gross errors. Thirty-five of the ninety-three rapids were unmarked and two dangerous falls were not on the maps at all. Twelve portages were missing and six were marked in the wrong location. I had chosen the figure of seventeen years of research into the deaths because it backdated events to the last map update in 1978. Ontario Hydro at that time had plans of building a dam at Thunderhouse Falls and the topographic map had needed updating for official proposed plans. I interviewed the librarian at Western University’s research facility. She actually knew of the incident where government cartographers had argued over where to insert the portage on the Thunderhouse map. It was arbitrarily affixed to the map at what looked like the shortest route around the falls. Since the map was from a series of “white” sheets, any correction done would now show up highlighted in purple on the black and white maps. The Canada Map Office produces 12,150 of the popular 1:50,000 scale topographic maps most widely used by adventurers — ninety percent of the charts cover “undeveloped” regions above the so-called “wilderness-line,” and are in dire need of revisions, particularly along rivers having park or heritage status.
During the winter of 1993–94, I retreated to a cabin on Lake Superior to write my book. The research was unsettling. I appealed to the provincial coroner, James G. Young, to call for an inquest into the high number of deaths linked to poor maps and misleading advertising by both the provincial and federal governments. I had interviewed Peter Andrews from the Canada Map Office in Ottawa and was told that “… we (Energy Mines and Resources) don’t recommend that canoeists use just the topographic maps for reference.” Andrews also stated that EMR would never advertise in a strictly canoeing or outdoor magazine; however, their full-page “All roads lead to roam” ad, a crowing statement that EMR maps “will lead you in the right direction,” did, in fact, find its way into Canada’s national canoeing magazine, Kanawa, and other American adventure-oriented magazines, as well. The Ontario Tourism Ministry had just spent close to $100,000 on splashy full-page, colour ads in American magazines touting the Missinaibi as a Heritage River you could paddle from start to finish, across the breadth of Ontario, and cross only two roads — the same year the two men from Ohio died at Thunderhouse Falls. Many provincial and federal departments aggressively market to back-country travellers, pitching Canadian wilderness, a product the bureaucrats know very little about. Ad hype and hastily packaged materials continue to lure adventurers to provincial parks and remote rivers.
The Canadian Federal Department of Indian and Northern Affairs “Wild River Survey” was carried out in 1971–73, in which sixty-five rivers across Canada were surveyed for recreational potential. Mike Greco, past secretariat of the Canadian Heritage River Board and Foundation says of the survey:
“… the ten published booklets, although available to the public, were never intended for navigational purposes … some were withdrawn because of inaccuracies — mishaps were occurring, especially in British Columbia because much of the compiled information wasn’t field-truthed … anyone canoeing in remote regions should be extra careful using 1:50,000 maps and avail themselves of any professional literature before heading out.”
Legal counsellor for the Canadian Recreational Canoeing Association, John Eberhard, had told me that “canoeists may have cause for legal action against both the provincial and federal governments determining the lack of ‘duty of care’ in producing public material, including topographical maps.…” Six months had passed since the Ohio deaths, a lapse of too much time to initiate legal action by the family. I had the photographs developed from the camera I had found floating in the pool at Thunderhouse — just a tight group of fun-loving guys having a great time without a care in the world.
I called Brian McAndrew, the environment reporter for the Toronto Star newspaper, and told him about the research I was doing. Within twenty-four hours he was on a plane for Sault Ste. Marie where I would pick him up in my truck and bring him north to Michipicoten, where my cabin was. The feature front-page story on May 8, 1994, read: “When a line on a canoeists’ map spells death at Thunderhouse Falls.”
McAndrew later told me that the story had provoked more phone calls and letters than he had ever received for any story he had written. He was deluged with story after story about close calls and near-tragedies at Thunderhouse and elsewhere along the river, including one about four guys who actually survived going over the falls in a rubber raft.
The Natural Resources provincial office called me shortly after the release of the story and offered to contribute $10,000 to my research costs. It was also agreed that proper warning signs would be erected at Mattice and on an island before the Thunderhouse portage. The faulty topographical sheet was temporarily removed from Federal stock, pending updates scheduled in the future.
The rhetorical question here is, “Who is at fault?” The obvious problem is twofold: the Canadian government is not providing accurate technical information for backcountry canoe routes, specifically for highly publicized parks and Heritage Rivers; and the canoeing public puts too much faith in topographical charts — maps that were never intended for adventure-oriented recreation.
Long before the white man came to Canada, Native people were scratching crude maps in the sand or on rolls of birchbark. People of the First Nations had a “built-in” knowledge of place and distance and were often employed by early explorers as guides. Early maps etched out by John Cabot, Jacques Cartier, and John Davis did not survive; however, in 1604–08, Samuel de Champlain — zealot and cartographer — did give us eleven large-scale charts of eastern “Canada,” drawn to indicate sovereignty over the land and resources therein. Canada was not an easy country to explore because of its vast, rugged topography, extreme environmental conditions, and short travelling season. But not just that, transferring information from a sphere to a flat plane involved advanced mathematics which worked only in open, unforested areas. Errors published on early maps remained uncorrected for centuries, chiefly because of the high cost of changing printing plates. Explorers, too, were not always proficient mapmakers so that a lot of “longitudinal” discrepancies were found in working charts well into the nineteenth century.
The Hudson’s Bay Company’s push for ever more furs prompted the need for more accurate maps of the interior and gave rise to the development of better survey instruments, tools used by the likes of Philip Turnor (1778–79), Sir Alexander Mackenzie (1789–93), and David Thompson and George Vancouver (1793). Much of Canada’s shape and size was well-charted by the turn of the century, although northern Quebec and the Arctic islands remained a mystery.
The Geological Survey of Canada, founded in 1842, went through a period of changes, eventually to become the Topographical Surveys Branch formed in 1883. Burgeoning westward settlement in the United States may have rushed the surveying of Canada by often inexperienced field crews; maps produced in the early 1900s were “so inaccurate that the details were kept secret for 50 years” (Milliken Report). The “Chief Cartographer’s” series of maps, drawn to the 1:250,000 and 1:500,000 scale commenced in 1903. A year later the Survey Division of the Department of Militia and Defence was created with the intent to map all of Canada in the one-inch to one-mile scale (the scale popularized with outdoors people today). In 1902, the DMD had realized the importance of detailed maps during the Boer War. Canada, being short on cartographic savvy, hired R.H. Chapman of the U.S. Geological Survey in 1908 to try and shape up the topographic unit within its Canadian counterpart. There were now three uncoordinated departments producing maps. This continued until 1922, when the formation of the Board on Topographical Surveys and Maps was created to respond to the need for some kind of standardization. The BTS&M evolved into a division of Energy, Mines, and Resources in 1966 (EMR) and it continues to be known by that name today.
Acknowledged as the “map for all seasons,” the one-inch to one-mile series was eventually converted to the popular 1:50,000 scale by photo-enlargement after 1950. By the 1930s, specific geographic areas of northern Canada were being mapped using “air-oblique” methods of range-finding, traverses down the more prominent rivers; methods deemed “sketchy” by the more advanced European cartographers. Photographs depicting water levels during high-flow could not detail many locations of rapids and falls, and consequently some of these discrepancies have not been corrected to this day. W.F. Phelan of the Geographic Survey remarked about pre-Second World War maps that “vagaries of water-courses beyond open-country