Nipissing. Françoise Noël

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      Récollet Falls was one of the spots on the French River favoured by fishermen. It is therefore not surprising that Reuben Sallows used this image as a postcard.

       “Recollet Falls, French River,” photograph by Reuben Sallows, Image number 0009-rrs-ogoh-ph, the Reuben R. Sallows Gallery.

      The habitat of Ontario’s deer, an area that extended south of the CPR main line to the Severn River, and from Georgian Bay to the Kingston and Pembroke Railroad to the east, was increasingly penetrated by railways, which worried some sportsmen.[24] The Department of Game and Fisheries was more worried that the large number of deer killed each year was not sustainable. While only 4,387 deer were shipped out of Ontario in 1908, this was considered to be less than a third of the deer killed, as “11,353 deer hunters’ licenses and settlers’ permits were issued, holders of each being entitled to kill two deer. In addition to the above, Indians and settlers in unorganized territory were allowed to kill two each without licenses or permits, for their own use, but not for sale or barter.” “It seems incredible,” the report continued, “that our northern districts should continue to supply these immense numbers year after year with no apparent diminution.”[25] Some looked for someone to blame when the deer population declined, and pointed the finger at local inhabitants, including the lumbermen who hunted in and out of season for food. The use of dogs for hunting deer was also much debated.[26] Dire predictions aside, the very high numbers of deer taken in the Nipissing area continued at least into the 1920s. About three hundred deer were shipped out from Trout Creek station alone in the early 1920s[27] and the steamer Kawigamog, which ran from Port Loring to the railhead at Lost Channel, transported more than a thousand hunters and 1,300 deer in 1921. An old railroader working for the Key Valley Railway remembered that, in 1921, 889 deer were handled between Lost Channel and Pakesley, the railway collecting one dollar each, regardless of where they were picked up.[28] Lumbering, by exposing the forest floor and giving rise to second growth, had provided good grazing grounds for deer, which may account for the continued success of the hunt in that area.

      When it came to the question of where to go hunting, there was general agreement that the area around Restoule, south of Lake Nipissing, was an excellent choice. Carleton Dyer made his first trip into this area with his father and a few of his father’s friends in the late 1920s. With other hunters from Toronto, they got off the train at Pakesley in the middle of the night and went to a boarding house that was so crowded that there was no place for them to sit. The next morning, they loaded their gear onto a lumber freight train and along with about twenty other hunters journeyed fifteen miles inland to Lost Channel. Then, everything had to be carried to a “little river tug,” which went up the Pickerel River another twenty miles to a place called “The Landing.” From there, they boarded a “Ford” and bumped along a muddy road filled with boulders to Arnstein to a friend’s place. A sled was used to carry their gear to a small lake where the canoes were launched. Being November, there was snow on the ground and the water was freezing cold. Ten miles inland, they set up their campsite. Young Dyer, left alone for two days as the two older men went back for the rest of the party, tells the tale of his misadventures as he coped in the unfamiliar environment. Once the others returned, the hunting began. Again, his inexperience is contrasted with the knowledge of the older men, with the exception of his father getting lost on their return. Hauling their deer out was not only hard work, it was dangerous, as they had to drag their gear across a frozen lake as the ice cracked beneath them.[29] No guides were used, as there were some local men among the party and this was a familiar trip for Dyer’s father. There were no luxuries either, unless a silk tent and a camping stove can be considered as such. The infrastructure that supported the trip was geared to lumbermen and lumbering rather than tourism. For young Dyer, it was an initiation into the world of men.

      The Look-Um-Deer Club, hunting in the South River area in 1906, enjoyed much more comfort. They rendezvoused at Wisawasa, and, having been outfitted with the houseboat Wasalily for accommodation, the motor launch Zephyr towed them down South River with the canoes they would be using. From the houseboat, they had only a three-mile portage to get their canoes into Perch Lake, the area in which they would be hunting. This group hunted with dogs and had a guide, Jimmy. They too were in a lumbering environment. “The air along the river smelt of sulphur all day, an ‘alligator’ towing a big scow of lumber went ashore and the language of the engineer was such as no self-respecting superintendent of a Sunday-school would think of using.”[30] The author of this account assured readers that these vacationing deer-slayers were not a serious threat to the game laws: “These men went out, primarily for a holiday, and incidentally to kill a deer or two, if the fates were kind.”[31] He placed considerable emphasis on the “excellent food appetizingly cooked,” but the group nonetheless went home with twenty deer, sixteen of them bucks.

      The Nipissing Hunt Club, made up primarily of local hunters, established a hunt camp on Sand Lake, located just west of South Bay on Lake Nipissing, twenty miles from Powassan. It was reached “by the stage ten miles to Nipissing, and ten miles by canoe and wagon to Sand Lake.” The “trail to Sand Lake Mills” was used for part of the trip.[32] R. McDonagh’s account of their annual hunt counters the suggestion that locals were unregulated in their hunting. Tasks around the camp were divided among the members. The hunt captain controlled the hunt. He called a halt by nine o’clock the first day because he had heard so much shooting that he felt they had taken enough for one day. Bucks and larger deer were favoured if at all possible. In the end, they had killed sixteen bucks and eight does. A fawn was captured and let go, being too small to kill. Dogs were used, but each hunter came out with his allotted kill and no more.[33]

      Both parties returned with photographs — laden canoes, and a display of their trophies hanging from the houseboat with members of the party lined up in front — that established the bounty of the hunt.[34] It was not just the hunt that mattered, but telling the story of the hunt afterward, in words СКАЧАТЬ