Pancake Bay is a Provincial Park in Ontario, Canada on the
eastern shore of Lake Superior, some 30 miles or more north of the Canadian
Sault. We have camped there several times over the years, including a recent week-long
trip where we enjoyed the lake shore and its clear, cool water that caresses
the miles-long beach during warm sunshiny afternoons.
The beach has a long and colorful history of visitors who arrived from the eastern shores of the continent. The earliest years of North American settlements included villages gathered on eastern shores where landed ambitious men seeking their fortunes. One of the reasons for the earliest coastal settlements was the opportunity to earn mind-numbing profits by trading with native Americans. Frenchmen who had settled in the northern regions became especially proficient in dealing with the several tribes who lived alongside the waterways that served as transportation routes through the forested lands.
The trade centered around North American beaver provided by
natives and manufactured goods from Europe. The Indians sold beaver skins with
their luxurious hides that Europeans coveted for their use in making hats.
Since Europeans had already killed the largest share of their own native fur
bearers, they sought other sources, and soon began depleting those supplies as
well, including those from the vast lands of Russia. Of course, the price of
prime beaver skins climbed significantly, providing extraordinary profits for
those traders who exchanged knives, kettles, shovels, axes and other metal
tools that Indians had never before seen.
The French traders soon exhausted the supply of beaver from
sources close to the French settlements that were primarily located on the east
coast of North America. The response from the Frenchmen was to travel further
inland to seek out Indians who had skins to sell. The Frenchmen traveled
further and further inland with each new season, paddling large canoes that
could carry hundreds of pounds of skins and the heavy metal tools for trade. A
specialized teamster business began with Frenchmen called ‘Voyageurs’ manning
the canoes and toting two 90- pound packs at each land crossing needed to avoid
waterfalls, and other obstructions to safe travel. After several seasons, the
Voyageurs were traveling into and across Lake Superior, in their large but lightweight
canoes, for trading trips that lasted two years, one year to travel west and
the following year to return to their homes with their canoes loaded with packs
of the valuable fur. The fur packs included not only beaver, but other hides as
well. Deer hides were considerably less valuable than prime beaver pelts,
universally priced at one dollar per hide, giving rise to the term “bucks” to
indicate deer pelts.
Pancake Bay was one of the overnight shore stops on the
travel itinerary for Voyageurs. The name “Pancake Bay” deserves an explanation.
Voyageurs were a colorful group of workmen. As a class, they
were Independent, inured to hardship, happy-go-lucky sods who had not a care in
the world beyond the well-being of their canoe mates. The fourteen men in each
canoe sang, talked, and gossiped about their homelands in the complete
isolation in the forested lands surrounding the waterways. Each day of work was
the same, paddling for as long as daylight permitted, up to 18 hours per day,
going to shore to eat and sleep as daylight dwindled after kindling a large
fire for cooking. This, for most of each year until they arrived at a remote
western fort at the farthest western edge of Lake Superior where their journey
was interrupted for the winter season while Indians brought their furs for
trade. In spite of this hardship, the Voyageurs were neither well-paid nor well
provisioned for their lengthy journey.
The provisions for the journey were provided by the company
who organized and paid the salaries of the Voyageurs. The food was simple and
boring with little regard for taste, variety, or nourishment. The only nod to
the tastes of the voyageurs was the allotment of rum for the entire trip that
was provided for each canoe at the start of the trip. The small keg was
carefully loaded onto each canoe at the dock where the men assembled, each man
carefully watching the keg and each fondling his small metal cup that would
remain with him as his single drinking vessel. The rum didn’t last. The canoes
departed from Quebec and later Montreal, and the men said goodbye to
civilization at their first overnight island stop upriver from their departure.
The paddlers had their first shore meal before attacking the keg of rum, each
man demanding his share. The entire keg was consumed that night in a drunken
party, ensuring no further battles about the remaining liquor.
Food for the Voyageurs included an inadequate amount of
flour. At their overnight stops, each man received his allotment of flour that
he kneaded with a small amount of lake water into a worm shaped dough ball that
he carefully threaded around a stick. Thereafter, he held his stick near the
fire to make bread. “Bannock,” some called it. If the overnight stop was
extended while repairs were made to the canoes, an iron skillet was produced
and coated with grease from salted pork to make pancakes. As the canoes made
their way west, the flour was slowly consumed. Legend has it that the Pancake Bay
stop, not only looked like a pancake with its nearly round shoreline, it was
also the place where the last store of flour was consumed on most trips west.
Fortunately, today’s Pancake Bay Provincial Park has none of
the hardships for modern-day campers despite its small population gathered near
the Bay. Instead, near the Provincial Park is a single small restaurant known
as “Voyageurs” that features a Bannock bread and a famous picture of a boat
being paddled by voyagers taking two English passengers, one a likeness of the
first white woman who came to the area. Just a mile or more south is the only
other active business in the area, a busy souvenir store formerly known as ‘the
Indian store’ featuring wood carvings and other hand-crafted items made by many
local people including Native Americans who live nearby. Across from the Indian
store is the remaining business of the area, a version of a fast-food store that
features freshly caught whitefish from Lake Superior.
Our camping vacation to Pancake Bay was a treat despite the occasional
cool weather. We re-discovered the pleasure of taking an early morning coffee to
the deserted beach as the sun rose as well as afternoon naps. Of course, we
partook of the fresh fish for dinner and drank in the beauty of Lake Superior’s
eastern shore while relaxing to the sound of the gentle waves lapping the sandy
shore.
