A Nineteenth-Century Algonquin Adventure
by James Dickson
http://www.muskokabooks.ca/natural-environment/52-a-nineteenth-century-algonquin-adventure.html
How would it have been, can you imagine, canoeing through what is now Algonquin Park back in the 1880s?
James Dickson, who knew the Algonquin highlands better than anyone, first published this now-classic book in 1886 under the title Camping in the Muskoka Region. His account describes a canoe trip from Lake of Bays up Oxtongue River then through the chains of lakes now plied each year by thousands of Algonquin Park adventurers. Writing in a charmingly quaint style, Dickson provides vivid descriptions of wild scenery and abundant wildlife, rounded out with detailed instructions for paddling birchbark canoes and cooking meals in the manner of the 19th-century bush camp.
Between 1878 and 1885 the author had explored the Algonquin highlands extensively as a surveyor for the Ontario government and while these surveys were an intended prelude to agricultural settlement, Dickson and others recognized the real potential of the region was recreation. Indeed, James Dickson is considered one of the “fathers” of Algonquin Park because of his central role in establishing Ontario’s most famous park in 1893.
Much of the territory Dickson travelled was part of the last remaining island of virgin wilderness on the Algonquin highlands. Just a few years later lumbermen moved in — notably the Gilmour company, as recounted in When Giants Fall: The Gilmour Quest for Algonquin Pine. Dickson’s narrative is historically all the more valuable because it portrays this pristine natural setting as it existed prior to logging.
Last edited by Barbara (11/10/2015 10:36 am)
