The Call of the Wild: Temagami Topophilia
May 2009 © Claire Smerdon
Presented at the Canadian Communication Association Conference, Ottawa, May 30, 2009
Audio Clip - WMA format (717 KB)
What draws us to wild landscapes? Why do some feel “at home” in places most find inhospitable? Why do we choose to live in remote locations despite economic and physical hardship? Why do place names fuel the imagination and evoke strong feelings? Geographer Yi-Fu Tuan (1974) describes these emotional connections between humans and their physical environments as topophilia (“love of place”).
Temagami Wilderness - © Claire Smerdon
I spent over 30 years canoeing in the district of northeastern Ontario known as the Temagami Wilderness before becoming a full-time resident in 1997. This move sparked my interest in the influence of landscape on communication, particularly in Tuan’s studies of space and place and Harold Innis’ theories of time and space-biased communication. I was given the opportunity to further my research in this area by participating in a larger project headed by Professor bettina heinz of Royal Roads University, titled Finding Self in Space, which examines how people experience their sensory interaction with their environment. I am one of a team interviewing residents of specific geographic settings in North America.
Tuan observes that “once a people have settled down and adapted to the new setting, it is difficult to know their environmental attitudes for, having become native, they lose the urge to make comparisons and comment on their new home” (1974, p. 68). I study the differences in attitudes between people who grew up in the Temagami landscape and have chosen to stay and those who chose to move here as adults. For this brief presentation, I will focus on interviews with two very different fellow residents, both relative “newcomers” to Temagami, and their connections to the place we call “home.”
Temagami Wilderness - © Claire Smerdon
But first – where and what is “Temagami?” In order to understand the landscape and its effect on humans through the ages, a brief geography and history is necessary. Temagami (variously spelled Timagami) means Deep Water in the Algonkian dialect of the Teme-Augama Anishnabai. For many people – visitors, canoeists, cottage owners and year-round residents, “Temagami” is as much a social construction, an idea, as a physical place.
The area known as the Temagami Wilderness is, according to historians Bruce Hodgins and Jamie Benidickson, “neither precise nor constant” (1989, p.3). From a contemporary perspective, the area encompasses 700,000 hectares of Crown Land in Northeastern Ontario. At the heart lies Lake Temagami, described by an early Grand Trunk Railway promotional brochure as “some gigantic octopus with its innumerable legs and arms and feelers stretching out in every direction into this wonderland of evergreen hills,” (1915). The lake boasts over 1200 islands and hundreds of kilometers of uninhabited shoreline; even today mainland development is limited to the village of Temagami, which is located at the extreme north-east end of the lake, on both the TransCanada Highway and the Ontario Northland Railway, almost precisely 100 km north of North Bay.
This is Precambrian Shield country. Hodgins and Benidickson (1989) describe the complex geological events, the actions of the prehistoric volcanoes and glaciers responsible for the rugged topography, which includes the two highest points in Ontario, the Ishpatina Ridge and Maple Mountain and the hundreds of interconnecting lakes, streams and bogs which form the fringe of the Arctic watershed and encompass headwaters of both the Ottawa and Nipissing drainage systems. Temagami’s vegetation is described as “mixed forest” as it is situated between the northern Boreal Forest of balsam, tamarack & black spruce and the more temperate Great Lakes – St Lawrence region, which is dominated by pine and hardwood forests. The Temagami forest is typically dense bush with a few clearings beneath stands of red pines, not the clear forest floor protected by a high canopy as is typical in hardwood forests.
For the Teme-Augama Anishnabai – the People of the Deep Water – the area is not a “wilderness,” at least not in the Judeo-Christian tradition of the earliest European explorers in North America. For the Teme-Augama Anishnabai, the area known as the Temagami Wilderness is n’Daki Menan – the Homeland. Historians tell us that “The earliest evidence of human habitation in the Temagami country” dates from “about 3000 BC,” and, while frequently and inaccurately described as “nomadic,” the People of the Deep Water “had a relatively extensive homeland which sustained their hunting, fishing and gathering through regular cycles of seasonal migration” (Hodgins & Benidickson, 1989, pp. 9-10).
Historian Craig Macdonald (2005) has devoted much of the past 30 years researching traditional routes of the Teme Augama Anishnabai and has produced a highly detailed map of the Temagami land, showing the ancient nastawgan, the “ways of going.” These routes define the “Temagami wilderness” and are key to understanding humans’ interaction with the landscape. Macdonald writes that “Before the advent of roads and railways, waterways provided the principal routes for travel and communication… It was much easier to travel on the waterways than to traverse the rugged, rocky and densely forested terrain. Waterways were used not only in the summer for canoe travel but also in the winter for travel by snowshoe and toboggan.” Although onigum (portages) and bon-ka-nah (winter trails) were part of the nastawgan, there were advantages to using waterways for both winter and summer travel in preference to the land trails. The portages and winter trails were no longer than necessary to avoid obstacles or cross heights of land, and generally followed the natural fault lines, incidentally the same routes followed by the animals which supplied sustenance for the early peoples.
I suggest that the nastawgan as a medium of communication, especially when associated with the oral tradition of the Teme-Augama Anishnabai suggest a communication biased towards time, although the nastawgan certainly cover physical space. Tuan speaks of the blending of time and space in experiencing self in a landscape. Whether these understandings apply only to the aboriginal peoples or are incorporated in the communication of those who share the landscape today are concepts I will want to explore further.
By the 1880s, the Temagami area was being aggressively promoted as a tourist destination by the railways, although none could deliver passengers to within 100 km of the lake and visitors were forced to make the arduous journey from Mattawa up Lake Temiskaming and then upstream and overland to Lake Temagami. The construction of the provincial Temiskaming & Northern Ontario railway began in 1900, ostensibly to serve the farming communities in the Little Clay Belt at the north end of Lake Temiskaming. An entrepreneur from Sudbury, seeing the tourism potential of the area, used his political influence to have the railway rerouted to take in the northeast tip of Lake Temagami, where the village stands today. By 1904 the railway reached Temagami. Lodges and hotels were quickly constructed to meet the demands of the wealthy vacationers from southern Ontario and northern United States, and fleets of steam boats plied their way down the lake. Meantime youth camps were established, inventing the ‘Temagami wilderness canoeing experience’ taking advantage of the extensive network of traditional canoe routes and portages and private cottages sprang up on the lake’s many islands. The Ferguson Highway was completed in 1929, but most visitors came to Temagami by rail until the road conditions improved in the 1950s.
Today many of the Teme-Augama Anishnabai live on the Bear Island Reserve at the centre of Lake Temagami. Much of the land described as the Temagami wilderness is subject to an ongoing land claim discussion. While lucrative mining and forestry industries were established in the area over the 20th century, by the early 1990s the primary mines and planning mills closed and by the beginning of the 21st century, the small town of 800 year-round residents was left with seasonal recreation and tourism as its main economy, much as it was 100 years before.
Tuan (1974) tells us that, “Visitor and native focus on very different aspects of the environment, Generally speaking, we may say that only the visitor (and particularly the tourist) has a viewpoint; his perception is often a matter of using his eyes to compose pictures” (p. 63). Certainly the Temagami landscape has influenced a number of visitors, including musicians, visual artists and writers, from Archibald Lampman, who penned his famous ‘Temagami’ poem before dying at an early age of heart problems attributed to the strenuous Temagami portages, to Archie Bellany the Englishman who used the Temagami landscape to reinvent himself as the native conservationist Grey Owl, from novelist Margaret Atwood who has set a number of her stories in the Temagami area and written extensively of the place of wilderness in Canadian writing, particularly in her 1972 Survival, to the highly popular television producer, Les Stroud, a ‘survivor’ of a rather different type.
Both of my interviewees chose Temagami over other landscapes. They came as “visitors” and while after about 20 years I would consider them “local,” to the “locals” they may always be “from away.” Judy is a visual artist; Lorie’s background is in accounting and administration. Judy moved to Temagami in the early 1990s having decided it was the landscape that resonated with her, a landscape that inspired the types of images she wanted to explore. Lorie was always attracted to Northern Ontario and 20 years ago when her husband’s construction business afforded them the opportunity to relocate to an island in Lake Temagami, a place he’d known virtually all his life, she jumped at the chance. Both had experienced summers at their family cottages in Northern Ontario and spoke fondly of those experiences.
Judy now lives in a small cabin less than five kilometers south of the village of Temagami, Lorie’s island is located in the Southwest Arm of the lake, about 55 kilometers from the village and 20 kilometers from the end of the access road. The differences in location are key to how they experience Temagami; while Judy can choose to insulate herself and ignore her surroundings, Lorie’s entire existence is dictated by her landscape.
Hardly surprisingly, Judy the artist spoke in terms of colour and the way it changes depending upon the season, time of day, weather. She spoke of textures, of the lack of straight lines. Lorie, on the other hand, spoke in detail of using sight for navigation on the lake, especially at night when the usual landmarks blend into a dark silhouette and she has to look for other and different signs to navigate safely. She also spoke of the appearance of the ice, from freeze-up to breakup. “good” black ice, which indicates it’s frozen hard and is safe to travel, compared to soft “white” or “grey” ice.
The sense of touch seemed closely allied to vision. Both spoke of the rugged textures of the terrain and vegetation, both from a visual painterly perspective and the need for protection – both told me, “it’s not somewhere you go barefoot!” They believe protection is necessary, from not only the weather and insects but from the landscape itself, saying it’s necessary to provide oneself with suitable clothing as protection against sharp rocks, spiky branches and sharp spruce needles. Lorie spoke of the ‘feeling’ of the clear cold water and is sure she can tell the difference between the ‘feel’ of Lake Temagami water and other water. She can certainly taste the difference! Questions about the sense of taste elicited the fewest comments as both seemed to associate it with foraging for natural foods, which neither has really done. Both initially associated the sense of smell with the unpleasant man-made odours of the city, but after some discussion they both commented positively about the wet green smells of spring. Judy uses her sense of smell to warn her of the presence of animals.
The sense of hearing plays a vital part in their lives, both the pleasure of listening to the wind in the trees and the chattering of animals and what Judy referred to as “the small sounds” which she remembered enjoying as a child at the cottage. Lorie can tell by the sound of the wind in the trees if she’s going to be able to travel that day. Judy concluded that while she had moved to this landscape specifically because of the visual appeal, that now the visual had been subsumed by all the senses, the entire physical sense of “being here.”
When we spoke of how the Temagami landscape affects communication, Lorie spoke at length about the difficulties of communicating with family when you live in a place with no phone – for several years they only had a marine band radio at the island and had to relay messages through people who lived closer to the mainland and did have phones, and about the efforts she made to keep in touch with family.
Judy’s reaction was quite different:
What I found, when I first moved here, and what I still find, to some extent, although not as much, is that my language disappeared. Because I was not in an environment daily, where I had to use language skills at a very high level, they began to disintegrate. My use of language became quite, ahhh--- stilted.
Both spoke of defining characteristics of the Temagami landscape as rock, trees and water. While Judy does not actually live on Lake Temagami, a creek runs through her property, providing a “highway” for animal traffic, and she spoke extensively of “water below the surface”, the bogs and swamps.
Lorie’s Temagami experience is defined by water, whether liquid or solid. She refers to the shoreline as a “wall of trees.” The water provides her means of travel and communication but creates isolation. However, I don’t think Lorie ever mentioned a swamp – her world is circumscribed by motor-boat and Lake Temagami and she would have no reason to explore the creeks and bogs around the lake, except possibly by snow-machine in the winter. Lorie finds the landscape – particularly in winter - is a dominant factor in her communication – and conversation:
We talk about it - constantly. We’re always talking about – something about the water. And it’s usually about the water as opposed to the um y’know the land although there’s discussion there with the snow but it’s the water and whether you can travel or not travel and how you can travel, and, you know, and so when you’re talking to people that’s what you’re always talking about.
Tuan, when speaking of the Australian aborigine, considers that:
Landscape is personal and tribal history made visible. The native’s identity – his place in the total scheme of things – is not in doubt, because the myths that support it are as real as the rocks and waterholes he can see and touch. He finds recorded in his land the ancient story of the lives and deeds of the immortal beings from whom he is descended, and whom he reveres. The whole countryside is his family tree. (1977, 157-8)
When I asked Judy “Do you feel personally connected to the landscape you live in?” she replied:
I’m a human being, I live in this cultural environment, I live in this physical environment, which is a contemporary house, even if it’s a log house. I socialize with other human beings, my means of making a living (if you can call it that) is about communicating with other human beings using certain accepted norms. The role of the natural world in all of that is not that great. It sustains me, it is my refuge, it is my source of inspiration, and yet… my involvement with it on a day-to-day basis is pretty superficial.
Judy seems to suggest that people today, especially people of non-aboriginal ancestry, cannot truly be connected to this landscape.
Or the most stunning thing is listening to tapes of the old Anishnabai elders, talking about how they used to live and even then, y’know, what they remember is a period of transition, ok, it’s not the old traditional life where everything that you used and ate and lived under came from the bush, it was a kind of a half-and-half, but even so, their, the connection of their psyche, of their consciousness, at a profound level was soooooo completely integrated with the character of the land on which they lived, the changing of the seasons, the nature of the animals, what the plants afforded them.
I think the key feature of my interviews is that all the people who live in Temagami have chosen to live here, as indeed, did the earliest people to inhabit this landscape. Hodgins, Macdonald and aboriginal author Madeline Katt Theriault all detail the rich resources that supported the traditional lifestyle of the Teme-Augama Anishnabai, the particular locations of birch trees with bark suitable for canoe-building, the rich and varied wildlife to provide food and clothing and, of course, the lake and interconnecting nastawgan that provided access to these resources. If this landscape did not afford the elements needed to support a comparatively good life, the ancestors of the Teme-Augama Anishnabai, would surely have found another homeland.
Judy, Lorie and all the people I’ve interviewed either chose to live in Temagami as adults or grew up here and chose to stay - or return after living elsewhere. And this affection for this landscape is probably the only thing we have in common, although we may express it in very different ways and – love it for very different reasons.
Tuan (1977) considers the attachment to landscape to be universal: “This profound attachment to the homeland appears to be a worldwide phenomenon… place is an archive of fond memories and splendid achievements that inspire the present; place is permanent and hence reassuring to man, who sees frailty in himself and chance and flux everywhere” (p. 154 ). Lorie concludes:
When I first moved up here onto the lake, um, it was like coming home and I see that in my husband too, I mean, he couldn’t live anywhere else – well he could but he would not have the spirit and he would not be the person that he needs to be if he was living somewhere else - and I think I – and I used to just say that about him, and I think that was important for him and then I realized well, in fact it’s really important, probably more important for me than it is for him, because I um sort of have the spirituality of, of living on Lake Temagami, and he does too because he’s been around for a long time, but, --- you know, you move around, you travel, you live in a lot of different places, right, and then finally you arrive where you know you’re meant to be.