Local Legend on the West Shore of Wanapitei Lake

Wanapitei Lake is located near Sudbury, Ontario.  It's a very deep lake, and roundish in shape.  Recently,   geographers declared that the lake was likely formed when a meteor impacted with the Great Canadian Shield, forming the crater that, once filled with water, became Wanapitei Lake.

 This photo is from Wikepedia

Another possible outcome of the impact could well have been the creation of the "Sudbury Basin", but this was, in my opinion at least, the result of a separate impact from a much earlier time.  The meteor impact which created the Sudbury Basin brought great riches to the surface of the earth in the form of Copper, Nickel, Gold and Silver .  This resulted in much exploration, prospecting, drilling, blasting and ... eventually mines and smelters.


Again, historically speaking, it wasn't until very recently that Canadians as a people discovered that they have a history and a national identity that is separate and apart from that of the Excited States of America. In fact, Britain and France, along with Spain once owned most of the land that is now the US of A, and the boundaries were set in accordance with treaties that were put in place to protect and assure trading rights in the New World.  Treaties were made and broken over the years, and wars were fought which sometimes re-established old boundaries, but most often changed the established lines and drew new ones.

There were many companies created to take advantage of the wonderful, untapped resources of this huge continent; two that had the greatest effect on Canada and it's history and development are the Hudson's Bay Company and the Northwest Company.  These companies sent out emissaries on trading missions that covered the continent and took months to execute.  They were primarily in search of furs; Beaver, Martin, Fox, Muskrat, Mink, Otter and whatever else they could make money on.

Let's keep in mind that, for the most part these expeditions were sent to trade with the Natives and not ideally meant to actually trap the animals they sought.  No...they left that to the Native American Indians and once a year, on average, the traders met with the Indians to barter trade goods for furs.

The trading companies and the governments and private enterprises which backed them built trading posts which were often incorporated within forts.  The Natives would bring their furs to the trading post where they would be assessed by the trader, or factor and a value would then be placed on the furs.  The Native trappers could then barter for goods based on the value that the trader placed on both the goods and the furs.  Things haven't changed much, have they?

This went on for a couple hundred years and eventually, things began to settle down to a routine.  However, the matter of boundaries had not yet been settled satisfactorily between Canada and the United States.  Along came the Canadian explorer, fur trader and geographer David Thompson (1770 - 1857) who, shortly before his death was given the task of defining the boundary between Canada and The United States.  David Thompson's maps, which were hand-drawn while on expeditions across North America were the most finely detailed maps of the day and were considered to be extremely accurate.

He is known as the greatest land geographer who ever lived.  Over his career, he mapped over 3.9 million square kilometers of North America.  He was eminently qualified to define the line that would divide and separate us from each other to this day. 

So how did we get from the West Shore of Wanapitei Lake to David Thompson, you ask?  Well, as you all know by now, I spent my summers with my grandparents in a one room log cabin at the "open" end of West Bay, just across the water from Arlt's Lodge, which was called West Bay Camps.

Walter and Lena Arlt (from the left) and an unkown man.  This was taken circa 1940.

My grandmother, Melinda spent most of her time in and around the cabin and my grand father, Ernest spent most of his time outside.  I spent most of my time at my grandfather's side, wherever he went and whatever he did every day.  Some days, we hauled logs out of the lake and rolled them up onto a saw horse where they were sawn into stove wood lengths, then split and piled to dry.  Once a log was sitting in the crossed top members of the saw horse, I would climb up and sit on top of it to hold it still while grand dad worked the big cross cut saw that he had recently sharpened in the tool shed.  When a couple of short lengths had been cut off and fell to the ground, I would climb down and together we would move the log along on the saw horse and I would climb back up and take my place sitting on top of the log.

 Once or twice a week, we would pack up a lunch and go fishing.  Sometimes, if the lake was calm we went out into open water with deep trolling gear looking for lake trout; and sometimes we stayed close to the cabin and fished in the bay for pickerel, bass or pike.

Occasionally, we made a day of it and, leaving at dawn we made a dash for the North River.  It would take over an hour to get to the mouth of the river because the old cedar strip boat was powered by a five horsepower outboard that would run for hours on a quart of gasoline, but not very fast.

Within a few minutes of leaving the cabin, we would pass High Island which sits in the mouth of the bay. 

There was no protection from wind and rain from there all the way to the mouth of the North River, where we could get under the Poupore Lumber Company's long timber bridge which spanned the mouth of the river or, if the weather got really bad...we could tie up at Poupore's dock and walk over to the company cook camp where we might get a bowl of hot soup and a sandwich while we waited for the weather to clear.

On one occasion ... and this is where we get back to the Traders and the Indians ... we were forced by a terrible wind storm to take refuge in Post Creek.  We had been there once or twice before, just to have a look around, but found the approaches to the creek from the lake to be quite shallow and seemed to change every time there was a big blow on the lake, or a lot of ice movement during the spring break-up.  On-shore winds created very turbulent water along that shore and the big waves breaking as they neared the course gravel shore were deafening and sometimes terrifying.

On this particular day, we were left with no alternative but to try to get into the lee of the creek's mouth where we could empty the cold lake water out of the boat and go ashore to stretch our legs while we waited for Mother Nature to get over her tantrum.

After a short consultation, we decided that it was our only chance at survival and we must make it through the breakers and into the creek on the first try, because we knew that it would likely be our only try.  If we failed, we would be overturned in the surf, and might not make it ashore because of the huge waves and the powerful undertow.

Twice, grand dad tried to steer the boat so that we would be lined up for the narrow creek mouth, and twice we had to abort the attempt due to the waves and currents pushing us sideways.  But there was a pattern in the waves, and grand dad figured out that if we started a bit more to the south of our last attempts, and timed it so that we got on top of one of those big wave-beasts, we could ride the crest right into the mouth of Post Creek.

Getting the boat positioned where he wanted it, he began our approach.  The waves were coming at us from behind and he waited until he was sure the bow of the boat was pointed just so and, ... as the boat settled into the trough between two waves, he gunned the little five horse power motor and got the boat up on top of the wave.  We were running at exactly the same speed as the wave and heading directly toward the mouth of the creek.  Shooting over the gravel bar with six feet of water under our keel was the most exciting thing I had ever done in my short seven year life span!!!  What a thrill that ride was!  I was never so proud of my grand dad as I was at that moment.  We were in!

Upon reaching the dark, brackish water of the creek, grand dad turned the motor sharply to the left and I jumped up onto the bow of the boat with the bow-rope in hand, ready to leap to the shore and pull the boat to safety.

Once the boat had been bailed out and everything was stowed away again, we went ashore with our lunch in hand.  Post Creek in those years ran through a very large, flat field that was covered by deep grasses that flowed like music when the wind blew.  And when the wind wasn't blowing, and the air was still, the field came alive with small birds, butterflies and grasshoppers.  If the sun was shining on a still day, the air grew very warm and a seven year old boy could take off his clothes and run through the tall grass in the hot sun.  There were no people to be found in the area in 1953; no buildings, no public access, no litter, no broken glass and no cigarette butts.  However, we hadn't eaten our lunch yet, and grand dad asked me to find a nice place where we could sit down and have our cheddar cheese sandwiches which were made with nana's home made bread and real butter!

In the middle of the field that I described above, there was a rise in the ground that was about four times the area covered by our log cabin.  I chose a spot near the edge of this raised area for our lunch.  After stomping the grass down flat, grand dad spread out the oil-cloth that was kept under the bow of the boat for emergency shelter or, on a day like today...a table cloth.

OK....where's the bit about the early fur traders and the Natives?   Well, it was right where we were sitting while eating our lunch.  While we sat in the sunshine, my curiosity began to poke me with regard to the raised area I had chosen to set up our picnic.  Why would there be a nearly square, raised outline in the middle of the grass covered field?  It looked to me as if there might have been a building on the site many years prior to our visit and it had either burned down, or had rotted away, leaving only the foundation as a ghost of its former existence.  With the last part of my sandwich in my hand, I got up and began to walk the perimeter of the "foundation".  Here and there, I kicked and picked at small bumps, holes and other anomalies hoping to find a clue to the genesis of this place.

Within a short time, I found a cast iron pot that had rusted almost all the way through.  The handle was long gone, and the little iron feet had almost disappeared as well.  Laying nearby, under a heavy cover of grass roots and rotted wood lay a very old tool that resembled an axe head with a pick head or adze attached to it.  The metal was very heavily pitted by many years of rust and natural erosion.  I brought these to my grand dad and we turned them over and over in our hands, all the while speculating about the origin of these items.

Some time later, the wind died down, leaving the lake to settle into a mildly choppy surface.  We decided to leave the shelter of Post Creek and make our way back to West Bay.  Perhaps we would let our lines down deep and troll for a lake trout for dinner.

Later that night, over a game of dominoes, grand dad and Nana and I talked about the adventure that he and I had.  Nana didn't know about the really exciting part; about how grand dad and I rode the crest of a wave into the narrow entrance of Post Creek.  We had already decided that it wouldn't benefit us if she heard that story.  She already worried about us when we went off for a day of fishing, or hunting for logs, or picking blue berries.  Grand dad had been doing some deep, quiet thinking during our game.  He played well, but he seemed to be far away.  He sipped tea from his big tea cup.  He rolled and smoked another cigarette.  Finally, he said that he recalled talking with an old prospector named Castleman, who used to have a cabin on Mountain Creek which enters Wanapitei Lake just a few miles down the way from Post Creek.  Mr. Castleman apparently had told grand dad about the origin of the name, "Post Creek".  According to Mr. Castleman, there had once been a trading post near the mouth of the creek ... a part of a once-great trade route between the Saint Lawrence,  the Pacific and Hudson's Bay.  

The big  empty field, which was once covered with deep grass that waved in the sun and wind, is now covered with roads, buildings and the debris of human habitation.  Where once, an old man and a boy sat in the sun, eating a cheese sandwich and talking about a couple of very old artifacts ... cabins now are crowded together; a restaurant serves meals to travelers and people stand, looking out at the lake, wondering what it might have looked like before humans came to this place.