Description
Manitoba’s Hayes River runs over 600 kilometers from near Norway House to Hudson Bay. On its rush to the ocean, the Hayes races over forty-five rapids and waterfalls as it drops down from the Precambrian Shield to the Hudson Bay Lowlands. This great waterway, the biggest naturally flowing river in Manitoba, served as the highway for settlers bound for the Red River colony, ferrying their worldly goods in York boats and canoes, struggling against the mighty currents.
Traditionally used for transport and hunting by the indigenous Cree, the Hayes turned into a massive fur trade route within the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, being explored by such luminaries (Pierre Radisson (1682), Henry Kelsey (1690) David Thompson (1784), Sir John Franklin (1819), and J.B. Tyrrell (1892). That is the account of the writer’s invitational journey at the Hayes from Norway House to Oxford House by traditional York boat with a crew of First Nation Cree, and later, from Oxford House to York Factory by canoe within the company of other intrepid canoeists – up to date-day voyageurs reliving the past.