Today, Sunday, September 6, our party visited the Hymers Fall Fair. Returning home, we crossed the Whitefish River, a lazy creek that seemed to hold more mudflats than water. I remarked that this water route was once explored as a route to the Canadian West. I was greeted with skepticism. I said I would provide the historical background.

            In 1857, Captain John Palliser of a British militia unit was appointed to lead a scientific expedition to explore a canoe route between Lake Superior and what would become in 1870 the Province of Manitoba. His instructions were to explore as far as the Rocky Mountains. Being an adventurous spirit, in 1847 he had spent eleven months hunting and fishing in the western territory of the U.S.A. and Canada.

            Fur traders had long ago pioneered a canoe route to Rainy Lake and Fort Frances (an actual fort). It required paddling up the Kam River to Dog Lake, and following a series of creeks and ponds and portages across the height-of-land to Lac Des Mille Lacs. Palliser was instructed to explore an alternative route up the Whitefish River. His Canadian Red River Exploring Expedition left Fort William (an actual palisaded fort) in July 1857, traveled up the Kaministiquia River, and found, with some difficulty, the mouth of the Whitefish.

            Here is a Wiki description of the river: “The Whitefish River is a 45 km (28 mi) long river in Thunder Bay District in northwestern Ontario, Canada. It is in the Lake Superior drainage basin, is a tributary of the Kaministiquia River, and is in the centre of the Whitefish River Valley which is the location of several small settlements that grew along the Port Arthur, Duluth and Western Railway.”

The “river” begins in an unnamed lake south of Nolalu. Whitefish Lake, further southwest, has no connection whatsoever with the Whitefish River. Whitefish Lake drains into Lake Superior via the River Arrow. The height-of-land is farther west.

So, Palliser was exploring a dead end.

In Palliser’s report he described six travellers paddling up the Whitefish River in “small” canoes (birch bark, of course); the North canoes of the expedition would have averaged 26 feet in length. The two white men, of course, were passengers, not paddlers.

            Palliser used the British expression “punted up” to describe navigating upriver. I don’t know what he meant, for the party would have been at many points poling the canoes, getting out on the banks and dragging the canoes, even leaping overboard to drag the canoes, and, of course, portaging the canoes.

            After an accident destroyed one of the canoes, Palliser and Hector elected to reach the Kam River overland. Granted that these gentlemen were in fine physical shape, the pace of 3.5 miles an hour is ingenuous. They would have been flitting between the trees like deer. A flight distance calculator measures the distance between present-day Hymers and Kakabeka Falls as 17 kilometres or 10.5 miles. It took them several days to reach the Falls. They blamed the delay on heavy rainfall. Still, the trek was a remarkable one. They would have pitted a compass and their survival skills against the chances of leaving their bones in the wilderness.

            However, the party had paddled farther than present-day Hymers, and even if they had travelled twice as far, the trek of Palliser and Hector suggests they often deviated from a straight line of travel.

            A word about the elevations in this country. Palliser’s party on July 16^th recorded an elevation of 860 feet. Kakabeka Falls today stands at 774 feet. So, the country where the party stopped their travel up the Whitefish was higher than the Falls.

            Palliser references the historic canoe route as the Old Portage Route and Northern Portage Route. He was referencing the Dog Lake-Lac Des Milles Lacs-Rainy Lake-Lake of the Woods route. After 1870, this route had one name (with variations): the Dawson Trail.