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Contacts	AN EIGHT BEAR TRIP IN THE FRENCH RIVER PROVINCIAL PARK

EARLY AUGUST 2001

The French River Provincial Park is a waterway park, that is it's about 200 metres wide on both sides of the river in its eastern reaches, and in the west it broadens out to include all the various outlets of the French and Pickerel Rivers to Georgian Bay and the land between them, as well as some of the bays to the north of the outlets. It has easy access from highway 69, and probably from other places as well. Ontario Parks publishes an excellent 1:50,000 plastic map of the area which is perfect for navigating around the Park. Campsites, portages, low water, private land, Indian Reserves and historical information and more are marked on the map. The Park is an easy paddle, with perhaps an exception for the possibilities of high winds at the Georgian Bay end. Portages are minimal and short; some are even on board walks which are there to facilitate the portaging of motor boats! Our eight-day trip had only four portages, including two on board walks, one complete with a trolley, totalling about 400 metres. The water levels were low, with many lines of the rocky shores indicating previous higher water levels. The highest one was about five vertical feet up the shore.

Drought conditions prevailed this year, and it was hot! The country was dry. The weeks of full sun with no rain had had its effect; the effect was especially severe in this landscape which has been greatly modified by glacial action. The area is all rock, often smoothed into long smooth whale backs which are frequently adjacent. Mostly the soil is shallow and in many places it fills in shallow depressions in the underlying rock. These pockets of soil can be from one foot by two feet in size to very large. These pockets of soil usually support grasses, shrubs such as the plentiful blueberries and trees.

The drought had totally dried out many of the soil pockets and as a result the blueberries were all dead. Their leaves were a rich deep golden brown colour, and crumbled when squeezed in your hand. The berries were plentiful, but all the size of pinheads. Many of the smaller oaks, poplars and pines, and a few big trees had suffered a similar fate. It looked to us as though droughts like this must happen periodically, otherwise the deciduous trees would make up a higher percentage of the forest than they do at present.

On the forth day of our trip we started to see bears! At a high lunch stop we saw a large bear amble down to the water on the other side of the river for a drink. An MNR person who later came by to check on how we were cooking (no fires, due to a fire ban) said that a sow and cub were checking the campsites in the area for food on a daily basis. Oh well, we thought, it's a good thing that we're not camping here. That afternoon, we saw two more bears climbing a steep flat rock face adjacent to the river. Two days later, we almost bumped into a sow and cub while checking out the campsite on Obstacle Island. Two of us climbed up the bank to check out the campsite at a spot no more than twenty feet from them. It was easy to decide to let them have the campsite! Nearby we met another party who said that a bear had come swimming into their breakfast where they were camping in the Outer Fox Islands. Fortunately, their dog chased it off long enough for them to evacuate the site with their gear. We saw our sixth bear on the board-walk portage to Bass Lake. The seventh we saw swimming away across the river from a point about fifty yards from our campsite. The eighth swam across a narrow river channel about a hundred and fifty yards ahead of us and bounced along a rocky point before disappearing.

At first we regarded ourselves as extremely fortunate to be seeing so many bears, which, after all, more than doubled the total time we had spent observing bears in the last forty years. Then we started to realize that we were present at a time when there was a disaster for bears in the making. They were constantly moving around, looking for their customary food which the drought had destroyed. They were probably hungry, and will be more so as time goes on. Our joy at seeing them was severely tempered by the realization that some, perhaps many, won't gain the weight necessary if they are to survive the winter. There is nothing like having a bunch of hungry bears around to make a camper nervous. We decided that we'd regard all the bear sightings as a big plus for the trip unless one attacked us, in which case we'd record them as a big minus. Fortunately, they all behaved as good bears should and moved away from us quite quickly.

We were lucky to see a rattlesnake swimming in the water at the bottom of a short, easy rapid on our first day; after that we did not see any more. We did see a lot of snakes though, every day we saw at least a couple of water and/or garter snakes.

Elk are present in the Park, and at one of our camping spots there was a huge elk antler which had about eight points and was approximately four feet long. On the south side of Merranger's Island there was an assortment of elk bones, complete with the two, still articulated, hind leg bones. We appreciated being in a landscape which contained elk, even though we didn't see one. Somehow, it is pleasing to be in a landscape which still contains some of the original species, even if they have been reintroduced from elsewhere.

One quite steep-banked campsite presented us with a marvellous mink sighting. From above we watched it going about its minky affairs for a full minute or two before it swam across the narrow channel and disappeared up the bank.

We travelled down the historically interesting Old Voyageur Channel, a narrow, sometimes twisting, route that had several liftovers, over either beaver dams or shallow rocky places. The map's notes suggest that, if you listen hard enough, you can still hear echos of the voyageur's songs. The wind must have been blowing the wrong way because we failed to hear them. At the end of the Voyageur Channel, we turned east and followed the sometimes narrow twisting channel towards the Bad River Rapids. This is not quite the continuous waterway shown on the map. It has one easy, forty yard portage and one easy, fifty yard liftover across a quite solid mud flat. After seeing the continuous waterway on the map, it requires a leap of faith to take this dry route. We camped near one of the exits of the Bad River Rapids, and it was interesting to see motor boats going up and down the deep water rapids.

The campsites as shown on the map vary from the great ones to the non-existent ones, with many being just adequate. Our party, which consisted of five people in two canoes and a kayak, needed three tent sites. Several times we camped in places which were not marked as campsites because the official ones were too small or were occupied by people or bears. Perhaps this was just as well as bears appeared to be checking out the campsites. The official campsites are often rather small and offer little space to separate cooking areas from tents and they sometimes require creativity to hang food in the stunted trees available. It might be better to bring your food in barrels for trips here. It was a good thing that we'd planned to cook on a two-burner Coleman stove, because on our arrival we found that there was a complete fire ban in place. The whole park, including almost all the campsites, has great swimming, especially if one likes going into deep water quickly off of a rocky shoreline. Due to the heatwave we swam often and long in the fairly warm water. It was a wonderful resource.

At a couple of places we found gray clay. This clay, when mixed with water to the consistency of thick paint, is great for slathering all over ones body. Not only does it look and feel good, but it gives an entirely new meaning to the tight fitting clothing concept. Gradually, as it dries, it shrinks just a little bit and feels tightish, and its colour changes from dark gray to a light gray. After ones face gets sore from laughing and grinning, which seems to be an integral part of the clay ritual, washing off is easy, just go for a swim and rub a bit. It even comes out of one's hair easily. This is an experience not to be missed, so if you get the chance, try it, you'll love it!

The French River Provincial Park is by no means free of people, lodges, houses, cottages, motor boats or indeed, other canoeists/kayakers, so don't go there for a wilderness experience. We found the constant motor noise and frequent wakes annoying at times. Many of the habitations were empty when we were there, but quite a few did have people in them. The map shows private land in a darker green, so one knows when to expect buildings, and one can even use them as navigational checkpoints. Irritating as these things can be, for some it makes for a low stress trip as help, if one needs it, is always close at hand.

Our trip started at Highway sixty nine and proceeded west along the French River for three days when we turned down the Western Channel and the Old Voyageur Channel for a couple of days. We spent two days in Georgian Bay and two more days completing the circle via the Eastern Channel and the Pickerel River. Would I recommend the trip to others? Certainly, if the non-wilderness aspects would not bother them too much. The landscape itself is very different from most which we know, and this is a huge plus in itself. The wildlife, the elk, bears and the mink, for instance, is also a plus. The trip was physically easy as compared with most eight day canoe trips.

Ian