here I am, two days later, lying on top of a worn red bedspread in a roadside motel in Lebel-sur-Quévillon, a small town in Quebec on Highway 113 on the way to James Bay country. Jim, and our friend Don Haines, who is driving up with us in his car in case Connie's rusty old Toyota Tercel doesn't make it, are with me.
I have a somewhat treacherous mind when it comes to travelling, a mind that can pull off all kinds of neat stunts to make a difficult trip even more difficult. In addition to psychological misgivings about leaving my mother and family, I have several nagging physical ailments that refuse to heal. I sprained my right index finger weeks before, demonstrating to Isaac how to go down the natural waterslide at High Falls on Algonquin Parks' Barron River. I tore a hamstring muscle while jogging. I have a stiff neck that came on months ago while driving in the middle of the night in the middle of a rainstorm. My masseur friend, Ton, worked out the kinks, but they are all coming back tonight. Lastly, I am developing a nagging toothache, which is getting worse the farther we go from Ottawa. I buy some “gum number” at a pharmacy in Chibougamau, a mining town about 100 km south of Mistissini, and extra painkillers. My lower back is sore and stiff, and I have a hard time lugging around our three huge packs.
Jelly-brained and up to my ears in self-doubt, I'm torn between having new adventures and following new rivers to the sea, and leaving my cosy comfortable life in Ottawa. Bogs and bugs, or beaches? Warm sunny days or cold rainy ones? Connie and Isaac and Mica to snuggle up to in the morning or Jim's stubbly face? But the view from the other side of my brain shows clear, clean water and endless spruce forests instead of pavement, the call of loons and wolves instead of the sounds of traffic, the freedom and boundlessness that canoe trips bring versus the daily slog to the office.
All our lives seem to be a struggle between the need for love and security and the need for adventure, independence and freedom. Perhaps this tension is the force that holds the universe together. Is true enlightenment being able to live in a state where all these needs are met without having to weigh one against the other, when you find out that these seemingly mutually exclusive needs are, in fact, not mutually exclusive at all? A.P. Low lived a life of adventure, but he also had a wife and family, a government job and a strong penchant for sports. I wonder how he reconciled this struggle between love and security, adventure and freedom? In his copious journals and writings, such intimate thoughts are never revealed. A.P. Low was a private man. The details of his personal life will likely always remain a mystery.
Images of warm sunny days and idyllic evenings, abundant wildlife and endless black spruce horizons filled our minds.
I know Jim is having the same misgivings. His wife had been seriously ill this winter and was better now but…. Although he didn't mention the possibility of not being able to go on the trip, I know that there were times when he felt he had taken on too much. Was he wondering if this was not the right time to be leaving his family?
This is a story about an explorer and a canoe trip, but our adventure really started on the drive from Ottawa to Lebel-sur-Quévillon. One doesn't have to head very far north of Ottawa before the country begins to take on a “northern” flavour. Highway 105 leads straight north out of the city, leads up the Gatineau River valley and then heads north to the mining town of Val d'Or. Just over halfway there, in the Réserve Faunique de La Vérendrye, the highway crosses over the height of land separating the waters flowing south and east to the Atlantic Ocean from the waters flowing north to James Bay. The highway has been greatly improved in recent years and, according to my observations, so have the drivers.
We are amazed at the ease of driving into the boreal forest. The farther north we go, the better the highway becomes. We stop at the gas station and outfitting station in Le Domaine in the Reserve. From here the mixed-wood forests we are familiar with in the hills north of Ottawa noticeably begin to change to a dense, dark green wall of spruce, fir and tamarack, with patches of aspen standing out with their creamy bark and light green leaves fluttering in the lightest of breezes. It takes a while before I realize that the purple haze over the ditches and open areas that was purple loosestrife seen at 120 km/hr is now fireweed. Road signs announce that we are in the Municipality of James Bay, which includes communities as far north as Chisasibi, at the mouth of the La Grande River on the east coast of James Bay, where the trees are small and stunted.
I lie down on the bed, and take out the envelope that Connie slipped into my hand when we left. Inside is a card, with two photographs — one of me and Isaac and Mica standing in front of the falls at the ruined mill of “Carbide” Willson1 on Meech Creek, in our beloved Gatineau Park just north of Ottawa. It was taken in the spring when the falls were swollen by melt waters. I remember the day well. Isaac's laughing when I told him to “DUCK!” as the current in Meech Creek swept us under a low bridge, Isaac pointing at the mink that ran along the rocks at the edge of the lake. The other photograph is of Connie and Isaac sleeping together in a hammock. The caption is “Wherever you are, I am with you.” I tape the card to the inside of my journal.
As I drift into sleep, inspired by the verse (doggerel really) that A.P. Low penned in his journals, I write this bit of questionable poetry:
Where-ever I go, you are with me
my love, my son, and my dog,
though the days be buggy and dreary,
and I'm stuck in a leaky tent in a bog.
Though the bannock be soggy and the portages boggy,
And clouds of blackflies hide the sun,
Wherever I go you are with me,
In the circle of rivers, we are one.
4 A.P. Low: An Overview of His
WE KNOW MUCH ABOUT THE professional career of Albert Peter Low. We know about his geological accomplishments, his travels and his experiences. But after all our research, we still have to admit that we can't truly say we know much about the man himself. The private picture of A.P. Low is faded and elusive.
We found few keyholes through which to peer into his personal life. Any of his personal diaries and private letters that he may have kept have disappeared. His sole surviving child, his daughter Estelle, had no children of her own. He was a modest person who did not attract much attention. In the writings of his professional colleagues, we have found only a few scattered references to Low, and there are no people left today who knew him personally. Only a few newspaper pieces, a treasure trove of his archival photographs and his field notebooks provide some clues to his personality. Despite these limitations, when we put all our findings together and make some informed guesses, a picture of the man begins to emerge.
Albert Peter Low was born on May 24, 1861, in Saint-Henri, Quebec, at the time an independent town just west of the old town of Montreal. His parents1 were United Empire Loyalists, those British subjects who emigrated to Canada from the United States (often under forced circumstances following the establishment of that new country). His father, John William Low, was a descendant of Peter Ludwig Lau, a Presbyterian minister from Hanover (Germany) who accompanied the Hessian soldiers2 hired by the British in New France during the Seven Years War (1756–1763). The Lau family settled in New England and became British subjects. After the American Revolution (1775–1783), Lau uprooted his family from the Mohawk Valley and move north to settle in Upper Canada, in the area of Stormont County in today's eastern Ontario. The family's Germanic roots survived until A.P.'s time as his surname was pronounced as “Lau,” although spelled Low, until the 1860s.3 A.P. Low also spoke some German, likely learned from his father.
Low's mother, Tryphene Winchester, was descended from Aaron Winchester, a British military surgeon who came to North America in 1758 with the troops of Major General Jeffrey Amherst. When Amherst went to lay seige to Montreal in 1760, he left the construction of the fort at Crown Point (New York) under the command of Surgeon General Winchester. Winchester married one of the ladies-in-waiting of Lady Amherst. His descendents settled in Massachusetts until the end of the American Revolution and then moved