Canada is an interesting country. It is
sometimes mysterious and often contradictory. There are so many different
cultures and so many unique names. Sorting out what our country might mean and
figuring out all who live here is a gargantuan task.
Spread out any Canadian
map on the kitchen table and you’ll see all that variety. For example, on a
1979 MNR map of the Township of Glasgow
in the district of Algoma there is a Carter Lake and a Loch Lomond quite close to Wabatongushi
Lake. Of course the neighbouring Township is LeGuerrier. Warring linguists would have a field day. Just as we do
every year on July 1st, Canada Day.
Our Canada Day here in Montreal River was cool.
Fog clothed Agawa. Clouds covered up that scorching sun from the day before
when “swimming”, then sunning on hot
rocks was a pleasant reminder that summer was in the area. When the rains did
come thundering through I saw a mother duck turn into an umbrella. She sat on a
rock very close to the water and spread herself as wide and as fluffy as possible
so she could protect her brood from the downpour.
But we humans also had
to protect ourselves from an onslaught of other kind. The Flies!! Oh my. Oh my.
They are voracious, aggressive and everywhere. As I don my armour, my bug
jacket, I wonder why there have been SO many mosquitoes the past two years.
Could it be the lack of bats? We used to watch them in the evenings as they
dove around and around catching the mosquitoes. Now a bat is a rare sight. They
seem to have deserted us, or have they died off due to white-nose syndrome. I
wish they’d come back home.
Oh Canada is our home
and native land but who determines what happens here? Who decides the future of our country? I look
to the lake and realize that really no one can own this place. Just as water
slips through our fingers, the earth also can escape our grasp. Such a problem always
stirs up several forms of debate.
Right now there is a court
case over the road into Nanabozhung or Gargantua Harbour in Lake Superior Park.
The word “Gargantua” has an interesting origin. In 1534 Francois Rabelais wrote
a series of novels about a giant he called Gargantua and his son Pantagruel. No doubt French explorers or voyageurs, who
had read the irreverent series, must have thought that Gargantua was an apt
name for this giant among places. But other folks have attached the same name
to other things. Gargantua is also a limestone cave located on the Andy Good
plateau in British Columbia. This giant of a formation has 601 m of passages and
is the largest natural cavern in Canada at 290 m long, 30 m wide and 25 m high.
Oh wouldn’t a Canada Day concert sound amazing in there!
Then there is the
gorilla born in the Belgian Congo, Africa, in about 1929. A sailor originally gave
the infant the name of Buddy but, circumstances had it changed to Gargantua. The unfortunate captive became a
depression era attraction in a Ringling Brothers circus. His story is much too
sad to print.
Another reference?
Gargantua is a solitaire game you can play using two decks of cards.
Lake Superior’s Gargantua
is almost 50 km miles north of Montreal River or about 40 km northwest of the
mouth of the Agawa River. The harbour itself is a wonderful sanctuary.
In the ancient days,
before European contact, the early peoples fished and hunted there. They also
attached spiritual significance to the area’s many wilderness islands. Only
boat or boot took you to Gargantua until the early 1960s. That’s when a rough access
road went in from the new Highway 17 North. During the 1930s and 1940s, when
lake trout fishing was at its peak, about 10 families lived there in summer. In
the winter at that time, two to five families called Gargantua Harbour their
home.
Gargantua is rugged,
mystical, Lake Superior shoreline. I like to think of it before it got a name;
think of the time when it was a home for moose and bear and caribou and fox.
Before men with ships
seeking minerals needed a shelter, before people with canoes had to slip in to
spend the night or before travellers on foot went there to live and harvest,
the place had become a keeper of magic.
Nanabozhung? Or Gargantua?
Who is right? I’m not one to say. But we could ask poor captured Buddy or the mosquitoes.
Or even the stars.
They would give us an
interesting answer.
