmother, Lillian Cassidy (nee Wilson) was raised Presbyterian and sounded politely Canadian English (despite being Scottish too), she found that when she married an Irishman, "conversion" to Catholicism was a rather simple affair.  The French language, however, was a different matter altogether.

My mother was never raised speaking French, because even if sleepy little Orillia, Ontario could ensure peaceful domestic bliss for an Irish-Catholic family (which was remarkable in a town that featured Orangemen parades until recently), being this deep into English-speaking Ontario, even in the 1950's, meant that any domestic use of French would earn a few raised eyebrows.  French, they said then, was for the nuns at the local Catholic school to use back at their convent and maybe in class.

Back to non-family history for a moment...

In the 1960's, this sort of thing changed.  Vast societal changes were taking place throughout North America.  Racial boundaries were being openly and defiantly broken, youth culture was emerging as a fighting force rather than a deviant minority, suits and ties were giving way to jeans and t-shirts, and peace was slowly becoming more attractive than war for the first time in human history.  Quebec took part in this upheaval in what has since been known as the "Quiet Revolution" in which the Catholic Church lost her place as a cornerstone of French-Canadian society and nationalistic tendencies rose up for the first time since confederation.  All of a sudden, even deep into Ontario, things French became cool and exciting, especially among progressive-minded youth yearning for a new society and world, more so when Parisians started transforming the artistic bent of their city, especially in the Sorbonne.  Montreal, long the crown jewel of Canadian commerce and cosmopolitan vitality, was looking to join the ranks of such cities as New York, London, Paris, etc.

Then the walls came crashing down.  Rather than ride the wave of new-found popularity, the nationalistic elements of the Quiet Revolution formed the Front de Liberation du Quebec (FLQ) and started committing terrorist acts in the name of Quebecois freedom.  In 1969, they bombed the Montreal Stock Exchange, and in 1970 started murdering and kidnapping government officials.  Ever since this time, the unity of Canada has been called into question by many on both sides of the internal border between Quebec and the rest of the nation.  I call these people extremists and just plain dumb.   Come by tomorrow when I explain the current (post 1980) situation of independence, but stay for now as I finish the personal history.

While my mother was largely kept in the dark about her cultural inheritance (she did know who her grandmother was and was taught French in school, to be fair), the fact that social pressures against French-Canadians was largely dead and gone by the early 1980's meant that my grandmother was quite eager to not see her heritage disappear.  She fed me lots of tourtieres, pea soup, and things both burnt and made of too much butter.  We read through saint picture books that prominently featured Joan of Arc, King Louis, and a number of Jesuits.  She sang Silent Night to me en Francais when I was a baby and spoke the mother tongue around me whenever we were alone together.  By the time I learned how to speak, I was becoming simultaneously bilingual.  Because the rest of my family and the majority of my existence in Ontario and other English-dominated parts of my early years surrounded me in English, I pretty much always spoke it without moving between the two languages, but the inside of the noggin was a different matter entirely, and I was a terrible speller until high school, mainly because of the battling languages going on in my head.  I laugh at the linguistic dueling, because it is so emblematic of what I strongly identify with as a "home" culture, that of being a Franco-Ontarian.

The Franco-Ontarian flag.  The above on is flown proudly alongside the Canadian and Ontarian flags in Mattawa, Ontario.

You would think I would thus be all for Quebecois freedom, non?  I again give you a resounding NO/NON to this tragedy of a concept, despite my heritage.  Why?  Because Quebecois freedom is oppressive to French-Canadian freedom.  By no means do some malcontents in politics have a monopoly on the cultural identity of our people.  Again, come by tomorrow as I expound on this.

Wednesday Filler: Drought Amidst Beauty

Yes, it does seem a bit cruel to just post a photo or two of Le Nord after so much inactivity, so instead of a traditional wordless Wednesday, we can have the picture along with some previews of things to come, just so you all know we are getting back on track.

As you can see, the United States did not have a monopoly on the drought this year.  Canada suffered quite a bit too.  Lakes in the Boreal northlands lost as much as several meters/10 feet of water here and there, with the majority losing enough to expose some rather rocky lake bed.  As I noted in an earlier post on the  wildfires in Colorado, I like to generally stay away from politics and vicious debates on the nature of climate change, but seriously?  The evidence is all around us.  Lakes are disappearing, seasonal extremes are becoming more pronounced or muted beyond all recognition, and our planet is turning into something it should not have the chance to become in mere decades.

Speaking of politics, since we do have those elections coming up in the United States, and since apparently no one is going to pay attention to anything else until November 3rd (if then), I figured I might as well chime in on some issues that have to deal with the scope of American Voyages.  No, no, nothing about abortion, the economy, foreign policy, or even welfare, but yes, yes, much about the environment, immigration, languages, and historical memory.

Why am I diving headfirst into this mire of political warfare, you ask?  Simply put, because I am French-Canadian.  When I was up in Le Nord at the top of the month, I experienced the start of some potentially brutal cultural warfare opening back up again between things Anglais and Francais in the battleground (ordinarily a peaceful lumber/tourist town) of Mattawa, Ontario.  Quebec, you see, is thinking about independence again... or at least some of her more vocally irritating politicians are.  This got me musing about the place of French culture in the New World, which in turn got me to thinking about the place of Hispanic culture here as well.  In the next few days I figured I would take a look at who we are as a continental people(s).

I also figured I would get around to explaining what "Le Nord" is.

The Northern Forests and Algonquin

A friend of mine asked what sort of things grew in "the north", by which he and so many others mean anything past where the chain hotels stop popping up and every other store advertises selling worms for fishermen.  He assumed that coniferous trees dominate in scenes such as this:

The Nipissing River not far from Cedar Lake.  Thanks again to the McElroys, where the picture can be found at  http://www.mcelroy.ca/bushlog/20110829.shtml.

Expect more pictures here in September!

By and large, they do tend to pop up far more than they do south of the 43rd parallel or so, at least in eastern North America, but it surprised him to find out that many pines actually peter out in the wet, boggy soils of the Boreal forests.  For that matter, it came as a surprise that some birches, willows, alders, aspen, and even some maples make it pretty close to the Arctic treeline, albeit most in stunted form.  Algonquin, in fact, has forests that are a mixture of these trees.

While often not considered true Boreal because it lies in an ecotone blending the Boreal world with the mixed-forests of the Great Lakes region, Algonquin does have notably similar soil and climactic conditions as areas to the north, owing to its higher elevations and the lack of a buffer it has against winter chill descending from the Arctic.  While the Great Lakes and north eastern extensions of the Appalachians can otherwise shield everything to the south and south east of Algonquin, the northern paradise itself lies in a direct wind path to frigid James and Hudson Bays, bodies of water which are responsible for extending tundra conditions far south of where they would normally exist, and giving a boost to Arctic outbreaks that can reach into southern Florida and central Mexico.  Poor Algonquin, without so much as a large lake or mountain range to block this onslaught, stands little chance of passing for anything temperate.

Remember how I said there are some maples that make it pretty far north, though?  Well, it turns out that the glacial tills and higher elevations actually work in the favor of such notable species as the Sugar Maple (Acer Saccharum), which can range as far south as Texas.  In Algonquin, they reach their peak of perfection, forming a towering canopy over 100 feet tall and, along with the surrounding areas to the west and northeast, produce the best maple syrup in existence.  Sorry, Vermont, you just don't have the same intense contrast of Winter frigidity to sudden Spring release that makes these trees both thrive and unleash some really eager sap.  Nothing beats Ontario maples, and if you don't believe me, as the blog suggests, travel there!

Maples aside, there are some other trees that reach their pinnacle of perfection in Algonquin, notably the pines.  Our Eastern White Pines are among the finest in existence, and the reason for the creation of the park to begin with.

Oh, there will be lots and lots of pictures of these come September.

That said, you can still find your typical Boreal species here as well, namely lovely stands of Black Spruce (Picea Mariana) growing in bogs that look no different from stretches of land one can encounter near the tree line.  The difference is, they usually grow with a backdrop of the other trees mentioned.  While not the apex of the Boreal forest, Algonquin is definitely part of it, and far more than just a southern extension, which the Appalachians would better qualify for in parts.  Algonquin just happens to be a place where such a nice combination of growing conditions exist to support a diverse community of forests that can largely be classified as "northern" with some dashes of "southern" mixed in.  The healthy moose population certainly agrees.

"I Never Imagined I Would See a Land Like This"

Part one of our adventure can be found here:

http://americanvoyages.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-land-of-our-savage-paradise.html

When the two other major European powers, the English and Spanish, came to North America, they largely did so out of an interest in conquest and settlement.  The spoils of conquest were initially a great prize and purpose for the Spanish in heading deeper into the lands of Mexico and Florida, but conquest, largely a means to an end of empire building rather than outright pillaging and piracy, took a back seat to establishing a thriving "New Spain".  The English, content to commit their piracy against the Spanish who had already done the primary work for them, took part in building a thriving "New England" in a series of colonies less telling of empire than of a transplanting of domestic hopes and dreams.  While many of her colonists came to plant tobacco and have a nicer estate than they could ever afford on Sheepshire-on-the-Thames, just as many came for a chance at a quiet life, free to live it how they chose, usually as dissenting Protestants.  The French, however, considered both conquest and colonization secondary to opening up a very lucrative commercial trade with the native peoples they encountered.  (That trade would be because of an encounter between the French and the Beaver, one of the most fascinating relationships between man and beast ever made).  Guess which system the locals liked more?

That said, 1608 was a very cautious year among both French and Algonquin alike.  Samuel de Champlain and his men arrived on the shores of what would become Quebec City with guns in hand, and the Algonkin and Montagnais were no less at the ready to come to blows over what looked to be a matter of potential battle.  Gestures were exchanged, the French gave "gifts" of trinkets to their new-found neighbors, and battle was deferred while both sides kept one eye on the other even asleep that night.  Houses and buildings of all sorts started being constructed almost immediately in order to allow the French to survive what Champlain knew would be an incredibly brutal winter.  As the men would later shiver and wish they had never left France, much less Tadoussac, Samuel kept to himself, making maps and looking outside his window wanting something more than just a crazed hunt for the Beaver.  Like so many North Americans before and after him, he looked west.

For a man who had never been to the Great Lakes nor even heard much about their existence, Champlain was incredibly accurate about his predictions regarding Canada's most attractive feature, extensive watersheds connected by easily portaged heights of land that permitted canoe travel clear to the Gulf of Mexico, the Arctic Ocean, and the Rockies.  With Quebec profiting off his successful gamble that the Algonkin and their trading partners would come to his new "inland" trading post first, Champlain was able to set out for western lands at his leisure.  By 1611, he found Lake Ontario, the great lake that kept the Haudenausonee and Algonkin apart from one another.  By 1622, thanks to the Mattawa portage, he found Lake Superior.  In his travels, he lived and worked with his Algonkin guides as an equal (albeit with the French necessity/penchant of elaborate dress).

Public Domain, 

While his grand objectives and military exploits against the Haudenausonee are known quite well, and the modern image of the man largely amounts to just another imperialist, we would do well to remember that he did not view the native peoples nearly as brutally as did men such as Cortez, or with the fear deep in the hearts of the early American colonists.  While certainly not a saint, Champlain was definitely an explorer, and probably took more than a passing glance up the various tributaries of the Ottawa and St. Lawrence as he made his way inland.  He almost certainly took a few side trips up rivers such as the Madawaska, Petawawa, and Amable du Fond, even if only for a short while.  This was a man so completely enthralled by the people and land he had come across, a man who stood in silent awe when he saw the Laurentians towering above the mouth of the Mattawa river or the waters of deep blue Lake Superior which went far off to the horizon.  This was not a land of conquest or even commerce, but, as it had been for so many before him and so many to come after him, a land of wild beauty and a power of nature that would bring pause to the plow and axe alike.

He was also a man on a mission, however, and had to document the better known routes before he could explore rivers of his own desire.  Fortunately, he could live somewhat vicariously through a man he considered a son, Etienne Brule.

Public Domain

Brule was given a mission by Champlain: Travel with the Algonkin to the land of the Wendat and then live among them and learn their language and their way of life.  Between the years 1611 and 1629, he would spend much of his summer among both peoples, and while his voyages with them have never been deeply chronicled, spending summers with the Algonkin meant that he most certainly visited and stayed on the shores of the larger lakes of Algonquin that were situated on the paths of the largest waterways, notably Opeongo, Grand, and the great meeting point of the pine and maple forests as well as the Nippissing and Petawawa rivers, Cedar.  He was probably distracted enough by what he saw, as well as by the bountiful fishing, to ignore the huge concentration of Beaver that inhabited the mountain lakes and streams.  He is documented to have shared his experiences of the area with Champlain, apparently in detail and reverence, and even as he would continue to return to the shores of Georgian and Nottawasaga Bay to be with the Wendat, the fact that he returned to be with the Algonkin year after year and came home with less than an abundance of pelts meant that he was constantly drawn back to Algonquin.

Now this is definitely conjecture... Commercial ventures of the voyageurs reached deep into the heart of western Quebec and northern Ontario, but largely avoided Algonquin.  The area is extremely rugged in places, but no less accessible than the rivers of the rest of the lands around it.  It is quite possible that Brule and Champlain respected Algonquin and the sacred summer home of the Algonkin enough to leave it off the map.  Don't believe me?  The purpose of this blog and the purpose of these posts in the next two weeks is to share with my readers not only what our continent is all about, what there is to discover, but what sort of majesty can be found on our shores.  This objective is furthered by encouraging travel to the places we visit here in the blog, because nothing can substitute for a full blessing of the senses in experiencing the land for ourselves.  My friends, there is no place like Algonquin on this entire earth.  I dare say these men thought so.

Many after them would agree.  Some would leave it alone, some would embrace it as a cause to be championed, and some would see it as a land to be exploited beyond recognition.  Stop by tomorrow as we continue the story of Algonquin.

"The Land of Our Savage Paradise"

One can only imagine what the scene would look like: A huge face of ice stretching as far as eye can see, melting into great bodies of water drained by what would become the great rivers of our continent.  Hunting at the edge of the ice, as they had been ever since their ancestors had ventured into this land from another far to the north and west, generations of people noticed as the ice would keep melting away until new lands would be uncovered and slowly advancing spruce forests would encroach upon their open tundra hunting grounds.  Some would follow the ice, some would stay in the forests but then move north as the woods changed, and some still would remain in the changed forests and warmer climes, joined still by newcomers from further south who favored something a bit less warm themselves.  In truth, we really do not know what life was like so far back even into the history of lands where records were easier to come by.  We really do not have a great idea about what life would be like in the Ottawa and Petawawa valleys as the ice gradually melted further north.

The evidence we do have, however, gives us pieces of a story of a nation of people whom the French and those who came after them would call the Algonkins (Algonquins).

Taken from Francis Vachon's blog.  Monsieur Vachon is a photographer in Quebec with a bi-lingual blog that can be found at  http://www.francisvachon.com/blog/.

 By 7000 BC or so, these people came to a land that was already establishing itself into great forests of spruce and fir, but also for the first time pines, birches, maples, and hemlocks.  The land they came to was rugged, very hard to live in come wintertime, and in some places more rock than soil, which was often sand anyway.  Golden waters poured down mountainsides to fill large sandy basins and remaining pools of meltwaters which were as black as the night.  Little in the way of crops could grow here well, which would later be the salvation of the forests.  Wolves howled, bears roamed the woods, and the cry of the loon pierced the cool air of the land, a powerful reminder to the people that this land was the relic of something far more ancient, majestic, and mysterious than themselves.  The people did not stay.

Courtesy of Bob and Diana McElroy:  http://www.mcelroy.ca/view/v20070729.shtml.

They did, however, gather here in the summer months, often in large numbers.  Families put aside differences, often to fish the deep black lakes that were full of trout and eel.  The people would discuss the movements of the Moose and the feeling they felt in the cool winds, and they would also keep track of the people who dwelled to their south, on the far shores of a vast lake, people they considered enemies.  More often, they gathered simply for companionship.  In the winter, they would set apart from one another into smaller groups of families that stuck together in the harsher months, floating down the rivers out of the mountains and into the valleys of two great rivers, one of which flowed to the ocean.  The land would be wild again, as it had been at the time of creation, until the people would return when the snows melted and the lakes were free once more.

Courtesy of Bob and Diana McElory:  http://www.mcelroy.ca/view/v20071117.shtml.  The valley of the first great river, the Ottawa, near Deep River, Ontario.

Now and then, the people to the south of the Algonkin, various nations who spoke one language and would come to be called the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), would venture north of their mountains and the blue waters of their great lakes.  They found the land of the Algonkin desirable, if a little different and not the best place to grow corn.  They were aggressive people, and they might have easily taken the land for themselves had the Algonkin not been as ferocious in defending their land as the attackers were in trying to seize it.  At times, control of the valleys leading into the mountains seemed to be quite contested.  The Algonkin prevailed time and again, however, and even found an ally in one of the nations of the Haudenosaunee, a people known as the Wendat (Hurons).  For that matter, the people not only loved their land enough to be willing to die to the last warrior for it, but the land of the mountains was a great bulwark protecting something just as valuable, a great meeting of waters that connected various nations far beyond their lands.  Even if the Algonkins would lose their land, they would most likely get it back quickly, for the nations of the western lakes and northern forests would not tolerate the passage being controlled by a hostile people.

The great power and determination of the defenders and their allies aside, the Haudenosaunee found the land  of black water, granite outcrops, and powerfully brutal winters was lacking what they loved about their own blue waters, towering deciduous forests, and limestone cliffs.  They would fight the Algonkins for centuries, even forming a great council of six of their nations, but would never come close to seizing the meeting of waters or the majestic mountains that protected them.  The Algonkin would continue returning to their blessed land every spring, and leave it to the spirits and ancient forests every winter.

Things would go on like this for some time.  The nations would move about, some heading into the vast lands of the west, some retreating from the advance of another, but for the most part, nothing grand or catastrophic happened to change the ancient ways of life.  500 years ago, however, news started traveling up from the distant south beyond the mountains of the Haudenosaunee, news of men very different from the nations of the people.  Along with news ventured trade which slowly passed between the nations and the newcomers.  Finally, some newcomers of a different nation made a small settlement for themselves at the fringe of the lands of the relatives of the Algonkin, the Montagnais at a place they called Tadoussac.  Though this was a mysterious new nation that had landed on the eastern shores, little changed other than the fate of the beaver.  One summer though, in 1608, as the people were in the blessed lands, a man sailed further inland along the great river that lead to the ocean, a man who would change their lives and their land forever.

Courtesy of Library and Archives of Canada, C-011016, Artist: George Reid, 1908.

The Great Canadian (North American, Really) Bridge

Mattawa, Ontario.  A small town of barely over 2,000 people that is largely dependent on the tourism and timber industries.  There are no stoplights here, and most people just pass through the place to more (apparently) interesting locations.

Then again, someone stopping at the local museum might actually find out that Mattawa was actually once quite the hub of activity, even if that activity was largely based on river travel and involved people passing through the small confluence of two rivers at the base of the Laurentian Mountains.

To the south, travelers would later favor roads traveled by walkers, horsemen, and eventually automobiles, but for the Canadiens and native peoples, the rivers were the roads.  Voyageurs and missionaries opened up the heart of a mysterious continent long before the steady stream of advancing "civilization" was filtering through the Appalachians.

Early on, however, the Canadiens faced a remarkable double obstacle: the Niagara Escarpment and the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) nations.  An easy route to the upper Great Lakes and the lands to the west in the interior seemed to be a distant dream in the face of a thundering waterfall and towering limestone cliffs, to say nothing of nations that took an almost immediate hostility to a foreign power that had founds friends among their traditional enemies, the Wendat (Hurons) and Algonquins.  Fortunately for Champlain and the newly arrived French, those same enemies had long since known about a fairly level water passage into the upper lakes.  This passage existed far to the north of the Haudenosaunee and the newly forming English and Dutch colonies on the shores of Virginia, New York, and Massachusetts.  This passage, which connected the French and Ottawa River valleys, existed in a rugged northern land that had winters even more severe than in Quebec, and was important to the Wendat, Algonquins, and numerous nations to the north.  The southerners, as a result, would have to contend with multiple fronts if they wanted to keep the French out of the interior.

They could not.  Even after the Haudenosaunee were pacified by a surge of troops from France in the late 17th century, the Mattawa passage had so conveniently opened up a rather large river network to the Canadiens that it never got abandoned in favor of a more climate-friendly southern route through the lower lakes.  The great location of the passage even meant that it took primacy of importance over the Mississippi network which would be opened up following the founding of New Orleans.  Again, an enemy proved that the Mattawa route was far too valuable to abandon, the foe this time being the Spanish who continued to expand northward through Tejas.  So what did this passage connect?

Everything from Quebec clear to the Rockies, including the Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Arkansas, Platte, Illinois, Wabash, Des Moines, Red, Saskatchewan, Niobara, Nelson, St. Croix, and many other rivers.  The red route which was denied to the French and their allies for so long eventually became insignificant, as that small yellow dot you see in northern Ontario proved to be the most vital link in the great chain of North American rivers.  The Mattawa passage, in fact, was the Canadian equivalent to the Erie Canal (lime line in New York) which would later be the passage to open up volumes of traffic into the American interior, built in the core Haudenosaunee territory no less.

Even after the time of the canoe had long gone by, the position of Mattawa remained important, and the trans-Canadian railroad commenced construction not far away in a sleepy Franco-Ontarian town of Bonfield.  The line still passes through Mattawa to this very day, alongside the Trans-Canada Highway.  So what does this confluence of rivers look like these days?

The water in the foreground is the Mattawa River, with the water in the background being the larger Ottawa River.  The land in behind the Ottawa is Quebec, while the vantage point and the land to the left of the falling slope in the background is Ontario.

The confluence looks very much like a scene that Champlain and the Jesuits would have encountered in their time, even with a railroad bridge and a town just off the view of the camera vantage point.

Poutine, mes amis, poutine!

This felt worthy of a second post today:

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2012207220450

God bless Sylvia Rector for bringing the world this news!

Poutine has made its way into Michigan (finally), and hopefully decent gravy will be seen more often because of it.

For my readers who do not know what this lovely dish is, Poutine is cheese curds, french fries, and gravy.  Now, let me break that down a bit more...

Cheese curds are cheese curds, not a bag of shredded cheeses.  They should ideally be made of cheddar or something as close as possible, and they should be white or something off white, not yellow, not orange.  This may seem to be fighting over minutiae and purely an aesthetic issue, but it is not.  Trust me on this one.  I'm Franco-Ontarian.  Now this might sound nationalistic, but you Americans (outside of Wisconsin) do not know how to make these things.  There are exceptions, sometimes even from chains like Culver's, a Mid/Nearwestern fast food place that serves them deep fried.  I swear, Culver's must have been started by an Englishman... they deep fry things that should never be deep fried, and you know what?  The world is a greater place because of them!

French Fries are french fries, made from scratch, not thawed out of a bag and certainly not anything other than good old fashioned french fries.  Shoestrings, waffles, etc. need not apply.  We are talking chips here, or frites, depending on the particular formula of Canadian you consist of.  Again with the nationalism, you complain!  Well, we are talking about a Canadian dish here.  Anyway, think pub fries.  McDonald's need not apply in this situation, as good as the little salty potato things are the rest of the time.

GRAVY!  The United States of America is nearly incapable of making good gravy!  Americans misidentify it all the time!  You shudder when I mention that it could be good with french fries, and I know not why, because you like it with mashed potatoes (even if the kind you serve with it is tolerable at best).  Gravy, from beef stock, needs to be reasonably thick when you pour it out, akin to the consistency of maple syrup (and don't even get me started on that topic).  People who can do gravy right in the United States mainly live in Michigan's upper peninsula and often consume their version with their wonderful pasties.

Gross, you say?  No more than Chili Fries and Coney Dogs.  Again, trust me here, one bite and you will forget all about how it looks.  Two bites and you might need a defibrillator, but one bite and you will have a nice preview of the heaven you will soon find yourself in.  Yes, yes, it is exceptionally bad for you.

Where did it come from?  As is the case with the origin of most cocktails and comfort foods, everyone claims to be the source of this amazing dish.  What most can agree on with certainty is that Poutine is a French-Canadian thing.  The Quebecois claim, along with most anything culturally French-Canadian, that it is theirs.  I personally think that it developed over time, owing to the unique combination of ingredients that account for slightly different tastes, in the many domestic and restaurant kitchens of the St. Lawrence and Ottawa River valleys.  It probably spread so well because it was served in little road side burger booths that catered to summer cottagers, and before then and during the winter, inns that wanted to present travelers with the comforting taste of home.  It is a very powerful food for Franco-Ontarians, a remnant of a culture that has long been under a process of assimilation into the rest of Ontarian society.  For a Franco-Ontarian living in the United States, it is like manna from heaven.  Comfort food indeed.

Where can you get it?  Tons of places over in Canada, and if my American readers are willing to brave the frontier, they can find it almost right off the bridge at Harvey's (note: Harvey's, not a misspelling of Hardee's).  For a fast food chain, they make the stuff almost as if they invented it.

My favorite place in the world to get it, and a wonderful example of one of those roadside burger stands at that, is at Riverview Burgers in Mattawa, Ontario, at the corner of Valois drive (Highway 17) and Ottawa street, right on the Ottawa River.  As if it were the cultural epicenter of the wonderful world of Poutine (and yes, I will always capitalize the word), you can enjoy it with a peameal bacon burger while you gaze across la fleuve to Quebec under the Canadian, Ontarian, Quebecois, and Franco-Ontarian flags which are lined along the road, and yes, they serve pink cream soda as well.

How about here?  Well, check out the article for some ideas, but with the exception of the Brooklyn Street Local restaurant, most of the varieties on display are, well, varieties, and not the real deal.  I know American cuisine basically transforms most cultural dishes into uniquely American versions, but there are also many of you that enjoy "authentic" tastes!  I'm not saying don't touch the stuff, but at least start with the original.  Sylvia Rector has excellent taste and sure knows food well, so actually, by all means, try the other kinds.  Just... try the original first.

Where can you get the real deal then?  Mikey's Burgers and Fries!  Co-founded by a homesick Canadian, Mikey's offers a mozzarella-based Poutine as a side dish or single entree.  I was told they use mozzarella curds because the regular stuff is hard to find south of the border here, and they want it fresh, not shipped from Wisconsin.  To be honest, as this was the first place I found it in my current land of residence, that small deficiency did not matter, and I dug into it with passionate gusto.  I have to say, between finding this place back two months ago and reading Sylvia's article tonight in the paper, well, I have hopes for the future of a blessed Detroit-Windsor hub of world culture.

Again, thanks to Sylvia Rector and the fine people at the Detroit Free Press.

The Impact of the American Civil War on the Neighbors: Part Four

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

On the whole, the Charlottetown conference had gone rather well for all involved.  Prince Edward Island was the sole region to voice reluctance regarding a possible union of Canada, with pretty much everyone else agreeing that the benefits of union were not only helpful in dealing with the Americans, but in helping move the regions towards a stronger economic future.  By late 1864, the American Civil War was looking as if it would wind down.  General Grant had made significant progress in splitting apart the Confederacy, and Union victory was looking to be something that would inevitably happen.   The participants at Charlottetown were well aware of this situation, and a union of their own seemed to grow in importance, but they probably also noticed how well they were all conducting themselves at what could have easily turned into a far more volatile meeting.  Most of the conference, in fact, was spent simply outlining positions regarding possible confederation, rather than arguing over its merits.  Remarkably, in the course of a mere week, the participants found themselves moving from a loose proposition to a desire to make union happen within several years.  As the nature of the conference was still considered to be an introduction of concepts, the proceedings closed without any manifested moves towards confederation, but all involved agreed to meet within a month.  They did so in October at Quebec City.

The gathered delegates at the Quebec conference.  Library and Archives Canada, C-006530.

The Quebec conference took things well beyond the level of proposition.  As noted, Charlottetown's conference closed with a strong desire of most participating bodies to see confederation happen, and soon.  By the time the delegates met again on the 10th of October, debates were being had over the nature of a federal government in a possible confederation.  In what would come to define Canadian politics ever since, Quebec and the Maritimes insisted on strong provincial rights and powers, mostly to safeguard their identities.  At the same time, proponents of a stronger federal government basically pointed south out of the windows and reminded the delegates how strong "states' rights" caused a very costly and bitterly dividing war that the Americans were still engaged in after four long years.  This cause was championed by none other than John A. MacDonald, the first Prime Minister of Canada.

Library and Archives Canada

John would have had some heavy debating to do, especially in confronting Quebec.  Fortunately, he had the foresight to engage the opposition and seek out compromises, something he had been doing for years with two very good friends, George Brown and French-Canadian superhero George-Etienne Cartier. 

Monsieur George!  Man could we ever use another one of him these days.

While George Brown fell out of the grand coalition that these three were instrumental in creating (over tariff issues), George of Quebec stood with John as long as his legs would let him.  The Quebec conference ended in a fair sketch of the system Canada uses these days, with the provinces allowed to safeguard their cultural and legal identities, while the federal government would be responsible for making sure that the provinces would work together and not try to act unilaterally.  At the time, and at the risk of sounding overly positive, in all subsequent history, this compromise pretty much satisfied all the parties involved.  Things still had to be approved of over in London, but considering as how the British government was pushing confederation from the start, all that was left to do there would be to actually draft some sort of an act detailing the creation of, well, Canada.  A few more issues were left to be hammered out, mostly cultural and involving education rights within the provinces.  On December 4, 1866, the British North America act was debated in London, and on March 29th, 1867, Queen Victoria told them all to basically get on with it.  We all know what happened on July 1st of that year and every subsequent years... celebration.

So why give out a history of how Canada came to be in a post about what the Civil War did to the continent?  Aside from the obvious matter that the threat of invasion had some people spooked up north, the very purpose of the Civil War, essentially a sealing of the purpose for creating the United States in the first place, affected not only the republic, but the rest of the world that had been paying close attention to the great American experiment in democracy.  The fathers of Confederation were not just looking out the south windows to see if shots were headed their way, but to understand what the whole venture of people on the continent was shaping up to be in the first place.  Individual rights and localization of government had come to question in the fight of brother against brother, while to the north it produced not a war but a separate nation following its own destiny.  As such, it might be easy to say that Canada exists because Canadians did not wish to become Americans, or that Canada exists because of the United States, when in fact the truth of the matter lies more in the reality that both nations exist because people decided that they wanted to protect their best interests and right to self-determination.

As was the case in Mexico, Canada survived the years following the Civil War because the cause of freedom took on a very fresh and powerful meaning for the re-United States.  The Canadians essentially told both the United States and Britain that they wanted to stand on their own, something that might never have happened had not the Americans had to again make that sort of choice for themselves.  As we remember the war in these years of the 150th anniversary, we would do well to also remember what a profound effect it had on the development of not one, but three nations.