the river, she is always on our side from the 2015 Kisiskaciwani-sipiy 1 journal of Jeff Hilberry & Dr Suzanne Steele
Day 1
26 July 2015
N 52° 2’ 21” W 116° 52’ 12” Steele:
Trailered from Canmore up through the Mistaya Valley to Rampart Creek campground. 2 We see glimpses of the river, and it is ice blue and so fast. Set up base camp on the Saskatchewan River, approximately 40 km from Saskatchewan Glacier. We’re the only sailboat in a campground filled with RVs, motorhomes and a few old-fashioned tents. Little Miss Moose , eccentric and beautiful, nested in the campsite with her mast up, her boom tent in place, and the ladder leading up to her deck from the forest floor. People stop and take photos of this ship moored amongst the tall Douglas fir and pines, many curious visitors. Asking questions. Marvelling and shaking their heads. We eat dinner by the river and I say I am a little afraid when I see the fast waters. But J is a river man with years of white- water canoeing and is an ocean man. He knows rapids and tides and boats. But I am a poet; know nothing about rapids and tides and boats – only land and words. At night, we board Miss Moose and sleep under the madras quilt in our cozy cabin while the river runs cold and green just metres away. We hear owls, look out of the companionway and the full moon has cast kisiskaciwani-sipiy into mercury. It has begun.
Suzanne Steele
These excerpts are from the logbook of Skipper Hilberry and 1st Mate Steele who in 2015 travelled the North Saskatchewan River in a 17’ sailboat, Miss Moose , the first sailboat since the York boats of a hundred years ago travelled the great river highway of Steele’s ancestors. Over 7 1/2 weeks, the pair sailed, rowed and portaged 2200km from the Saskatchewan Glacier in the Rockies to outfall near Grand Rapids, Lake Winnipeg. Hilberry, an ocean sailor with 35 years experience sailing on the west coast, and Steele, a Red River Métis war poet with no boating experience, set out for two very different reasons; he’d always wanted to trace a river from source to outfall; she longed to travel the old river highways of her peoples. The journal continues the centuries-old tradition of recording a river, as by Samuel Hearn, Alexander Henry, Peter Pond, Paul Kane, Alexander MacKenzie, David Thomson and by Steele’s ancestors’ millennia-long story-telling traditions. The journal is a love letter to one of the great river veins of our continent, one that links the distant past to a fragile present. A cautionary tale, not polemic, it reveals the sublimity and dangers of the river and records her generosity. It is especially dedicated to the creatures who live along her and in her— the pelicans, beavers, moose, eagles, hawks, the fish, the wolf-willow, the sunflowers, the pickerel ... so many struggling to survive. In 2220km of river the pair estimate they encountered no more than 100 people on the water. Sometimes they moored besides banks of wild sunflowers or beaver lodges, sometimes in the heart of a city. They encountered a river filled with the skeletal remains of the historic fur trade, lost dreams of villages, former robust settlements named only on maps with no trace of occupation. Along the river the sailors were welcomed by Cree and Métis who fed them moose meat stew, bannock and tea; who advised them
on the river and especially the dangers of the haunted Cedar Lake. They were invited into cabins to get warm and dry and on the last legs of their journey were watched over by Indigenous peoples using FaceBook, email and texts while the pair used little to no tech. In 2015’s record low river levels, Hilberry navigated a river of dangerous rocks and shoals; a river that twists, turns, snakes its way through ancient river valleys carved from a long-ago ice age, making sailing for more than short sprints impossible. He rowed hundreds of kilometres using three oars he’d made before leaving the west coast. One cracked in half on a huge underwater boulder, another limped its way to the end of the river under dozens of metres of gaffer’s tape. Their little outboard died just as the cold and rain hit; the pair nearly missed a tornado, but the river always gave back. The North Saskatchewan River was chosen for its historic significance in the history of the Indigenous peoples, and by extension, the history of Canada. One of North America’s largest rivers, she is alive and compelling. Although struggling mightily with overuse and willful or benign neglect, the river is utterly salvageable should we collectively decide to care for her, to recognise her as a living entity. Steele, observing the peoples they encountered and recalling historical context, the flora and fauna, found that she had unwittingly, or, naturally, performed the traditional Red River Métis role of navigator, translator and interpreter, often being the one to enter a settlement or cabin first. For Steele, this journey was extremely personal, a quest to learn a river. For Hilberry, oarsman and skipper, any day messing around with boats is a good day.
2 The plan was to hike into the glacier, then, when possible, transfer to a small zodiac on the upper reaches of the river until Lake Abraham where it is navigable for the sailboat. We had a trailer and a truck and parked it and sailed distances of days. J would hitchhike back to it. We needed both for the four major portages we would take past hydro-electric dams.
1 kisiskaciwani-sipiy : ‘the river runs fast’, the Saskatchewan River
48 on site review 49 :: shorelines
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator