Northwoods Memories Multimedia Productions

Earlier this summer my wife and I needed to take a particularly difficult trip to visit the last few pictograph sites about which we knew, and we had very little time to make the trip.  One of the pictograph sites, Swartman Lake, involved a long bushwhack trip along a route about which we knew little.  From there we would travel up the East Agnes River to Kawnipi to check out a pictograph site we had discovered two years ago and then on to Montgomery Lake and the Montgomery Creek site.  And we had to do the entire trip in six days, as that was the only time available. 

We elected to hire a guide to provide some extra paddling and carrying power.  Additionally, since we have no bushwhacking experience, we needed someone with excellent woods skills.  After talking with an outfitter friend of ours and a long term friend with lots of guiding experience we were referred to Dean Bushey ( dbushey1@hotmail.com ). (more…)

This book is unquestionably the best book I have read about Quetico Provincial Park.  Jon and his wife Marie were Quetico Rangers, first at Beaverhouse, then Cache Bay and Prairie Portage.  After his tenure there he returned to Graduate School for a Master’s program, I believe, in Archaeology, and worked as an archaeologist in Quetico for several years.  During that time he interacted with and got to know a number of the First Nation citizens of the Lac La Croix community.  As we are very much interested in the pictographs of the area, his multiple comments on this aspect of First Nation culture and religion were very interesting to us.

This book relates a broad range of topics from the early geological and natural history of the time when the glaciers of the last ice age were retreating from the area now Quetico, to contemporary issues with the park.  It is divided into sections allowing the reader to read sections of interest in any order.  To me, with my woefully inadequate knowledger of pre-history, the readings on the early post-glacial era and the Paleo-Indians were fascinating.  For the biologist or the reader interested in biology and ecology, the chapters in part three relating to ecology, tell the stories of lichens, orchids (yes, orchids in Quetico), moose, ravens and forest fire ecology along with other topics.  As a biologist and biochemist myself, I found these chapters fascinating, well written, and full of interesting information.  I learned a great deal from them. (more…)