Peace Point to Sweetgrass Station by Canoe

I opt to make camp quickly before the light is gone. The sandy bank is marked by the tracks of tiny creatures, birds, and bears. All at once, the wildness of it all settled in. Here I was, all alone, in Canada’s largest national park.

Day Two

I slept in—I think. I have a phone and a satellite messenger close by in a dry bag for emergencies, but I’m doing my best to stay “unplugged,” so I don’t check the time. (It’s crazy how our perceived need for technology can follow us into the wilderness). With lots of distance to make up ahead of me, I down a quick bowl of granola and an Aeropress coffee for breakfast.

It’s not long before the coffee works its magic, and I pull over to answer “nature’s call.” The sand and mud of the bank show again the evidence of the creatures that call this place home. This time the bear tracks look particularly fresh. After a quick climb up the bank, my eyes are quickly drawn to a black bear foraging in a dried-up channel in the distance. If he is aware of my presence, he doesn’t seem to mind. I watch him for a moment before returning to the canoe—it feels prudent to take care of business a little further upriver.

As I paddle, I pray. There’s something about being out here in the wilderness that strips you of all your pride, your false pretences. It’s just you and the Creator, the Divine, God in the present moment. As I pray, I weep. The heaviness of pandemic living, of the things I have “done and left undone” all carried away into the current. It’s repentance on the river. I’m no expert on the subject, but Celtic mystics talk about an idea called “thin places” where the space between heaven and earth seems to lift. I think this is one of those places.

As the sun, and my energy, begin to fade I am treated to a wide stretch of prime riverside real estate to watch the sunset with tea and dark chocolate in hand.

Before bed I write in my journal, “God, thanks for the gift of today. Please keep the bears away. Amen.”

Day Three

I make it to Sweetgrass Landing by mid-afternoon. The forest is alive with the sound of woodpeckers and squirrels hard at work. I welcome a feast of Annie’s Mac and Cheese sitting at a picnic table sheltered from the long and enduring gaze of the late summer sun. The woodpeckers perform a funny dance in the trees while I read. Tomorrow, I’ll make the day hike into Sweetgrass Station.

Day Four

The trail to Sweetgrass Station is a wide and easygoing fourteen kilometre path that winds through the boreal forest before opening up to Lake Claire and the Peace-Athabasca Delta.

Along the way I spot an eagle, a family of grouse, cranes, ravens, grey jays, squirrels, and best of all, a buffalo ahead of me on the trail. I give him plenty of space and obverse from a distance until he dashes off into the thick bush.

Before long I reach the open meadows and corrals of Sweetgrass Station.

The corrals are a vestige of the troubled and still recent history of Wood Buffalo National Park. The park was created in 1922 to protect the bison and preserve the land and water of the boreal plains. In the years that followed local indigenous peoples were forced off the land and disease was introduced to the wood bison herds by plains bison transported into the park from southern Alberta. An estimated 4000 bison were slaughtered and sold to meat packers, hotels, and restaurants in southern Canada in an attempt to cull the herd and manage the disease. The corrals and cabins at Sweetgrass were built in the 1960s for annual anthrax vaccinations where the buffalo were rounded up by helicopter, and many were trampled or died in shock.

It was never about the bison. We know now that the treatment of Land, Peoples, and mostos was part of a larger governance approach aimed at control and commodification. Logging was carried out on traditional lands in the park and lumber was sold to support exploration and mining in Uranium City. Commercial fishing was permitted on Lake Claire within the park boundary. Profits did not go to the Indigenous communities in the park, where they could have created circular reciprocity with the Land. Some will say this all happened a long time ago, but remember, these were not isolated events.

Chloe Dragon Smith and Robert Grandjambe, To Wood Buffalo National Park, with love

Today the park remains under threat downstream from oil sands and hydroelectric dams.

The health of the Peace-Athabasca Delta has dramatically declined. Indigenous communities see these declines firsthand: the drying of the Delta, the disappearance of culturally important animals and plants, the slow pollution of the fish, waters and air.

Gillian Chow-Fraser, A Brief Indigenous History of Wood Buffalo National Park

As settler people, we have a responsibility to actively pursue reconciliation and to live in right relationship with the land and with the Indigenous people who have sustainably managed it for thousands of years.

I enjoy a lunch of trail mix and Cliff Bars at the cabins with Lake Claire shimmering in the distance. It would be a real treat to stay at the cabin for a few days and get a chance at observing the predator-prey relationship between the wolves and the buffalo, but my plans this time dictate that I must head back.

I wasn’t more than five minutes back down the trail when I felt a piercing pain in my right heel. Upon further inspection, I found that my foot had become covered in blisters and I had rubbed my heel completely raw inside my shoes. I patched myself up the best I could and made my way back to the canoe, albeit a little slower on the return. Loneliness was setting in fast, my first aid kit was understocked, and I worried about keeping my foot from getting infected over the course of many more days of wet and muddy travel up the Peace and Slave rivers, up to Fort Fitzgerald where I had left a bike to shuttle back down the long gravel road through the park to Peace Point. I was frustrated and embarrassed by my mistake, but equally relieved when I got the text on my InReach that there was a good chance I could get an early shuttle at Moose Island the next day, just a few hours up the river.

That night I watched as the sky slowly turned shades of faded purple and blue, casting its last light on a sandbar so wide, I couldn’t see the other side from where I made camp for the night.

Day Five

It’s bittersweet waking up on the last morning of a trip. The skies threatened rain, so I packed up and ate quickly before continuing the final short stretch to Moose Island. Upon arrival, I was welcomed into a warm cabin by a couple of trappers, and enjoyed bacon and eggs while listening to stories about the buffalo and the park, its history, and the people who are fighting for its future. I am grateful for their hospitality, and especially their generosity in providing me and my red canoe with a shuttle back to Peace Point.

The trip ended much as it began. Leaving Fort Smith, I cranked the AC in the truck to fight the heat of the late August sun as it set. Ahead of me lay the long dusty highway back to Fort McMurray.

Perhaps sometime you would like to come and visit this wild and wonderful place. You might like to marvel at the prowess and the strength of the buffalo, delight in the strange behaviour of a family of grouse perched in trees like oversized ornaments, or run barefoot across sandbars as wide as the eye can see. Please tread lightly. Learn the rhythm of the water and the language of the trees. And when you drive back down the highway to your home, tell everyone how wonderful it was. We can’t afford to lose it.