The Lake of the Thousand Isles

The bard.

Evan MacColl, the Bard of Loch Fyne, is not well remembered. I see no reason to disagree with the judgment of time on this. In English—his poems in Gaelic I cannot evaluate—he was a competent versifier, no more. His poems are good, but generic, with nothing to distinguish them from the output of a hundred other poets of the day.

Still, if he was no more than a competent versifier, he was no less. He was a skilled craftsman, and there used to be a place for a competent craftsman of verse: as an occasional poet. Someone who could be counted on to write a poem to mark some special occasion: the opening of a new bridge, a visit by the Prince of Wales, the founding of the Engineers’ Society.

For that, MacColl was more than adequate. Consider his ode to the steam engine, “The Modern Hercules”:

Offspring renowned of Water and of Fire!
Thy triumphs, Steam, to sing I would aspire:
Let critics who would deem my numbers tame
Confess at least the greatness of my theme.

Power unmatched! what wonders hast thou wrought!
What feats sublime beyond the reach of thought!
In thee we gladly realize at length
The fabled Titans’ all- compelling strength —
A might that dwarfs what Grecian bards have told

Of deeds Herculean done in days of old.
The winged Mercury of their proud day
Were, matched with thee, a lagger on the way:
Scornful of distance, unfatigued by toil,
No task thy temper or thy strength can spoil, —
Whate’er thou doest doing with good will.
And at such speed as seems a miracle.
Man's mightiest ally upon land or sea.
He owns indeed a glorious gift in thee!
Not mine the skill to sing in fitting phrase

How science yokes thee to her car — the maze
Of tubes metallic, wondrous as a spell,
In which, like to a spirit, thou dost dwell —
A worker with a zeal that naught can tire,
Determined, prompt, impetuous as fire,—
Seeming as almost taught to think and feel
With that complex anatomy of steel!
To this let others fitting homage pay.
My task be thy achievements to portray.

Cliched and predictable, but seamless. My favourite line is “complex anatomy of steel.” That was a nice little verbal pirouette.

The only reason MacColl seems worthy of mention, even to me, is that he spent thirty years at the Kingston, Ontario, Canada, Customs House, and composed rhymes on his new home. Which happens also to be the area, more or less, where I largely grew up: the Thousand Islands.

I think the Thousand Islands are, legitimately, one of the more beautiful parts of the world. I say that having visited and lived in many parts of it now. At one time, many of America’s rich and mighty agreed, and built summer palaces on its banks.

Yet it has not been much celebrated in verse. And any verses I have seen have been awful.

To this task, MacColl is up:


THE LAKE OF THE THOUSAND ISLES 

Though Missouri’s tide may majestic glide, 

There's a curse on the soil it laves; 

The Ohio, too, may be fair, but who 

Would sojourn in a land of slaves? 

Be my prouder lot a Canadian cot 

And the bread of a freeman’s toils; 

Then hurrah for the land of the forests grand, 

And the Lake of the Thousand Isles! 

I would seek no wealth, at the cost of health, 

‘Mid the city’s din and strife; 

More I love the grace of fair nature’s face, 

And the calm of a woodland life; 

I would shun the road by ambition trod 

And the lore which the heart defiles; — 

Then hurrah for the land of the forests grand. 

And the Lake of the Thousand Isles! 

O, away, away! I would gladly stray 

Where the freedom I love is found; 

Where the pine and oak by the woodman’s stroke 

Are disturbed in their ancient bound; 

Where the gladsome swain reaps the golden grain. 

And the trout from the stream beguiles; 

Then hurrah for the land of the forests grand, 

And the Lake of the Thousand Isles!


I doubt the Thousand Islands were an untouched “forest grand” even in MacColl’s day. And I think the area was short on gladsome swains reaping grain. Or trout: pike and bass are more common. These are bits of his standard-issue romantic claptrap. But the thing is decently done, with a nice refrain to which one might hoist a glass.

There Are No Canadian Aboriginals

Human Zoo, Seattle, 1909

Some years ago—if I recall the details correctly—the St. Lawrence Islands National Park decided to use their Hill Island property to recreate an authentic Mohawk encampment. The land they used had previously been in my family, and I got from this a bit of a sense of what carpetbagging must have felt like to US Southerners; or Israel to Palestinian Arabs. My family had been in the area for generations. There were no Indians of any kind living in the area. Growing up in Gananoque, to have encountered an Indian would have been about as exotic as encountering a Mexican or a Burmese. Why was their foreign culture being featured here, and not ours, not the not the real, living, beautiful culture of the Thousand Islands region?

But then again, I might have had reason to be just as irate if I were Mohawk. Do a quick internet search on the term “human zoos.” Why was it racist when the Americans built an authentic Filipino encampment for the St. Louis World’s Fair, and racist when the French built an authentic African “negre” encampment at the 1889 Paris World Exposition, but not racist when the Canadian government does it with Mohawks on Hill Island, Ontario? It’s kind of hard to follow this “racist” thing, isn’t it? Seems to require going to the right parties and the right schools. Must be hell on immigrants.

Human Zoo, Paris Exposition, 1931.

But I digress. There is a bigger issue here. About ten years ago, I wrote a piece for the old Report newsmagazine titled “There Are No Canadian Aboriginals.” The situation in the Thousand Islands gives a good local example of what I meant, and mean, by that.

First, the concept of “aboriginals” or “native people” is immoral. It violates our Christian duty and our civic duty to view all men as created equal, and endowed by their Creator with equal rights. As John Locke said, there are no elder branches on the tree of man. There is a reason why aboriginal rights must be cited specifically in the Canadian constitution’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms: because they violate its other terms, and must be exempted:

“The guarantee in this Charter of certain rights and freedoms shall not be construed so as to abrogate or derogate from any aboriginal, treaty or other rights or freedoms that pertain to the aboriginal peoples of Canada”

Okay, so it’s morally wrong to think this way. But is it even rational to do so? No; “aboriginal” is a nonsense concept. Nobody, anywhere, is really “aboriginal”; nobody, anywhere, is a “native people.” Our ancestors, especially before settled agriculture, were all in constant movement.

Let’s take the Thousand Islands as our case in point; though I suspect the same exercise could be done almost anywhere in Canada.

As noted, there are no Indians (aka native peoples, aka First Nations) living anywhere near the Thousand Islands today. There are Mohawks at Tyendinaga, seventy kilometers to the West; but they came as United Empire Loyalists after the American Revolution. They have no more claim than my own UE Loyalist ancestors to be “aboriginal” to the area, or to Canada; less than the French. The next nearest Indian settlement is the Algonquins, at Golden Lake, 160 kilometers to the north as the Thunderbird flies. Seems pretty far away; in European terms, this is about the distance from Brussels to Amsterdam.

But surely, this is a recent thing. Surely, before the Europeans came, there were Indians here?

Remains of real aboriginal encampment, Kingston, Ontario (Fort Frontenac).

Actually, no. There is apparently no archeological evidence of any Indians actually living here, ever. At the time when the first Europeans showed up, circa 1650, there were no Indians closer than the Humber River—on the west side of modern Toronto, 270 kilometers away. At various times, we know that the Hurons, St. Lawrence Iroquois, Mohawks, Ojibwa, and Algonquins all passed through here to hunt and fish. But they came here from about as far away as do modern tourists. And, if you had to settle a land claim among these different and generally mutually hostile nations, who would have the better claim? Would any have the claim? Who could claim to be “aboriginal” here?

These nations—we traditionally call them nations, but keep in mind that we are generally talking of “nations” of several hundred to perhaps several thousand people, a grand total of 1,800 people in all of Southern Ontario—were also perpetually at war. Hence, the Indian nation who held any particular bit of territory when the first Europeans arrived was likely to have actually held that territory for only a few decades; and to have conquered it by blood. How then does that make them “aboriginal” in any sense the Europeans are not? To cite a famous example, when Cartier and Roberval, the first known Europeans, visited Montreal and Quebec, there were St. Lawrence Iroquois villages at both sites, Stadacona and Hochelaga. When Champlain returned sixty years later, both villages, and apparently the entire civilization, had disappeared.

In about the 16th century, but not before, the area west of Kingston along the north shore of Lake Ontario was apparently inhabited by Hurons. By the end of that century, though, they had abandoned or been driven from that area for points north of Peterborough. Not long after, they were wiped out there. Starting in 1701, the Ojibwa Mississauga showed up in the same area, migrating there from around Lake Superior. But by this time, they were only joining the French who were already there. The French, in fact, were the “aboriginals” in the region.

When the French—the first Europeans—set up shop in Kingston, at the western edge of the Thousand Islands, there were no Indians there. There were no aboriginal people. They displaced no one. As far as we can tell, no one had ever actually lived here. If they had, in the distant prehistoric past, they bore no known relationship to any modern Indians anywhere nearby.

When the French came, it was not as conquerors. The Mohawk in what is now central New York State were delighted. In fact, they had been petitioning the French to come to that region. They wanted the business—they were becoming wealthy trading furs to the Europeans. Not exactly an oppressed race.

Is that clear? Good; time to summarize. If anyone has a claim to be “aboriginal” to the Thousand Islands, I’d say it’s between the French and the Irish. The French were the first to live anywhere in the immediate area, and the Irish were the first to settle in most of the area.

Everyone else is a furriner.

And I want my land claims settled.