Through the early years at the school it was general practice on canoe trips that personal gear packs were shared by two students (or staff). This meant some planning and cooperation had to take place. You certainly had to hope your pack partner would care for your gear!
What are your memories of sharing a pack? Send us your story.
March 9, 2015 at 8:07 am
You relied on your pack partner, but also the people on your crew that were carrying the packs over portages. I recall hearing a story about the Grand Portage one or two years before I did it when somebody, on the portage itself, got sick of carrying three packs and just ditched one or maybe even two of them into the woods on the way over – I’m not sure if they were found and, if they weren’t, what the people did whose gear was lost (I think the same guy also stole a can of Klik from a food box and was severely punished for food theft by Mr Brookes – 15 so the story went).
On my Newboy I shared a pack with Frank Doolan’s son, sorry I can’t recall his first name and he’s not on the Laundry List. On the Grand Portage I packed with Ivan Robertson of the La Ronge Robertsons. On the Churchill I packed with Pat Williams.
I guess having your pack totally immersed in water after tipping was a true test of how much effort you had made at water-proofing it. My canoe tipped on all three trips. On the Churchill it happened after going down a rapids sideways with our port side facing downstream and tipping to the starboard when we hit the standing waves at the bottom. But on the Newboy and Grand Portage both tips were the classic canoe leaning far over to one side and then everyone reacting by violently leaning over to the other side and tipping in that direction.
I seem to recall that in your canvas duffle bag there was a heavy gauge clear plastic bag that you shared, with your individual stuff in a green garbage bag. The green garbage bag slowly disintegrated over the course of the trip and it was the heavy clear bag that you were depending on to keep your clothes, but particularly your sleeping bag, dry.
The Newboy tip happened somewhere on the first part of the Winnipeg River. It was a reasonably warm day – the weather started to get a lot colder as we got closer to Lake Winnipeg – frost on the tarp in the mornings. We got towed to the shore (we weren’t that far away) and a fire was lit, dedicated to those from the tipped canoe getting both their gear and themselves dry. I don’t think either of us was paying much attention to tying up the pack in the mornings, I remember my hands were always freezing after rolling up the plastic tarp. And things hurt more when your skin is cold, so the canvas of the wet duffle bags felt like sandpaper on the backs of your hands. I think our pack must have floated free and this stopped the water from getting into it in any volume because my sleeping bag wasn’t all that much wetter than it had been when I had packed it that morning. It was great to get it and myself dry for the first time in days.
On the Grand Portage I remember Ivan making a very robust seal by twisting the heavy plastic bag closed and then folding the neck over on itself and tying the fold tight with string (I watched and took careful mental note for future reference). We tipped in the Rainy River at Manitou Rapids and I think Ivan and I were the only students in the canoe to emerge from the water with our pack contents dry. So the fire was an opportunity to dry the clothes we had on. I remember I was wearing my black school sweater which, being synthetic, dried very quickly, but also proved itself to be no defence against the mosquitoes that descended on us in droves. It was a Godsend having Ivan in our canoe because he was one of the, if not the, strongest boys at the school. But also, being from northern Saskatchewan, he knew about using spruce boughs for mattresses and that sort of thing. I know I benefited significantly more from having him as my pack-mate than anything he got from my side of the arrangement.
And so, having learnt the ancient art of bag tying from Ivan, and having grown somewhat bigger by the time the Churchill rolled around the next year, it was no surprise to me at all that when Pat and I opened our pack after the tipping experience on the Burntwood, the contents were bone dry.
March 9, 2015 at 8:14 am
This is embarrassing. I can remember sharing a pack, notably on the Grand and on Selkirk Newboy trips, but I cannot remember who I shared a pack with.
Where are the other ex-staff from that era? In some cases I can figure out who I would have had to share with by deduction. E.g. On the Fond du Lac we had 6 canoes. Two student steersmen. Rod Voss and Bud Brooks ran the trip, so if I packed with anyone it would have been Willie Johnson. Similar deductions would put me with Marty Clark on the Grand.
The one in between, the Lockhart we had individual packs. Since there was in essence no fires on that trip we had to take extra care to keep our gear dry, plus we had tents since there was nothing to tie a tarp to.
I have one mental movie clip of sliding my folded tarp down the side of a duffle, and struggling with the latch beside a blue lake on the Grand. The beach faced north, and we were about 60 feet from the water. But who?
I certainly remember doing it. I remember it being extremely aggravating for boys and staff alike. Some kids would wear their bush jacket (wool mackinaw) and their rain gear tied around their waist all day to not pack them. This usually meant they were wet.
And the hassles to get rain gear! “Smith’s my partner sir, he has our pack. Over there in the Peguis” while someone else wanted to get to the Brebeuf. Once out, rain gear didn’t get repacked until the next portage or morning. Sometimes raingear was just tied to a pack. Or to a seat. And it would come untied on a portage, and either get picked up by a staff member, or left behind.
There’s a day on the Grand where you do about 20 portages, none of them more than a quarter mile. Frank assigned me to be sweep. So I had a food box, my pack, and I would pick up the debris. It got worse and worse. Finally I said, “From now on if I pick it up, I am charging 1 swat per item as freight charges. If you come and meet me before I get to the portage end, it’s free. (Figuring that you can’t always stop carrying a cnoe to pick up your cup.
Next portage I handed out 33 swats. The one after that, none.
One kid tried to game the system. “1116? Rain jacket” No takers. Next portage, “1116?”
Finally, 6 portages later, it started to rain. He came to me and said, “I’m 1116.”
“Where have you been?”
“You were already going to give me a swat for it. Figured if I didn’t pick it up I couldn’t loose it a second time.”
“Fine. Freight charges on 6 portages. Six swats. I’m not your pack mule.”
I came in just as the school was getting into single side band radios. They were bulky enough that they were the tipping point for staff sharing or soloing a pack.
By my fourth trip I was always some combination of 2/i.c. Navigator, Radio Man and Cook. (RM and Cook were mutually exclusive) Maps for any significant trip were bulky. (The Cree Lake trip used 33 maps plus some photocopied corners)
March 10, 2015 at 6:45 pm
Liferafts were the other tipping point. The Grand had 6 canoes most with 6 boys and one master in each. The staff member carried at minimum a food box, a pack, and usually some other item. 6 boys meant 3 packs. Staff usually had a pack. Plus there was the pot pack, repair kit, medical kit, radio, map tube.
Four boys carried the canoe. 2 boys carried two packs each. Staff member carried food box and one pack. If you had 6 boys it worked well. 5 made it tough.
After Temiskaming, we had liferafts. Liferafts were one more thing to carry, and took up the space under a seat, which made storing a double duffle harder.
That in turn pushed us toward 5 kids per canoe. This also meant that the canoe drew less water, so you hit fewer rocks. It was a lot less like paddling a log.
5 kids per canoe and the life raft pretty much put the end to singling a portage. The newer canoes had floatation tanks in the ends. You couldn’t wedge the paddles in the bow and stern.
At the same time, the Grand was closed as a route, due to Quetico park regulations. (9 was the maximum group size) Portages on the Bloodvein and the Berens weren’t nearly as well worn or well kept. We had more occasions where we needed to double a portage. My Berens River trip I think was the last trip I did where we tried to single portages on a regular basis. That was a group of very strong grade 10’s. The next year was Temiskaming.
The duffles were unsatisfactory. Sealines came in, but they were 70 liter or 110 liters. A duffle was 90. Tents came in. One trip we had two kids share a 110 liter sealine, and had a separate tent pack. The community tent pack was a disaster, with little incentive to pack your tent well, getting the last tent in was a pain.
We ended up going to a 70 liter per person, and the groups had to deal with the tent. A canoe then would have 6 or 7 personal packs, but being almost a foot shorter they were much easier to store.
We moved more and more of the food into these duffles too. When I was cook, I wanted two food boxes. One was for the spices, and thickeners, soups, dried veg. One was set up for lunch so that we didn’t have to take apart 6 packs to find everything.
Portaging became two trips as standard: One with the canoes, one with the packs.