REPEATING HISTORY
Francophones follow the footsteps of the first European explorer to venture near Lake Ontario,
Fourteen lovers of history came together this weekend to trace the ancient route taken by French explorer Étienne Brûlé, who was the first known European to travel the Lake Ontario region with the Huron-Wendat in September 1615.
Led by Christian Bode, president of the Société d’histoire de Toronto, they paddled and hiked roughly 65 kilometres over three days, following the Toronto Carrying-Place Trail from Holland Marsh, south of Lake Simcoe, to the Swansea neighbourhood on the east bank of the Humber River.
“Sometimes it’s lost in suburbia, sometimes it’s there and sometimes you have to reroute,” Bode said of the trail, which is estimated to have been travelled for up to 8,000 years.
“What has impressed me is not the fact that we walked the whole way, but that, everywhere we went, we were welcomed sincerely.”
Bode said Brûlé’s quest into Huron-Wendat territory 400 years ago was a seminal event; the Frenchman grew familiar with the routes of the landscape and learned the aboriginals’ language, which facilitated future fur-trade excursions and the infiltration of the area by Jesuit missionaries. Ever since, Bode said, “there has been a French presence in the province of Ontario.”
The weekend of re-enactments of Brûlé’s travels started Friday, when the group canoed the first stretch in Lake Couchiching and attended a ceremony at the Champlain Monu- ment, named for the man who founded Quebec City in 1608 — then capital of New France — and commissioned Brûlé to help explore and chart the Great Lakes region. The group also attended the opening of a pavilion dedicated to local Ojibwa.
As Bode’s history buffs resumed their hike south of Lake Simcoe on Saturday and made their way southwest, they planted a tree in East Gwillimbury, took in a French choir performance at a Newmarket farmer’s market, lunched with the local mayor at the Aurora Armoury, unveiled a new plaque to the Carrying-Place Trail in Vaughan and finally made their way to Swansea.
The hike concluded Sunday with a celebration of francophone and aboriginal history at the Lucy Maud Montgomery Parkette on Riverside Dr., with actors dressed in the garb of the early 17th century and an unveiling of a moccasin project for the occasion by Garry Sault, an Ojibwa elder with the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation.
Asked how he’s feeling after the travelling, Bode laughed. “I am going to sleep very well tonight,” he said.
Daniele Caloz, who made a documentary about Brûlé, said he was a wealthy man who profited greatly on his knowledge of the Huron-Wendat language, as well as his familiarity with the waterways and trails around Lake Ontario, which was valuable to incoming waves of fur traders.
Brûlé was killed by the Huron-Wendat in about 1630, though the circumstances are unclear.