Nipissing. Françoise Noël

      While this image of bringing a deer back to camp may well have been staged, it is typical of Sallows’s work in that it shows the sportsman actively engaged in the work of play. This image was used as the cover of Rod and Gun in February of 1912.

       “The deer hunters,” 1910, photograph by Reuben Sallows, Image number 0155-rrs-ogoh-ph, the Reuben R. Sallows Gallery.

      Similarly, canoeists arriving at Mattawa station in the spring of 1904 found themselves in the company of a number of other sportsmen, who were greeted at the platform by “white and Indian and half-breed guides, and discussing with them questions of duffle and the portage.”[8] With a local population of only 1,438 in 1891, the small town of Mattawa must surely have felt the impact of this annual influx of sportsmen.

      Selous, whose name is more likely to be recognized in Africa than in Mattawa today, was in quest of his first moose head. Since outfitters could supply most of his needs, he arrived with only his “rifles and ammunition, blankets and clothing.” Anything else he needed was acquired with the “assistance of Mr. E. O. Taylor, the manager of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s store, and Mr. Colin G. Rankin.” The most important requirement for his trip he could only acquire upon arrival — a good local guide. In this case, he obtained the services of one of the best guides in the area, George Crawford, and his son (see page 71). The party boarded the train to Temiskaming, headed for Lake Kippewa with gear, provisions, two small tents, and two birch-bark canoes. There, a steamer used in the lumber industry took them across the lake, and from there they portaged into Lake Bois Franc. An old lumber camp served as a base camp but they went even further inland from there. Their hunting area was therefore in Quebec rather than Ontario, a fact that seemed to have little relevance to their trip.

      His account of this trip in Outing magazine ends with the killing of his first moose, a five-year-old bull that weighed in at 394 kilos (862 pounds) and had “a spread of forty-nine inches and eighteen points.” Selous admitted some would get larger, but he concluded, “I was well content with him, nor am I ever likely to forget the memorable day on which he, my first bull moose, fell to my rifle.”[9] This is a fitting ending to a short account, transmitting to the reader his full satisfaction with his trip, which in turn helped to confirm and enhance Mattawa’s reputation as the place to go for hunting moose. In a longer account of the same excursion, we find that Selous continued hunting for another week with no sightings before finally getting his second moose. “George pronounced this moose to be an old bull past his prime, but his horns were quite worth having as they measured just fifty inches in greatest spread and were well palmated with eighteen points.” Having gotten his two legal moose, he then hunted for deer for a few days before leaving for Newfoundland, where he would hunt for caribou.[10]

      When Francis H. Gisborne and his friends canoed the Mattawa in 1889, they travelled from Ottawa to North Bay via the CPR in order to begin their trip at Trout Lake and descend the river rather than ascend it. The wilderness began as soon as they left North Bay; the “new road through the woods” was so rough that their canoes were damaged. Their first camp was on Big Island at the mouth of Four Mile Bay. They carried 190 pounds of provisions with them, and supplemented their supplies by fishing and hunting. A large muskellunge, landed while they were still at Trout Lake, was an auspicious start. They spent the day hunting on the mainland before setting out the next day. At the stepping stones, a line of stones that crossed the outlet of the lake, they were able to shoot partridge for their supper. At least one more muskellunge was caught later. Near Lake Talon they saw bear tracks but no bear.[11]

      The area was still an active lumbering area. At Turtle Lake they saw evidence of forest fires as the banks were stripped of their pine. At the end of Pine Lake, a log shanty remained at the end of the portage. At Talon Chute the water had been raised several feet by a dam and a timber slide built by the lumber companies. It was being rebuilt by a “large gang of men” when they went through. A timber slide and dam bypassed the Grand Paresseux Falls. The only houses they saw were at MacClou’s Mill, where a dam had been built across “Plain Champ Rapids.” Cutting and forest fires had left behind only “a few small jack pines, silver birches and poplars.” At the head of the Boileau Rapids, they had difficulty finding firewood, as the spot had been used often as a camp. In the process of scouting around, one of them found “a weather-beaten wooden cross on which was roughly carved the name ‘Antoine Joly’. It marked the last resting place of the foreman of a gang of log drivers, who had been drowned in the rapids some years before.” The author noted: “You will find these little wooden crosses near every rapid on the Mattawa, marking the graves of daring lumbermen.”[12]

      While this historic route had never gone out of use, the portages were not well marked in 1889. At one, the presence of several logging roads confused them and they had to double back. At the end of Pine Lake they chose the wrong bay and had to go around to the next one. In the meantime, the lake had gotten rougher, and rather than paddle, they waded to the portage over boulders and half-buried sticks, and with water sometimes up to their armpits. They ran all the rapids successfully until they reached “Épine Rapid,” considered to be the worse. On the advice of “an old half breed” they met who had, they thought, told them it could be run, they chanced it, running into serious difficulty when one of their canoes wedged between three rocks where it filled with water and they lost some of their gear. Gisborne wrote: “You might just as well have tried to hold a whale by the tail as hold, or check, or guide that canoe when the water took her.” Luckily the canoe was not damaged. Running the Flat Rapids just after the junction of the Mattawa and the Ottawa Rivers, on the other hand, was very enjoyable: “I never experienced a more delightful sensation than when running that rapid. There are no rocks or broken water, but the river runs like a mill race for half a mile or so. I can only liken the motion to tobogganing down a good slide, but the motion is much smoother.” A few days later they were back in Ottawa, after, he mused, a “long and eventful cruise, in which I trusted each learned some good from his fellow, and each gained three warm and hearty friends.”[13] The social aspect of this trip was largely left out of the account. Perhaps the author felt the problems they encountered made for a better story than the delights of comfort and comradeship around the campfire.

      Neighbouring lakes and the Amable du Fond River attracted fishermen who were promised a wide variety of fish, including bass, pickerel, muskellunge, salmon trout, and perch.[14] After looking at railway guides for Maine and Canada, Charles G. Campbell and his friend Drake of New York chose to go trout fishing in the Mattawa area in the spring of 1904.[15] They were looking for a destination that was nearby, not too expensive to get to, and that would provide an extraordinary fishing experience. Their original intention was to canoe down the Amable du Fond River, but because logs were being run down the river when they got there, they were forced to choose an alternative destination. Instead, they went to Smith Lake, one of the mountain lakes north of the Mattawa, advertised for its trout fishing in the CPR guides. Proceeding along Smith Creek to get to the lake, they found considerable evidence of the fact that this creek had been used to run logs: an old log shelter hut they slept in the first night, a log cabin they stayed in the second night, and a long timber slide that followed the creek. The lumbermen had also built three dams on the creek. The slides were dry and could be used as a route through the woods, but they had to portage from the river to the third dam. They set up camp on the shores of the lake where they would spend the next few days fishing. Having two guides, they were free to fish and try to find a moose for the camera while the guides did the portaging, camp preparation, and cooking. They had little luck finding a moose, seeing only tracks, but they found the fishing much to their satisfaction, catching trout that were between one and two and a half pounds. This was trout fishing at its best, and as Campbell pointed out: “a one-pound brook trout in quick water is a mighty lively proposition and worth going the way to get.”[16] When they returned to the Ottawa River, they found that there were even more logs headed downstream, and rather than paddle back to Mattawa, they carefully, and with difficulty, battled a headwind to cross