Too Many Lakes

     Too little time to paddle all of the lakes I want to.  We haven’t had the opportunity to paddle the Woodland Caribou but according to writer Kevin Callan it sounds like we should make some time.  It’s difficult to travel somewhere to go paddling when the best canoeing is right outside our door, but I’m always up for something new. 

"The New Quetico"

Northwestern Ontario’s Woodland

By Kevin Callan

Woodland Caribou Provincial Park is being called "the new Quetico" by many of its visitors. If you think about it, the label fits. The parks are comparable when it comes to the endless possibilities for canoeist looking for a route to paddle. They’re also managed in a similar fashion; portages and campsites are not marked and no roads, railways or powerlines penetrate the interior. The only difference is that Woodland Caribou has only been around a little over two decades and Quetico has been a prime paddling park for close to 100 years.

The bonus of being a relatively new-found park is that crowds are at a minimum. On average only a thousand paddlers use the park in any given season and its common place to find yourself alone out here. The immense size of Woodland Caribou also helps increase your seclusion. The park measures 450,000 hectares (1.2 million acres). On top of all that it’s also being nestled beside Manitoba’s Atikaki Wilderness Park, close to the same size as Woodland Caribou, and is the headwaters for one of Canada’s Heritage Rivers, the Bloodvein.

This is a park that simply can’t be beat if you’re looking for an accessible but remote wilderness getaway.

Woodland Caribou may have similarities with Quetico when it comes to size and management style but it has a landscape all to its own. It’s an ancient ecological wilderness; a place biologists have labeled "Prairie Boreal" due to its similarities with central Manitoba or Saskatchewan. This is a forest that has never been logged and where wild fires have been allowed to burn.

Indeed, almost all of the park area has succumbed to forest fires every hundred years or so. The park’s existence actually depends completely on it. The thin soils and dominant stands of jack pine, along with the fact that the area is rated as the hottest and driest place in Ontario, and that it’s the third most likely place to be struck by lightening in North America, that makes fire a natural element. Its constant regeneration produces a place for a dozen of the uncommon plants in the province and home to many rare fauna, including the western red-sided garter snake, Franklin’s ground squirrel, and of course, the woodland caribou which gives the park its name.

Populations of the rare woodland caribou are average in the park, meaning you have a good chance of spotting one or more of the 120 members who call it their home. The critical factor again is the fire that’s allowed to burn here and in return produces perfect growing conditions for the caribou’s winter food – reindeer lichen. The lichen grows on exposed bedrock amongst mature stands of jack pine forest.

Famous Footsteps
Archeological evidence found in Woodland Caribou park indicates that semi-nomadic tribes, titled the Laurel People, existed here around the same time the Romans were dominating over much of western Europe. That’s close to 5,000 years ago. And they continued to settle in the area for a good many years that followed.

The best visual evidence of past occupation by prehistoric Native groups is the many pictographs adorning the slabs of granite found along the Bloodvein, Gammon and Oiseau rivers. One particular set of paintings on Artery Lake are thought to be placed their between 900 and 1200 A.D. , rating it as a national significant site. One pictograph is that of a bison, far away from its prairie habitat. A second shows a shaman making a sacrifice before a war canoe and many warriors. The significance of the second is that the name "Bloodvein" is thought to be derived from a great battle on the Bloodvein River between the Saulteaux- Ojibwa and another unknown tribe. Many deaths occurred and the name "Miskwi Isipi" or "Blood River" was applied.

Woodland Caribou and its adjacent Bloodvein River was also a main trade route for Ojibwa trappers during the 18th century and became an important secondary trading route for the Hudson Bay Company between 1790 and 1821, during its rivalry with the Northwest Company.

At present the descendants of the Saulteaux-Ojibwa people still continue traditional skills of trapping, hunting and fishing.