8/17 Kakabeki Falls, Ontario

These are the second-highest falls in Ontario--40 meters or 131' high, and frankly, they are pretty impressive.  (The highest falls in Ontario would obviously be Niagara Falls.)  They are located about 20 miles northwest of Toronto and are part of a provincial park that has camping and other recreational activities.  It might be an interesting place to camp, if I ever come back this way.  

The other nice thing about the falls is that there is a boardwalk on both sides of the river, and a car bridge that takes you from the parking lot to the other side.  It was a nice hour-long stop.

 

This gives you an idea of where the falls are located.  

Looking downriver from the bridge.  No swimming here!!

8/17 Anishinaabe Keeshigun Event at Historic Fort Williams

The Anishinaabe are a tribe of indigenous people in the Thunder Bay area.  Every year, they present this weekend event to demonstrate the culture and skills of their people, and I was lucky enough to be there on this particular weekend.

I separated this event into a separate posting for two reasons:  the fort posting was getting too long and I spent a separate day at the fort for this event.  One problem is that I did not take as many photos as I should have.  Missing from this posting are photos of the little tables where native crafts such as making bannock or pottery were demonstrated.  Also, we in the audience were asked not to take photos of the many dancers, so you will have to imagine the couple of hours of the dancers in a group and separately by tribe.  

Tip:  Don't skip the video I took of the drummers and the little boy at the end!

This photo shows a small encampment of natives as it might have looked in the days or fur traders. 

 

 

A reconstructed teepee made of birch bark.  

The inside of the teepee.  In winter, the walls would have been reinforced with additional layers of bark and cracks filled with moss. 

This is the area where the tribes were able to sell handmade goods.

 

 

These are dancers getting ready.  I was able to take this photo because they had not started dancing yet.

There were two sets of drummers that took turns drumming and singing to accompany the dancers.   Click here to see a video of their warming up and the child of one of the drummers.  He hung around his dad and the other drummers for a while, and then started wandering around.  At one point, not shown on the video, he obviously got tired and found himself a spot to sit between a couple of strangers on the bleachers.  Eventually, his mom found and retrieved him!!

I need to take more pictures next time, but I did enjoy the afternoon. 

8/16 Historic Fort William, Thunder Bay

Warning:  This is going to be a long post for a couple of reasons, the first of which is that this historic fort is really huge.  The second is that I spent two four-hour days there, and took a ton of photos, but really did not even hit all the buildings.  

Also important to know is that this place is not the original fort from 1816, but was constructed in about 1972 to reflect the original fort in Portage, Minnesota, just down the shore of Lake Superior from Thunder Bay.  It is supposedly a faithful reproduction, but I could find little information online about the original fort.  The one piece of interesting information I did find was that this fort was much larger than most fur-trading forts because it was a central point where Native Americans and fur traders met to sell and trade their furs with the North West Company.  Many of the large buildings stored trade goods and furs, plus it had a large military contingent to protect its operations. 

Anyway, nearly all of the buildings are filled with period appropriate and historical furnishings, and the employees are dressed in appropriate period costumes.  They also stick to their roles as 1816 people at the fort and will not answer any questions outside of their roles!!  We will start at the entrance! 

 

You pay admission at the visitor center, but the fort entrance is a considerable walk away, though there is a shuttle for people like me who do not want to walk.  This is the actual entrance to the fort. 

 

 

I had to stop and look at these pins on the outside of the log palisade walls. 

On the inside, I noticed that the walls were strengthened by the use of half logs and wooden pins to hold them in place.  Nails were hard to get on the frontier and had to be made individually, so they carved each wooden pin individually and hammered them into place.

Next are just a few of the many buildings inside the fort walls. 

This is a flagpole with a sentry post in the background.

I could not post the insides of every building, but I thought this building showing the bales of trade goods being stored.

And this building had several hundred hanging furs.  I wonder where they got them all???

This building was better finished than most and represents the buildings that held offices, sleeping rooms, and dining facilities for the higher level fort employees. 

This was a copy of an original note sent to the headquarters regarding someone who had died of a venereal disease! 

A room in the hospital.

I wonder what tapioca was supposed to treat??

I really liked the area of buildings where craftsmen made things that were hard or impossible to obtain or replace because of the distance from England.  Most of the craft buildings were centered around this water pump in a far corner of the fort. 

The canoe shop had real craftsmen, and one craftswoman, who built one canoe per year here at Historic Fort Williams.  The process started with finding the right birchbark trees and stripping off very large panels, then drying them and fitting them on a canoe.

This was a tinsmith who made and repaired pots, dishes, cups, and other items. 

Can you guess what this is?  Note that it is pulled by horses, but has several buckets and hand pumps on each side, as well as a storage area for water. 

A storage area above one of the craft buildings.

More tomorrow about the local event put on by the local Indian tribes. 

8/14 Aguasbon River Gorge

I found this place about 60 miles west of Neys Provincial Park.  It had a good parking lot, and I needed a stop anyway.  Short boardwalk to a good viewing place.  

Note: Wish I knew how to pronounce the names of some of these places!

On the way back to my motorhome, I stopped to take some photos of the mosses and lichens on the rocks and trees along the way.  If you look carefully, you can see several different kinds.

These look like tiny ferns and each was about 2" long. 

A close-up of the moss in the previous photo.  In some ways, this reminds me of Washington and Oregon.