CHARTING THE LAKEHEAD
CAN A MAP TELL A STORY? CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC SENT CARTOGRAPHER CHRIS BRACKLEY TO LAKE SUPERIOR TO ANSWER THAT QUESTION
Can a map tell a story? Canadian Geographic sent cartographer Chris Brackley to Lake Superior to answer that question
Green water and pink rock. As I gaze out at Ontario’s Sleeping Giant Provincial Park from the scenic lookout on Mount Mckay in the Fort William First Nation reserve, my preconceived notions about nature’s palette are already being challenged. Like a painter, I am endlessly documenting the colours I see around me. I soak them in wherever I go, always broadening my mental colour-bank in case I ever have to map the places I experience in my day-to-day life.
I have been Canadian Geographic’s cartographer for nearly a decade, and as such, my job is to create technically precise yet conceptually revealing pictures of our country — pictures created using the codified language of lines and symbols, forms and colours. I have produced thousands of maps depicting much of Canada and parts of the rest of the world. But as a modern digital cartographer, I have mapped from afar — from a desk. And in mapping places without experiencing them first-hand, I have sometimes had to insinuate how a place really is — not only how it looks, but how it feels.
This trip to Superior’s north shore to visit Thunder Bay and, along with Parks Canada guides, Lake Superior National Marine Conservation Area and Pukaskwa National Park, has provided me with the rare opportunity to experience a place before mapping it, to put to the test whether I have been on the right path in my constant quest to create maps that meaningfully reflect the places they represent.
THE CITY
The James Street Bridge reopened to car traffic in November 2019, reconnecting the Fort William First Nation with the city of Thunder Bay — a step forward in the sometimes rocky process of bringing historically distinct communities together. Port Arthur, Fort William and the Fort William First Nation have always been geographically close, but proximity is no guarantee of unity.
An alien (or a cartographer, for that matter) looking down from above would see a single connected pattern of roads and buildings, but the reality on the ground is not always as integrated as its unified footprint would imply. Driving around Thunder Bay with Taylor Green, longtime local and former owner and guide at Animikii Tours, I can’t help but notice most of the stories he shares relate to challenges brought on by the 1970 merger of the former towns into modern Thunder Bay, and the ongoing process of reconciliation between Thunder Bay and the neighbouring First Nation. It’s a tricky business merging communities, especially when they each have proud and distinct histories.
If there is one thing that residents of the area share, it’s their distance from a major metropolitan centre. Everyone I meet shares a story of their epic journeys to far-off Winnipeg or Minneapolis in search of big-name concerts or high-end clothing. More than many communities, residents of Thunder Bay are a product of their geography; they are alone, together.
They have faced many challenges in making their collective isolation work. Where should the downtown be — or can there be two? What kind of urban development should define the land between the two former towns, which has become known as the Intercity? And in the current Canadian climate of reconciliation, the question of how to build bridges with not only the local First Nations but also the many First Nations people from Ontario’s far north, whose only access to schooling and health care is in Thunder Bay, is forefront. The fact that a once-closed real-life bridge has now reopened is a hopeful sign that the three communities are finding meaningful ways to move forward together.
PROTECTED WATERS
Lake Superior’s north shore is rugged and remote. So much so that one of the last sections of the Trans-canada Highway didn’t open until 1960, when the 495-kilometre stretch of Highway 17 between Schreiber and Sault Ste. Marie, part of which was known as “the gap,” was finally cleared, blasted and graded. Looking out at Superior from a rocky outcrop above the tiny town of Redrock, I am awestruck by the raw power of the world’s largest lake (sorry — I just can’t accept that the Caspian Sea is really a lake). My primary goal as a cartographer is to connect people with place, and when I have a quiet moment to breathe a place in, to absorb it, I try to take that opportunity. Here on the shores of Lake Superior, I am surprised by the effortlessness of feeling deeply connected to this landscape.
The lake’s elemental power, combined with the area’s remoteness, is at the heart of what attracts tourists to Superior’s north shore, but these qualities also create challenges. Convincing people to travel so far afield is not a simple sell, and once they get here, they need an integrated system of accessible and safe activities to experience Canada’s sometimes unforgiving inland ocean.
Enter Lake Superior National Marine Conservation Area. First announced by the federal government in 2007, it is only in the last few years that it has really taken flight. The effect of this conservation area has been as much about the coalescence of local community recreational initiatives (most of which predate the park itself) along the shorelines and inner bays as it has been about protecting the marine environment. Like the Trans-canada Highway before it, building this recreational infrastructure in a thinly populated and faraway place takes time. But thanks in no small part to cooperation between Parks Canada and the area’s Indigenous and non-indigenous communities, it seems that the Lake Superior National Marine Conservation Area’s time has come.
PAINTED LANDS
To me, maps are like a stage play. The route lines and points of interest are the actors. They take centre stage, demanding attention with their saturated colours and flashy symbols. They tell the story. The rest of the map, all the background water and land, is the stage on which the play unfolds. Both elements are critical to tell a deep and meaningful story. Any map that ignores stage design misses a profound geographic opportunity — the opportunity to tell a story in context, rather than in isolation.
I was drawn to cartography by the background of maps. All those concentric contour lines fascinated me, evoking the real-life hills and valleys they represented. They drew me into a half-decade of off-trail exploration, where I built a deep relationship with what I have come to call the “land between.” So, whenever I can justify depicting a rich and full land-cover background on a map, I do so.
But as a modern digital cartographer, I rarely get to experience the landscapes shown on my maps. I make best guesses about what a place looks and feels like by referencing photography and satellite imagery, but without immersing myself in a place, I am always to some degree guessing.
The year before my visit to this region, I was contracted by Parks Canada to make maps of the then newly cut backcountry route (opposite). Spending three days hiking Pukaskwa National Park’s Mdaabii Miikna trail therefore created an ideal test case to see how successful I had been mapping from afar and to learn how immersive travel through the landscape would change the way I mapped it. I brought my camera, ink pens and pencil crayons, and I observed the land with an artist’s eye. I saw its ever-changing
colours and textures, water in all shades of blue and green blending in ways that could make the iconic blues of the Caribbean seem uninspired. I saw lichens practically glowing in electric orange and florescent mint, organizing themselves in patterns that mimicked those of the forest itself when viewed from space. And in the end, I realized (like all landscape painters before me) that the best a cartographer can hope for is to capture a particular mood from a particular time. That water isn’t simply blue and trees aren’t simply green. That there are many right choices about how to render the “land between.”