Pike's Portage

Pike's Portage plays a very special role in the landscape of Canada's Far North and its human history. It is both an ancient gateway and the funnel for early travel from the boreal forest of the Mackenzie River watershed to the vast open spaces of the subarctic taiga, better known as the Barren Lands of Canada. This book is a rich and wonderful comopendium of stories about this area and the early white explorers, the Dene guides, the adventurers, the trappers, the misguided wanderers (like John Hornby) as well as the modern-day canoeists who passed this way. For the reader, it provides an absorbing escape into the past and the endless solitude of the northern wilderness. -- George Luste, wilderness canoeist, physics professor (University of Toronto), and founder-organizer of the annual Wilderness Canoeing Symposium. So why do people come to this place, this Pike's Portage in particular? The call of landscape is potent and these word portraits collected here offer up some of those who have answered. Both subject and writer reveal the complexities of human perception. Some are called by the profound power of inherited cultural meaning, while a huge dose of imagination draws others from far away. These worlds seldom truly meet, even in a place as busy as this, but whether it is homeland or wilderness, human histories are recorded in footprints, place names, and memory, and here we stand with a magnificent view, marvelling at it all. -- Susan Irving, Curatorial Assistant, Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre, Yellowknife, NWT