Trap Lines North Fans....I've got something cool

The school is in the process of obliterating my past, lol. Since I retired in 2019, much of my stuff from Outers and the Video program I ran has remained untouched. Renovations are forcing a lot of stuff into the garbage. The old map cases have been emptied, and I had to go through hundreds to save the ones that were still relevant. There was one in particular that I was searching for, it was a historical map I had briefly seen several years ago about a trip run by the famous Vanderbecks and Emile Cote. trapline North fans will recognize these names. Anyway, I found the map. It is over four feet long and a a couple of feet long, it looks like a direct copy on some old style onion skin paper. I've taken several shots to post here.




Here is an overview of the map, then i will post three closer shots of sections.

They leave from Cordingley Lake in Nakina.




I'm assuming they went down the Esnagami "Esskagannega" and the Little Current, and then poled back up the squaw system. Lots of detail on the map, very interesting. I'm not sure if the squaw section could be replicated now, there has been a lot of cutting back there.

Precious. Love those old maps. Thanks for sharing.
G.

That is very interesting, I love that book. I’m going to pull it out and read it again, see if I can find all those names, then follow the routes and their experiences they had. Great find, Thanks for sharing it.

Mem, before dumping anything, why not contact the new Canadian Canoe Museum? I was there a few months ago and there's still plenty of empty wall space for more exhibits, pretty sure they'd be interested in some of your old maps and stuff

I vote that @Gamma1214 make this his route for next summer.

Alan

Over 9 miles of portages?! Tempting but I don't have that much vacation time.

Great save Mem. Very cool map

Glad you were able to save what did. That map is cool.
Jim

So there's a bing shot of the cutovers surrounding parts of the Squaw. The Esnagami is still traveled fairly often, I have heard that the ports are usually good, a fair amount of fast water. Not sure about coming upstream on the Squaw though, that's probably where most of their poling miles came from. However, one could travel the Squaw downstream and probably come back up the Drowning to Supawn Lake with only mid level suffering. There was a road that went back to Supawn, not sure if it is still negotiable, it was rough 20 years ago. Anyway, there are ways to get into most parts of this route, but one would have to be a dedicated masochist to recreate it,

This story reminds of my rescue of ALL of the Wabakimi Project section sheets used by Uncle Phil on his project trips 2004-2018. Each trip had 2 sets of maps, one for each boat. To save space and weight (?) Phil cut off the borders/legends of each map. The final year of trips was 2018. Phil died in May of that year and his son/daughter allowed the final trips that year to operate out of Phil’s house. I asked Phil’s son what he was planning to do with the maps stored in a large map case in the basement. He told me to take them, so I spent several hours going through the maps, rolling and boxing them. I delivered them to the Project member who developed the original map booklets. At that time as he was collecting all written materials related to the Project.

Unfortunately, after the map maker and the new leadership of the Project had a falling out, all those maps and other written materials like individual trip reports, etc were discarded by the map maker. Many of those section sheets had field notes which would have been valuable for use in advising people requesting specific route information.

Memaquay, Thanks for saving and posting the map and it's information. I hope that a library or museum can use or store it for the future.


As we plunge headlong into the digital age, so much of the past is being lost due to the trending belief that "if it isn't on the internet, it can't be real". Fortunately many libraries and museums are digitizing their collection so at least some of the past is being preserved in the form of data, and if space for storage is available, quite often the physical object is preserved. Digitization is great for the present with our current electronic technology, but the preservation of the past's artifacts are important for future generations to see and understand what came before them.

We often like to think that the systems we have now are the systems that we will have in the future, but both progress and regression of civilization can make todays technology either obsolete or unreachable. Currently the US government has racks of data from the 1950's and 60's that cannot be accessed do the degradation of the magnetic tape used for storage and to the lack of the machinery to read them. Unfortunately, this information was not transcribed as technology progressed and is now lost. Should there be a gap in the jump to the next technology, will the information stored on today's USB flash drives even be accessible? Just a few decades ago our computers used floppy disks for storage, and how many folk can access that data now?

Another issue is that information systems are fragile. As for our modern electronic storage systems even a massive EMP, whether natural (solar flare or other astronomical source) or a manmade (nuclear war, shutdown of communication satellites or even physical destruction of the electrical system) event could render the information to future generations inaccessible. Even in historic times. this fragility was true. Today we still wonder what information was lost with the sacking of the great libraries of Sumer, Assyria, Thebes, Carthage, Rome and other ancient culture's centers of knowledge and scholarship. Will those that follow us just wonder what we and our civilization knew or will they have books, maps and other physical items to tell them of their culture's past.

Saving Information and artifacts is not important just for today's societies, but for those generations that follow us.

SouthernKevlar said:

Will those that follow us just wonder what we and our civilization knew or will they have books, maps and other physical items to tell them of their culture's past.

Click to expand...

Wondering is often more interesting than knowing.

Alan

Can't speak to books and maps, but with the amount of trash we produce they'll definitely have other physical items.

That map would look fitting and impressive on a wall in your home Mem. Even if it's a temporary stewardship.