Just finished off a video trip report on our 2021 trip through Wabakimi Provincial Park:
Tag: wabakimi
TRIP REPORT: WABAKIMI PROVINCIAL PARK – ALLANWATER – WHITEWATER – CARIBOU
Grey vapours loomed above us as we stood on the edge of Mattice Lake in Armstrong, Ontario. The cool, early morning air held a faint scent of smoke; a manifestation of record-breaking wildfires raging just to our west that would claim some 800,000 hectares of boreal forest by the end of summer, 2021. Under the hazy, overcast sky, a slight breeze tickled the surface of the lake. The water was cold and dark and the forest was dark too. The scene held a magnetic gloominess that stoked my sense of anticipation. We were about to begin an adventure through the heart of Wabakimi Provincial Park – a land of some 10,000 lakes and 2,000 kilometres of canoe routes…
TRIP REPORT: WABAKIMI PROVINCIAL PARK – KOPKA RIVER
The magnificent, primeval ridges and valleys of Wabakimi were carved and scoured in the twilight of the last ice age, some 12,000 years ago. Black spruce, tamarack and jack pine, thin and stunted from long, harsh northern winters, cling to the shallow veneer of soil that scantly coats this portion of the Shield country. This harsh world still wholly belongs to the woodland caribou, the grey wolf and the bald eagle.
Signs of humanity are sparse; few tread here. But if you endeavour to pass through this land, look carefully under the shadowy canopies of those weathered and stunted tamaracks; under the beard lichen and Labrador tea; amongst the sphagnum moss, wood ferns and wild blueberries bushes; you will find trails of another time. Gaze over the placid waters, down the tumbling rivers, across the serpentine lakes, and envision the water trails of yesteryear. These canoe routes were established over centuries by the North of Superior Ojibwe – ancestors of the Whitesand, Mishkeegogamang, Saugeen, and Eabametoong First Nations. Today those canoe paths remain.
THE TERRA INCOGNITA 