The King's Ransom: More from the King of Algonquin Park

By Paton Lodge Lindsay

If you loved King of Algonquin Park by Paton Lodge Lindsay, get ready for more laughter and tears in The King’s Ransom: More from the King of Algonquin Park.

The King’s Ransom is a companion book to King of Algonquin Park featuring more stories and adventures of the exceptional and well-kno

• Language: English
• Publisher: Burnstown Publishing House
• Release date: Sep 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781772570090

Book preview

Joseph Emmett Chartrand

(Photo by Nelson Lindsay)

The King’s Ransom

More from the King of Algonquin Park

Paton Lodge Lindsay

BURNSTOWN PUBLISHING HOUSE

5 Leckie Lane, Burnstown, Ontario K0J 1G0

Telephone [phone]

http://www.burnstownpublishing.com

ISBN 978-1-77257-009-0

Copyright © Paton Lodge Lindsay 2015

Cover photo: Nelson Lindsay

Cover painting: Paton Lodge Lindsay

Editor: Jane Karchmar

Published in Canada.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright (Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency), 1 Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario, M5E 1E5.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Lindsay, Paton Lodge, 1943-, author

The King’s Ransom : more from the King of Algonquin Park / Paton Lodge Lindsay.

1. Chartrand, Joseph Emmett. 2. Trappers--Ontario--Algonquin Provincial Park--Biography. 3. Outdoor life--Ontario--Algonquin Provincial Park. 4. Algonquin Provincial Park (Ont.)--Biography. I. Title.

FC3065.A65L5652014971.3’147C2014-904886-6C2014-904887-4

The King’s Ransom is dedicated to Joseph Emmett Chartrand December 5, 1914 – September 14, 2000

The Last Voyageur . . . The King of the Long Runners . . . The King of Algonquin Park . . . One of The King’s Ransom

Joseph Emmett Chartrand.

(Photo by Paton Lodge Lindsay)

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child; for what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?

(Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman Senator, ca. 50 BCE)

In the rustling grass

I hear him pass

He speaks to me everywhere.

Contents

Preface

Prologue

1The Back Story — History

2The Back Story — His

3The Back Story — Hers

4First Encounters

5The Big Bang

6The Call of the Wild

7Chapel in the Wildwood

8Rub-a-Dub-Dub

9Reuse and Recycle

10The Master Key

11School of Hard Knocks

12War at the Little Wenebegon

13Coolin’ Off

14Preparing for the Long Sleep

15Sound Shots

16Mooses and Mouses

17Open Water Trappin’

18Rainy Days

19The Band of Little Vigilantes

20Shotgun Annie

21Winter Ways

22The White-Winged Horse

23Icebound

24Wild about Harry

25Wanderin’ Ways

26Snow Bugs

27He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands

28First Memories

29The Lost King

30Beaver Bubbles

31Je ne parle pas Français

32The RCMP and the Little Vigilantes

33Workin’ on the Chain Gang

34Bootleggers

35Heartbeat of the Creator

36Maintaining the Right

37When You Go Down to the Woods Today

38Tough Livin’

39The Junior Strangers

40Forests and Fires

41A Wilderness Christmas

42Home for the Holidays

43Trappin’ Trails and Beaver Tales

44Les Trois Belles Filles

45A Fishy Memoir

46Tales of the Out Back

47Trapper’s Farewell

48Partir C’est Mourir Une Peu

49One in a Million

50The Millionaire

Appendix AA letter received from a retired Algonquin Provincial Park ranger.

Appendix BLake Travers

Appendix CIn Memory of Emmett Chartrand

Appendix DThe Woodsman Emmett Chartrand, 1915–2000

Sources, Credits, and Permissions

About the Author

Preface

The story The King’s Ransom is based on wilderness experiences in the life of the author and the trapper, with a few gleanings from her first book, King of Algonquin Park. Between the covers of The King’s Ransom, you will find more stories of this exceptional, notorious, rugged wilderness man who grew up in an age when men were real men. He was honorable, courageous, resilient, independent, determined, unyielding, and beholden to no one. He was a survivor, a king.

This story was written purely to share some of the life and times of an absolutely extraordinary wilderness man who had a tremendous impact upon the lives of most of the people with whom he came in contact. It is very sad to realize he might well be the last of his kind to know real wilderness survival skills first hand.

At the time of my first expedition into the wilderness with The King, I was in my early twenties and city-raised with a silver spoon in my mouth. He was pushing sixty, bush-raised, rugged, and roughly hewn. I found I was truly in love with the remote wilderness; in love with the solitary lifestyle, the loneliness, the lack of conveniences and luxuries, the hardship, the independence, the quiet, the peace, and the freedom. They became part of my life. I wanted it all — ALL of it — to BE my life. At the end of that three-month expedition, we stood together on the dock at Brown’s Bay in Wakami Lake Provincial Park to say farewell to Wakami Lake; and for me, it was time to say adieu to this wonderful man. I stood in tears on the dock, so choked up that I literally could not speak. At that time, Trapper took me into his arms, placed a kiss on my forehead and said, "Partir c’est mourir un peu . . . To part is to die a little." Little did I know that some twenty-one years later, those would be his parting words.

In putting pen to paper, I have shared with the reader experiences, feelings, and words that I have not before shared with anyone but the closest family members. Though the King of Algonquin Park passed on many years ago, I well remember our life and times together. Such reminiscences often bring an upturned curl to the corners of my mouth . . . or send a river of tears down my cheeks . . . and yes, even yet on occasion cause a little twitch where perhaps there should not be one. I see his face in the full moon that lights the heavens; I hear his voice in the call of the wild.

In the rustling grass

I hear him pass,

He speaks to me everywhere.¹

I thank my many friends who shared life with The King and me and who saved my letters from the wilderness and suggested these experiences be shared for the enjoyment of others now and of those of future generations.

I say thank you to: my husband, Keith, for his love and for his many hours and days of support and technological expertise; to all the readers of King of Algonquin Park for your positive comments and reviews; for your wanting more about The King, which I hope you will find in this companion book, The King’s Ransom. A very special thank you is due to my cousin, Nelson Lindsay, for capturing the wonderful portrait of Emmett used for the cover of this book.

Again, I thank all the staff at General Store Publishing House: Tim Gordon, publisher; Jane Karchmar, senior editor; and Magdalene Carson, art director, for their support and encouragement, expertise, and professionalism.

Most important, I thank The King himself, Joseph Emmett Chartrand, for the love he shared, for the knowledge he imparted, and for the life lessons I learned by his side.

I have made every attempt to credit my sources and to acquire permission in writing where required for the materials used herein. In the cases where after several attempts no response appeared to be forthcoming, I used the material and credited the source.

Prologue

The Last Voyageur, known to most simply as Trapper, was to the Algonquin Park rangers an exceptional wilderness man and notorious poacher known as the King of the Long Runners. Over time, he would become known as the King of Algonquin Park. Trapper was not only King of Algonquin Park by virtue of his tenure and ability — which were, to say the least, recognized as very exceptional — but also by virtue of his ancestry. To discover and follow these ancestral roots along the historical trail of time leads one through the genesis of the Canadian Blood Royal of begats, and the exodus of some of our earliest Canadian settlers westward across the vast wilderness hinterland that in time would become Canada.

By his French genes, Trapper was directly descended from Charlemagne, King of all the Franks. In the 1600s, descendants of this Holy Royal bloodline arrived on the shores of Nouvelle–France, and the genes of Charlemagne that were carried in the blood of the last voyageur’s paternal fourth great-grandmother, Charlotte–Marie Bayard, can be found on his family tree, which hosts a considerably historic and distinguished Canadian renown.

Map of Nouvelle France.

(Courtesy of GNU Free Documentation, Licence Version 1.2)

In his paternal Chartrand lineage, the first Chartrand to immigrate to Nouvelle–France was Thomas Chartrand, born in 1641 at d’Ectot-les-Boons, Rouen, France. Thomas Chartrand disembarked at Nouvelle–France in 1655; on January 6, 1669, at Montreal, he married Thecele Hunault (Hunaut) the daughter of Toussaint Hunault.

In historical and genealogical records, one finds that the Hunault (Hunaut) family was related to the famed Medard Chouart des Groseilliers and Pierre–Esprit Radisson. Pierre–Esprit Radisson Sr., born in France in 1590, had married Madeleine Hunaut, the widow of Sebastien Hayet. By her first marriage to Sebastien Hayet, Madeleine Hunaut had a daughter, Marguerite, who married Medard Chouart des Groseilliers. Through her second marriage to Pierre–Esprit Radisson Sr., Madeleine Hunaut had a son, Pierre–Esprit Radisson Jr., the famous voyageur, explorer, and fur trader. Pierre–Esprit Radisson and Medard de Groseilliers were the first Frenchmen to set eyes on the Mississippi River and would later guide the first English ships into Hudson’s Bay. Perhaps that could explain just why the trapper king always had to know what lay around the next bend in the trail, and what lay over the next hill.

Further to his paternal lineage of Chartrand–St. Romain–Dubé–Boucher, the trapper king is related to Pierre Boucher, the Royal Governor of Nouvelle–France and thence through the Boucher–Gaultier de Varennes line, he is related to Pierre Gaultier de La Vérendrye, the famous explorer and fur trader who was the first European to traverse the upper reaches of the Missouri River five decades before the much-proclaimed Lewis and Clark expedition. Pierre Gaultier de La Vérendrye married Marie–Anne Dandonneau du Sable, and through the Dandonneau du Sable–Bâby line (pronounced Bawbie), Trapper is related to François Bâby, one of the most influential and important financial investors in the Canadian fur trade, which was the most important sector of the economy of Nouvelle–France and Canada at the time. Through his Charbonneau–Labelle–Bayard–Chartrand line, the Last Voyageur was a fifth great-nephew of Sacajawea, the Shoshone woman who acted as sometime guide and Indian interpreter on the American Lewis and Clark Expedition.

The only mother Trapper ever really knew — the only female to ever be his lifetime partner — was Mother Nature. He was indeed a man among men; "the icon of what a real man was and should be," stated The Fur Harvester magazine in 2000. He was akin to the wayward wind; he was the Last Voyageur . . . the King of the Long Runners . . . the King of Algonquin Park . . . and he was one of "The King’s Ransom."

1

The Back Story — History

Northwest Company Flag.

(Photo by Paton Lodge Lindsay)

In March 1603, two ships were outfitted in France and set sail across the Atlantic Ocean for Nouvelle–France. Among the crew of François Gravé Du Pont was one Samuel de Champlain. Within five years, Samuel de Champlain would establish the first permanent French Colony in North America. A trade agreement was negotiated with the Algonquin Indians to purchase their furs in exchange for metal goods such as knives, hatchets, pots, kettles, and even blankets. The primary interest of the French was the wealth from the trade in furs, predominantly the beaver pelt, which would be manufactured into heavy wool felt used in the production of top hats for the aristocrats and landed gentry of Europe.

In the establishment of the Canadian fur trade, François Gravé du Pont engaged several partners from among the merchants of St. Malo, France, one being Jacques Bâby (pronounced Bawbie), Sieur de Ranville, born in 1633, St Malo, France, to help finance the settlement and the fur trade of Nouvelle–France. The earliest attempt at settlement was begun by the Company of One Hundred Associates. When the recruitment of entire families proved to be too costly, the company decided to just recruit single men such as labourers, masons, coppersmiths, and tradespeople who could build and benefit the new colony. The colony was thus composed predominantly of explorers, trappers, traders, and soldiers. A soldier who didn’t marry could be fined.

There were very few women in Nouvelle–France, and thus there was very little opportunity for men to find a wife, raise a family, and thus populate the new settlement. Samuel De Champlain openly discouraged the immigration of women to the harsh new land and the colony that was continuously besieged by attacking Iroquois Indians. His own wife, Hélène Boullé, had gone back to France to never again set foot in Nouvelle–France.

The King of France established a program for marriageable young girls, some of them not yet into their teenage years, to be provided transportation to Nouvelle–France; upon marrying a French soldier or a settler in Nouvelle–France, they were guaranteed a dowry that would have been the equivalent of a year’s wages for most of them. Most of these young girls were orphans or destitute girls living in cities with little hope of a decent life. The king’s offer would provide these girls with the opportunity to find a husband and raise a family in the new world.

Upon arrival, the girls would spend a few weeks or months with Roman Catholic nuns, missionaries, or a chosen family. They would then be introduced to a suitable man, the sole purpose being to marry him right away, become pregnant, and start a large family of ten to twelve children. Men and women were encouraged to marry young; a man who married under the age of twenty would be paid twenty pounds, and a woman who married under the age of sixteen would be paid twenty pounds.

Families with ten living children would receive 300 pounds annually, and families with twelve or more living children would receive 400 pounds annually.

A marriage contract was a legal document drawn up prior to the actual marriage but many marriage ceremonies were celebrated on the same day that the marriage contract was signed. The marriage of little girls, some as yet menarchial, to men several times their own age was common practice in the times of early settlement. Usually, within the first year, most had settled permanently in Nouvelle–France, married, and would soon become the foundation teenage mothers of French Canada. These young girls, some still little girls, were held to ransom. Their progeny were the King’s Ransom.

On a plaque imbedded upon a monument erected behind the Notre Dame de Quebec Basilica in Quebec City, one can find immortalized for posterity the names of the first settling families. Included thereon are many of the ancestors of the King’s Ransom.

In 1651, what with the continued attacks by the Iroquois, there was a desperate requirement for men to protect the French colony at Montreal and at Trois–Rivières. The Iroquois were constantly attacking and killing settlers who were without any protection. Two years later, in April 1653, twenty-one-year-old Gilles Lauzon, a master coppersmith who had contracted a salary of eighty-five pounds per year, boarded the ship Sainte Nicolas de Nantes and on June 20 departed the Port of Sainte–Nazaire en route to Nouvelle–France and the young colony at Trois–Rivières. While crossing the Atlantic, many of the settlers succumbed to a very serious epidemic. Eight actually died and had to be buried at sea. The ship did not arrive at Quebec City until September 22. Once there, many of the settlers were transferred to longboats and were paddled upriver to arrive at Montreal on November 14, fully seven months from their expected date of departure from Sainte–Nazaire on April 30.

Fortunately for the last voyageur, among the survivors of the 1653 voyage of the ship Sainte Nicolas de Nantes was Gilles Lauzon, the master coppersmith who settled in Montreal and married twelve-year-old Marie Archambault. Gilles Lauzon and Marie Archambault would be paternal sixth great-grandparents of the King of Algonquin Park. Another survivor of the voyage was thirty-one-year-old Toussaint Hunault dit Deschamps of Picardie, France. Toussaint Hunault presented himself as a pioneer and received a salary of seventy-five pounds a year for a five-year contract to work at the Hotel Dieu hospital. Upon arrival, he settled at Montreal and, on the sixteenth birthday of his bride-to-be, he married Marie Lorgueil, who, just ten months later, delivered her first child, a daughter, Thécle Hunault. At the tender age of just twelve, Thécle’s hand was given in marriage to twenty-seven-year-old Thomas Chartrand.

Thomas Chartrand had emigrated in 1655 at the age of fourteen and settled at Montreal, which at that time had a population of about five hundred settlers. Before her next birthday, the very young Thécle Chartrand had delivered a son, Thomas II Chartrand who would be a paternal sixth great-grandfather of the Last Voyageur — the King of Algonquin Park. Thécle gave birth to a second son, Toussaint Chartrand, who died in his cradle a few days after birth, and on March 12, 1674, at the age of just eighteen years, six months, and eleven days, young Thécle was dead . . . but the king’s ransom had been paid.

When following the story of the Last Voyageur, King of Algonquin Park, you might ask why so much history of old Nouvelle–France? Let it not be forgotten that until 1760, the area now known as Algonquin Park was French territory; it was situated in the centre of Nouvelle–France. It was also located in the heart of the traditional lands of the Algonquin Indian Nation.

Life in Nouvelle–France was indeed far different from the life these French immigrants had left behind. These young men and women had to work very hard just to survive. Most colonists were farmers. The men had to hunt, fish, and trap as well as clear and cultivate the soil. The women would take care of the household chores of the day; some women had as many as fifteen children and, with their older children, would tend to the vegetable gardens. In those times, the women wove their own yard goods and material; and spun their own yarn, to make most of the clothes worn by the family. When a young boy was eleven or twelve years of age, he was capable of putting in a man’s workday to clear land, plough fields, build fences, sow seed, and harvest crops; cut and split firewood for cooking and heating the family’s log home; fish, hunt, and trap to put food on the table; and even fight Natives to protect the family homestead. Very few children went to school in those early days. Everyone had to work to survive. You could be a farmer or a trapper without knowing how to read. Only the children of the wealthy attended school.

The sons and grandsons of Thomas and Thécle Chartrand would grow up to be the explorers, guides, interpreters, trappers, and voyageurs in the service of the major fur trading companies. In the journals of the voyageurs, between the years 1735 and 1850, one finds the direct ancestors of the Last Voyageur. The King descends in three lines from Thomas Chartrand (1641–1708), his sixth great-grandfather through two of his sons, Thomas and Pierre. All of the King’s sixth great-uncles — Charles, Joseph, François, Pierre, Charles Jean, Benjamin, and Augustin — made many canoe trips from Montreal to Pontchartrain (Detroit), La Poste, Illinois, the Mississippi, Missouri Territory, and La Baye (Wisconsin). They paddled from Montreal to Fort St Joseph and Fort Michilimackinac; to Penetanguishene and Michipicoten; they crossed La Grand Portage to Pays de l’Ouest and to La Portage de la Montagne.

To travel from Montreal to La Baye, they would paddle and portage their canoes up the St. Lawrence River, thence up the Ottawa River to Mattawa and Lake Nipissing, down the French River into Georgian Bay, through the islands, and down to the southernmost point of Lake Michigan, thence up the Chicago River, and portage all their goods several leagues, and thence down the Illinois River into the headwaters of the Mississippi River. The bundles to be portaged weighed about ninety pounds each. These trips often covered over a thousand leagues, and men were away from home for several years. An unknown voyageur penned in his journal, . . . to the Pays du Nord Ouest or La Grand Portage the difficulty is so great as almost to amount to impossibility. The distance is above 1000 leagues and from the west end of Lake Superior nothing but small Indian canoes can be carried into the Mississippi near its sources. Whoever attempts to pass that way must run the risk of perishing by famine or the depredation of numerous tribes of fierce Indians.

The Chartrand voyageurs were known by the major companies. They were in the service of McTavish and Frobisher; McGillivray; Parker, Gerrard and Ogilvie; Alexander McKenzie; and the Hudson’s Bay Company. The Chartrand voyageurs were not merely hired as engages, or porters, or the general labourers, who were paid 80 to 250 livres annually. The Chartrand voyageurs were found among the elite; many, known as winterers, paddled from Montreal to La Pays de la Ouest, spent the winter in the west, returned to Fort William for the rendezvous, and then back to Montreal.

Augustin Chartrand was a guide and interpreter. Joseph Chartrand was on more than one occasion working as the "gouvernail"² on several expeditions. They were trapping furs by royal right and were granted the right to hunt and fish whenever necessary. Joseph Chartrand was in such high demand he could negotiate his terms of contract and was known in 1802 to have signed a five-year contract as "gouvernail with Alexander McKenzie and negotiated 1,000 livres annually for the first two years and 1,200 livres annually for the final three years, obviously a payment commensurate with his great knowledge and experience. The King of Algonquin Park" was raised upon the stories of his voyageur ancestors. The Chartrand family trapped furs in the forests for over 350 years.

When one follows the ancestral records of the Voyageur-King of Algonquin Park, one can follow the migration of his ancestors from France to Quebec City and thence up the St. Lawrence River to L’Île d’Orleans, 5 km east of Quebec City, where his great-grandfather Francois Xavier Turcot received a medal for the family’s owning the same lands for over 200 years. Thence, on to Montreal, and then up the Ottawa River to L’Île-du Grand-Calumet, on to L’Isle-aux-Allumettes, then on to Chapeau, and finally across the Ottawa River into Ontario, as did so many of the French settlers.

Three lines of descent from Thomas Chartrand (1641) merge in Trapper’s very own grandfather, Michel Chartrand, who is listed as a "Voyageur" on his marriage registration of 7 July 1879 at Pembroke, Ontario, to Elizabeth Felicitas Turcot(te).

The Turcot line of ancestry descends from Jean Turcot of Poitou, France, who immigrated to Nouvelle–France in the 1600s and settled at Ste Laurent, Montreal. The line descends directly to Elizabeth Turcot(te), who married Michel Chartrand, the voyageur.

Traditionally, the Turcot(te) family had for nearly 150 years lived on lands that were expropriated — set aside — for Algonquin Park, their homestead being at Lake # 1 in Algonquin Park. In 1890, when the Canadian National Parks Act set aside the area for Algonquin Park as a "forest reserve," the government evicted everyone — Natives, homesteaders, and trappers. Tradition would tell us the Turcot(te) family was evicted from their lands set aside for the park and relocated to Black Bay near Petawawa.

There was always bitterness over the establishment of the park and the removal of the original settlers. It was suggested that the provincial forestry branch probably burned the homesteads. These lands had been the traditional lands of the Algonquins before they had become the traditional lands of the French as granted by the King of France.

Trapper said, Although the area known as Algonquin Park had been set aside as a forest reserve, logging was still allowed. As well, the government itself made money by having hundreds of beaver trapped each year and then selling the pelts. Some of the park rangers even lined their own pockets from the illegal poaching and sale of furs and sometimes even arrested trappers for poaching and then seized and sold the trappers’ pelts themselves. The government even live-trapped beaver and other fur bearers and sold the live animals to fur farms for breeding.

The Provincial Parks Act of 1913 allowed the harvest of any species of furbearing or game animal or bird that they thought to be surplus to the park. The money then could be used to operate the park that had been set aside to protect that very forest and wildlife.

Trapper said, Back in the hard times of war, the government even allowed the netting of fish and the slaughter of many hundreds of deer in the park. Finally, the government leased the lands of the evicted homesteaders to the wealthy so they could build cottages and enjoy the prime wilderness. Is it any wonder that those who had been evicted from their lands and displaced from their traplines would grow more and more angry and finally themselves engage in the illegal trapping and sale of pelts, so as to sustain their own families?

He always said, The government was goddamn good at burning everything. They went into the park and burned homesteads, camps, cottages, historic lodges, and inns, and even the log ‘Turtle Club’ built by the lumber baron J.R. Booth. They destroyed all the history of the park and then set about building a museum to show and tell everyone all about the ‘History of Algonquin Park.’

2

The Back Story — His

NWC canoe.

(Photo by Paton Lodge Lindsay)

The Last Voyageur, King of Algonquin Park would carry in his veins the royal genes of Charlemagne and the Boucher genes of the Royal Governor of Nouvelle–France. On the branches of his family tree, one finds the very explorers and voyageurs that discovered, claimed, and opened up this vast land. In 1650 when the Mohawk drove the French out of the lower Ottawa River Valley, many families migrated up into the headwaters of the rivers that flowed into the Ottawa River, the Petawawa and Madawaska rivers being among them. These rivers would have been very busy with the fur trade and with travel to and from the Ottawa River.

In the first half of the eighteenth century, we find the beginning of the wood trade in North America. In the early 1800s, logging companies harvested white pine from the shores of the Madawaska River. Thousands of French Canadians, Irish, and Scots hired on to cut the white pine, square the timbers, and float the giant square-timber rafts downriver. As the shantymen worked their way along the rivers, their families would soon follow, and eventually small settlements were built. In the mid-eighteen hundreds, the white pine was still being cut down with axes. The logs would be scored with a scoring axe and then squared with a broadaxe to ready them for rafting to Quebec. The crosscut saw had not yet been invented. The King told me himself that both of his great-grandfathers had been renowned axemen, and, in the mid-1800s, one of his maternal great-grandfathers, Elijah Towns, brought one of the very first crosscut saws into the country, having carried it all the way from Pennsylvania.

The King’s ancestors had been voyageurs for several generations, and the descendants of these progeny became the last of the white pine loggers and the legendary river drivers that rode the big white pine logs down the raging waters of the Madawaska, the Petawawa, and the Ottawa rivers.

A trail known as the Warpath ran through the wilderness along the South Petawawa River (Barron River) all the way from Black Bay right into Algonquin Park. Every autumn, men of ages from eight to eighteen to eighty, it seemed, put one foot in front of the other and made their way along the Warpath, their backs laden down with packs and supplies for the long winter’s work cutting down the white pine in Algonquin Park. The King himself represented three generations who drove the dangerous and wild Madawaska and Petawawa rivers.

It has been rumoured that the last voyageur was born in a canoe in a snowstorm. Considering that he was born on December 5, 1914, on the south branch of the Petawawa River, there is certain plausibility in the rumor. His mother died when he was but eight years old, leaving a younger sister, and a baby a few months old. The new baby was raised by the mother’s family, but the two older children went into the logging camps with their father. Trapper lived in camboose shanty camps from the age of nine and lived the life of so many children of the time — a life of child labour. The Voyageur King had been raised on the stories of his voyageur ancestors. In his own words, he had often said, When the Lord made the world, He didn’t make Algonquin Park first . . . The French came to Canada for beaver; the French king gave those rights to my family, and I will not give up that right. There are beaver to be had and they are mine by right of the king, and I’ll goddamn well have my share.

By the age of ten, the King had figured out he could make a lot more money trapping beaver at $35 a pelt than by working around the logging camp for his father for $6 a month. At the age of eleven, he set out his first trap for beaver in Algonquin Park, and at the age of thirteen, he rode the white pine logs on his first river drive down the Petawawa River. From then on, as he put it, he was, his own man. He suffered many hardships, trials, and tribulations to try and survive in the rugged, remote wilderness terrain of Algonquin Park through childhood, the Depression, and the war years. He lived off the land, became one of the most notorious poachers and one of the most exceptional wilderness survival men ever known to the Ontario Forestry Branch or the Ontario Department of Lands and Forests. He spent much of his life very successfully searching Algonquin Park for original artifacts and relics of the white pine logging days. Among his finds were logging tongs, grindstones, maple syrup jugs, and some actual square timber. In the summer of 1963 alone, he discovered the original foundations of five camboose or shanty camps, which were the log buildings that housed the legendary pioneer white pine loggers. Eventually, eager to gain the knowledge of this exceptional man, the Department of Lands and Forests hired him, and he worked and guided in the park for years. Among his peers he was known as the Last Voyageur . . . the King of the Long Runners . . . the King of Algonquin Park; and to the old-timers of the park, he became a legend in his own time.

3

The Back Story — Hers

Paton in Gramp’s canoe.

(Photo by Kathleen D. Scarlett Lindsay, author’s mother)

I was born in Toronto, Ontario, and for a few years while my father was away at war, just my mother and I lived in our home near Upper Canada College. When Father thankfully returned safely from the battles of war, we moved to an old home on the hilltop just a few blocks away from Casa Loma; I lived there until about eight years of age. Even at that young age, when not in school, my time was spent exploring the wilderness found beneath the viaduct on St. Clair Avenue that crosses what is now known as the Nordheimer Ravine. It seemed a very sacred place, as I could sit by the stream and watch the birds and butterflies, the squirrels and raccoons, and listen to the church bells that pealed