MOUNTAIN LIFE - Blue Mountains | Summer 2020

46 FEATURE G rowing up in Penetanguishene, I learned about Drummond Island through family stories. Once belonging to Upper Canada, the island at the top of Lake Huron was occupied by the United States following the War of 1812. The British granted land titles in Penetanguishene to the Metis living there, including my ancestors on my mother’s side: Jean Baptiste Trudeau and his wife, Papanaatyhianencoe. In 1828, along with their son and 75 or so other families, they made the nearly 500-kilometre voyage by bateau or canoe. I had imagined paddling this ancestral route for some time, and last summer I set out to do just that, taking my nine-year-old daughter Acadia with me, on a Blu Wave Catalina 14’ Expedition touring SUP. Turning nine at our house calls for celebration in the form of a backcountry epic. For Acadia that meant spending a month on water on a wayfinding “summer camp” across Lake Huron. It was Acadia’s idea to take water samples to be analyzed for microplastics research, something she learned about through the assistance of The Lake Huron Coastal Centre for Conservation in Goderich. To support this, we would take the scenic route and paddle across all three bodies of Huron: the North Channel, Lake Huron proper and Georgian Bay. We took a deep-water sampler with us, to collect samples at depth along the remote channels we’d have to cross. After launching into Potagannissing Bay we began the crossing of the North Channel, attuning ourselves to daily distance-paddling while working out all the kinks and settling into our isolation. We were on our own for many miles without a soul in sight. Until we crossed the border—then it was kilometres. For Acadia this meant inescapable hours of dad humour. The moods of the lake clashed with our ambitions for each day and we had to pivot ourselves at a moment’s notice. In this water world, the wind is ruler. Slowly we adjusted to moving in accordance with the wind. Crossing the False Detour Channel and the U.S.–Canada border felt mysteriously quiet. No border guards, no boats. No one but us. We conducted our first deep-water sample in the middle of the Channel on the border line. Between the wind pushing us off position and the sampler not always triggering properly, there was a juggling act of adjustments to be made. We shared a rousing holler as we entered Canada via the back door, arriving at Cockburn Island—Lake Huron’s last large wilderness island and home to Tolsmaville, now mostly a ghost town apart from a dock and a handful of cottages. We explored on foot and discovered an old cemetery, most of the graves belonging to young children. At the dock on our way out, someone told us Tolsmaville had suffered an epidemic long ago—possibly the Spanish Flu. A father-daughter tandem SUP mission into the deep heart of Lake Huron Mornings are for coffee and contemplation. Misery Bay.