Recalling an epic journey
Historic 1,600-km canoe trek from Cape Breton to Montreal remembered
ESKASONI – Ernest Johnson has never been as sunburnt as he was in the summer of 1967 when he arrived in Montreal after 31 days in a canoe.
“Nobody got sick, but everybody was really sunburnt, lots of bug bites,” the 78-year-old Eskasoni First Nation elder recalled of the 1,000-mile (just over 1,600 km) voyage he made with 13 other Mi’kmaw men from Unama’ki.
The canoe trip was organized by the Mi'kmaq Grand Council to coincide with Canada's centennial year festivities but was an independent activity celebrating Mi'kmaq history instead, following the route taken by Mi’kmaw representatives in the late 1800s to enter into a peace treaty with the Kahnawake Mohawks.
“I wouldn’t have gone if it was for the centennial because I had absolutely no connection to Canada, what Canada is. To me, we did it on behalf of the Mi’kmaw nation because we were proud, that’s why I went there,” Johnson said.
CELEBRATED DEPARTURE
The Mi’kmaq Grand Council had applied for federal funding and was able to purchase two 19-foot canoes and paddles built by the Chestnut Canoe Company in Fredericton, N.B.
A self-described Mi'kmaq outdoorsman, Johnson heard about the trip from his brother, Greg, and jumped at the chance to paddle to Montreal.
“I was really excited,” Johnson said.
The group departed from Mniku, the tiny sacred island off Potlotek First Nation on the morning of Sunday, June 18 after the blessing of the canoes by the Catholic priest and amid farewell celebrations attended by Grand Chief Donald Marshall Sr. and hundreds of wellwishers.
The group of canoers, most in their 20s and 30s, arrived in St. Peter’s a few hours later to a warm welcome and a complimentary meal from a local restaurant owner before paddling on to Port Hastings, where they came ashore to register for passage through the Canso Canal and were again greeted by throngs of locals excited to catch a glimpse or a photograph of the Mi’kmaw canoe team.
ROUGH START
Johnson remembers the crowd waving on the shoreline at Pictou Landing First Nation the next morning as the two canoes passed and headed for the open waters of the Northumberland Strait between Nova Scotia and P.E.I., where they had their first encounter with rough waters.
“The waves were 20, 30 feet. We wanted to get in to shore, so we got on a wave and went in with it. Our canoe made it very easily, but the other one, we told them to do the same, but they couldn’t do it, and they capsized,” he said.
The paddlers were clinging to the overturned canoe and Arthur Johnson from Potlotek First Nation, the youngest at 14 or 15 years old, went under.
“The boys, including myself, all jumped in to retrieve them. My brother had to give him mouth-to-mouth and after we finally got the water out of him, he spent one night in the hospital and the next day came back good as new,” Johnson chuckled, shaking his head.
LIVING OFF THE LAND
From then on, Johnson said the travelling was fairly easy until they reached the Nova ScotiaNew Brunswick border, where they had to portage, carrying the canoes and all their belongings to get to the waters of the Bay of Fundy.
By that point, they were hungry and sick of eating canned beans, so they pulled together enough cash to purchase 50-pound bags of potatoes, turnips, carrots and cabbage.
“After that, we just had to find something, salmon or porcupine or eels, something to go with it. Food was there for us, and we lived right off the land,” Johnson said.
“This wasn’t an event for us – it was something every one of those paddlers prepared for all their lives, learning the knowledge of our ways. We got holes in the canoes, and we patched them with natural materials. We got cuts, we got bites, and we treated them with our own pharmacy all around us."
CELEBRITY TREATMENT
The young men were often met with hospitality along their
journey, with crowds awaiting their arrival with offerings of food and drink, especially at First Nations communities along the way, where they would sometimes stop for a day or two.
“We played ball wherever we could, we played games wherever they’d let us – arm wrestling. We did a lot of things out of fun, humour.”
Eventually, though, the celebrity treatment started to wear on the weary travellers.
“The media was getting to be a nuisance, they were there waiting on the shore every day, we were getting interviewed. So we made a plan to travel at night and wash and clean up during the day, cook food, and we camped in solitary places where we couldn’t be seen,” he said.
ARRIVAL AT EXPO
From the Bay of Fundy, the men travelled along the St. John River, straddling the Canada-U.S. border, and then trucked the canoes to the St. Lawrence River at Levis, Que. It was somewhere around Trois-Rivieres when they knew they were nearing the end of their journey.
“It was a sad ending – it was a good experience and we had gotten used to it. We arrived in Montreal and saw the pavilions at night, all lit up, and we decided to go back three or four miles and make camp for the night,” Johnson remembers.
The pavilions were a part of the main event of Canada’s centennial year celebrations, known as Expo ’67, an international exhibition that welcomed more than 50-million visitors from around the world that year.
The Mi’kmaw canoers started out the next morning, some dressed in their regalia, paddling slowly to give the crowds at the world fair time to see them coming.
“They pulled our canoes up with chains and we climbed the ladders. There were millions of people there and that wasn’t a surprise, but it wasn’t comfortable for us.
“We got up to a big stage or whatever and one of the guys there said, ‘Okay, you’re going to do a dance for us,’ and we said, you know, the hell with the dance, feed us,” Johnson said.
NEW AND RENEWED BONDS
After a meal, the canoers continued across the St. Lawrence River to their destination, Kahnawake First Nation, for the final leg of the reenactment, but Johnson, whose mocassins had gone missing after he left them on his canoe to dry, stayed behind in Montreal.
“The reenactment, to me, was an acknowledgement that we still have a treaty, and we are brothers and sisters, the Mi’kmaq and the Mohawk, and we are under their protection. So, we had a ceremony in their longhouses to reaffirm that bond – well, I wasn’t there because I was still looking for my shoes,” Johnson said with a laugh.
Looking back, Johnson said the journey made by the 14 men, and the experiences they shared along the way, created a family bond between them.
In addition to Johnson and his brother Greg, the canoe team included Arthur Johnson, Norman Basque, Eddie Kabatay, Adrian Morris, John Sylliboy, Valerian Marshall, Gordon Patles, Peter Kabatay, Ray Googoo, George Francis and George Johnson.
“Some of us were related but by the end of the trip, even after 40 years, we still have that bond, we still have that connection no matter what. There’s only four of us left now.”
Johnson would like to see their voyage, and the one made by his people over 100 years earlier, recognized.
“This is what happened and I think it should be in the history books and in the museums where it belongs."