This title expires August 31st, 2024
Subject(s): Canadian History, Canadian Social Studies, First Nations Studies, Geography, Social Studies
Grade Level: 6 - 8, 9 - 12
The Last of the Voyageurs: This film is a quirky piece of Canadiana. A wonderful funny, yet poignant story to help celebrate Canada, but more importantly, it pays homage to the men and women who served and continue to serve in the Canadian military. Mike Ranta is a modern-day Voyageur. He is the first solo canoeist to cross the North American continent in one season. Mike dedicated his paddling efforts to raising awareness and respect for the challenges Canadian soldiers face in and after being in a war zone. He and his dog Spitzii visited many Canadian Legions along the way and he dedicated his trip to past and present Canadian veterans. Mike reflects on the people he met, the changing Canadian environment and the challenges associated with embarking on such an adventure.
Filmmaker Bio: An award-winning Métis filmmaker, Matt LeMay is an innovator in the field of educational documentary film. He has channelled his passion for addressing social issues that impact First Nations and Métis communities into documentaries that showcase the power of Indigenous storytelling and the importance of protecting the natural environment.
Running Time: 24:00
Country of Origin: Canada
Captions:
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Producer: LeMay Media
Copyright Date: 2017
Language: English
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TRANSCRIPT
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- Mike Ranta-- the pride of Atikokan, Ontario-- is the world's first solo canoeist to successfully traverse the North American continent in one season. For 200 days, Mike paddled-- with only his dog, Spitzii to keep him company.
- From Vancouver to Cape Breton, Mike has witnessed the rugged beauty of the Canadian wilderness. And the destructive nature that our industries can have on our watersheds. Mike's primary goal was to raise awareness for the many challenges that face our Canadian veterans. Mike's love of country and the generations of men and women that continue to serve and protect Canada, runs deeper than the waters of Lake Gitche Gumee.
- I caught up with Mike on a gloomy November day on the shores of the river in Pembroke, Ontario. I hope you enjoy his story.
- I like to describe myself as a modern day voyager. I'm a solo canoer. I'm the first guy to cross the North American continent solo by canoe in one season. I definitely got some kilometers behind me. I did this trip here, my 2016 trip, for our veterans. And I just wanted to say thanks, especially to our World War II men and women. It's a generation we're losing fast, and I really wanted to say thanks to them. They're an amazing group of people. I talked to a lot of American soldiers that were out there fishing. And they said the one thing they feared was a Canadian soldier.
- When they came into ground, you knew it. The steps were heavier. There was a pride. There was something thick there. And everybody stepped aside, because they knew these guys were going to get the job done-- hell or high water. And there's so many stories out there. And they weren't guys to brag about it. They just did it. They just did it for country. They did it for family. They did it for friends. Amazing people. Amazing.
- The first guy that always comes to mind with me, is when I was walking in BC. I was walking down toward [INAUDIBLE], and this little blue truck pulled up. It was an old Chevy. I always liked them trucks. It was a late 70s, early 80s. Anyway, this old guy came out and introduced himself. He had a little bit of a limp. And said he was 80 years old, and he really appreciated what I was doing. It was a lot of fun.
- We started talking and I said, well, where did you serve? And he goes, well, actually I couldn't-- medical reasons with my feet, he said. I couldn't, he said. But my dad's in the truck, he said, would you mind saying Hello to him? Your dad? He's 80, right? So how old is your day? 98 years old. And so I took off a piece of the canoe and walked it over to him. He had mobility issues, of course. But spry. He was just an amazing guy that way. He had that sharpness to him.
- He was first wave in on Normandy. He lost 83 men in one day. What an amazing story, as he explained how-- he was walking right there. You could see it in his eyes. You know? That fear still. That drive. He was reliving it when he was telling me. He went up to get the nests-- machine gun nests. It was his job. It was their job.
- Telling me how he branched away from-- him and five other guys, or six of them-- and made a run for it. He said three of them only made it. Two by shrapnel. One by sniper. He started naming names. And I was thinking to myself, wow. I was crying. So was his son. It was a pretty emotional moment. And that's when I knew that, wow, we're doing something pretty fantastic here.
- I also asked him about the positive aspects. I said, what was the best? He said, men and women he worked with. He started telling me prank stories and all this other stuff they used to pull off. It was a great conversation. We laughed at the end of it, because I wanted to hear something positive of what he got out of our military. That was probably one of my most memorable conversations.
- And as I walked back with his son-- he walked me back to the canoe. I was just-- I was in absolute awe of these two men. We got 100-- 100 and some years of experience-- 178 years of experience-- sitting right in front of me. It's pretty humbling when you get people saying thank you, and you're doing a good thing. I knew we were doing something special. And his son told me, that was the first time he had heard his father tell that whole story sober. And that was pretty emotional.
- So I think even after 80 years of being together, I think when he got back into that truck they made a new connection and a new respect. And that was pretty Canadian. That got me up that mountain that day. I did. I really strolled those poles in my canoe with pride there. So did Spitz. He was a real hit. They loved him, too.
- Another fellow I met on the Winnipeg river really stuck out, he was from Hitler Youth. And I was just paddling along there and I seen this old white haired fellow, so I stopped in there. We were talking away, and I noticed he had a pretty thick accent still. And I told him what I was doing and everything, and he was kind of-- you could tell he was kind of uncomfortable a little bit. And I was just like, did you ever? He said honestly, I was a POW here. I was from Hitler Youth. He was taken in when he was 13 years old. Family killed. He said he saw his cousin shot, right in front of him.
- And as we talked about it, he had he had a pretty spry sense of humor. He was saying, man, I got into with the Canadians. He said, a grenade went off and knocked me out. I come to, he said, there's three of them. He said, that's it. I'm dead. They're going to kill me right here. Well, they didn't. He said, they hauled him up, strapped him down, got him out of uniform, started peppering questions at him. He said he was scared. He said you said whatever you could because he was told on his side that they were going to burn him and skin him and all kinds of stuff to get the information. Probably back in the day, it wasn't far off. They were pretty desperate on the information they wanted to get out of people.
- So anyway, they got him into smocks and everything. Went from Belgium and then went over to England and he thought, wow, when are they going to do it? Then they told him they're shipping him to Canada. So he thought, wow, why are they going to bring me all the way to Canada to kill me? Well, I'm going into a mine or something like that, or a factory. And they put them on the way to [INAUDIBLE] River.
- It was funny how he told the story. He got there, and there was guards and there was Italian in there, there was Japanese. He said, when he started looking around, there really wasn't much of a fence. He said, there was guards, but it probably wouldn't be too bad to get out of here. But midsummer on the Winnipeg river when that sun went down, he understood why nobody ran in the bush. There was lots of bears then. There were lots of animals kicking around. Lots of bugs, that would be the biggest one. The Winnipeg river is phenomenal for the bugs. So that was a major deterrent for all of them to run away.
- He said, at the end of the war, he just turned 18. And he said, the war was over and he didn't go back. He stayed. He had, really, nothing to go back to. And he just thought this was an amazing place. He kept in touch with the soldiers that rescued him, as he put it. It was a pretty cool moment. So when I got him sign my canoe, he was, like, what? If there's ever a Canadian veteran, that was a man who had a pretty unique story and who loved his country-- second to none. He did. He absolutely appreciated what we had here. There's lots of people like that we met along the way. Amazing people.
- OK, we just seen a cow and twin calves here. And one twin calf just bailed into the water over here. And I don't know where he went. I'm kind of nervous. This is not a very Deep Creek here. If mama comes around-- oh my, the little fella is trapped. Oh my. I do not want to be here. OK, I got to help him. I've got to help this little guy. He's trapped. OK, just hang tough, Spitz. OK, wow. Um. He's drowning. I've got to get him out of here. I've got to get him. I've got to help him.
- Oh, boy. It's OK, little one. It's OK. It's OK. I'm going to help you. I going to help you. Look at him. He's right here. He's just little. He's going under. He's going under. I can't. Come here, you. Come here, you little fella. OK. It's OK. It's OK. I got you. I got you. It's OK, little one. I'm going to help you here, OK? OK. Wow. A moose rescue. I never thought I'd be doing this. OK, I got him by the ears here. OK, here we go. He's just the a wee little fella. Oh my. OK. Mama. It's OK, Spitz. It's OK. It's OK. Come here, little one. It's OK. It's OK. We're going to get you out of here, OK? We're going to get you out of here.
- Can you-- can you get up? Oh boy. Oh boy. OK. OK. In the canoe. In the canoe. OK. OK, little moose. It's OK, little moose. Spitz, you stay. OK, whoa. OK, off he goes. OK, he's a pretty decent swimmer. We got you out of that jam. You going to be OK? I know the most dangerous thing-- OK, I'm going to get out of here. He seems to be all right. He'll start calling here in a little bit. I'm glad I helped ya, OK? Just be a little bit more careful next time. OK, little fella? You're OK.
- I'm going to get out of here because if that momma moose comes back here, I'm going to get one hell of a lickin'. Spitz! Hey! It's OK. He's one of us. OK, well, if I know my moose, mama didn't go too far. She's probably just over here. Once he starts crying a little bit, which he will, she'll come back and get him. Oh, wow. You know, it's like I said, some crazy things happen in the bush. Oh, what next? Seen a pile of otter today. Seen about a half dozen raccoons. Rescued a baby moose. It's a great, Canadian day.
- I have a brother that's in Edmonton-- good guy. He was in Bosnia in the 90s. It was a pretty rough time. Bosnia, Sarajevo, and around that area. It was a pretty rough go, even as a peacekeeper. He's having a hard time with it sometimes. There's a guilt there that we can't comprehend. And you could see it. But he's getting better. A little bit of love and compassion and that's what it takes to help these guys. We're losing 22 guys a day between the United States and Canada from suicides. And a lot of it is mental. It's the programs they got to go-- again, for these guys to get help, the paperwork they got to go through is sickening. It's sickening. It's broken.
- And a lot of times if they don't dot an i or cross a t, they're right back to the very beginning of it. For a man or woman who has mental issues, that's devastating. Rejection is devastating, especially when it comes from the very people who promised to protect them. And a lot of them just feel helpless and desperate. And that's where we're seeing them go. Men and women with families, young kids. It's hard to fathom, but they're so desperate. And they feel burdened. They feel like they're a burden on society now. And they got such immense pride.
- It's that pride is why we're here. Why we have a Canada. And we need to step up and show them that we're proud of them, too.
- There's nowhere else in the world I could go this distance without having a gun pointed at me or asking for some sort of papers. I never had that at all. In fact, the police officers I met along the way were awesome. They were good. They were pretty amazing people. A lot of them were jaw dropped from what I was doing. And whenever they could-- I had guys give me a hand with a flat tire, bringing me coffee, signing my canoe. It was amazing. I never felt a threat. And I wasn't the greatest of people all the time when I was younger, so I was just as guilty as anybody when it comes to police officers and bad mouthing them.
- But then you realize when you've got friends that are officers, and you have an understanding of what they go through in the run of a career-- wow, yeah, respect is needed. I can see why sometimes they get a little frustrated. But in general, they're good people. And I think it's showing that little bit of, again, love and compassion. Smile, hug, and a handshake goes a long ways in this country. It's beautiful.
- Well, I explain to people my ancestral background is I'm Finn and [INAUDIBLE]. So I tell people I'm half Finn, half French, and half Ojibwe. It takes a man and a half to paddle across the country, I say. For the finished part of it, it gives me that stamina, that strength, that the Finn have. That [NON-ENGLISH]. Its very unique energy. The French, that gives me that laugh in my heart. That laugh and song that gives me that good positive attitude that even in the toughest times, I still get the whistle and sing.
- And the Ojibwe in me, that gives me that connection to the land. I really feel it. When you soak in the waters, and you feel the dirt in your hands, and the wind in your hair, and the fire, it's an amazing feeling. And we do. Surprisingly, they lived here for thousands of years, and you'd never know it. The way they carried themselves, they coexisted with nature. So they could keep going. We're looking at a 150th anniversary here. And we've been here for well over 400 years, as coming over to North America.
- Look at the damage that has been done. Irreversible. We went through the Qu'Apelle Valley, Buffalo Pound. 15 million gallons, dumped into a small river system, of raw sewage. I mean, how embarrassing. That whole native settlement, all the way down river, because they didn't want to spend the money on cleaning it? They just assume it's cheaper to dump it into the river and make all these people sick that they have nothing to do with? That's what I mean, it seems to be passed down. Grassy Narrows, that was right close to our home town. These are our watersheds. We've got to start realizing that if we don't have good water and good air, it don't matter how good our economy is. It doesn't matter how many dollar bills you put in your back pocket. Dead is dead. Sick is sick.
- That's our health. Our health begins with what we put into us. Firm believer of that. And it was-- yeah. It was-- it was embarrassing, again, in some places. But there were some other places you see that were just, wow, how clean it is. You can taste the water in it. You can smell it in the air. But it seemed to be when you got by the city centers, the runoff that came down through those waters-- Edmonton was another example-- as I went through there, there was a scum on my canoe. It was good waters right up till I got to that big city center. There are signs up there, don't eat the fish.
- We didn't inherit this. You can't buy the land. We're borrowing it from our children-- the future. And we're supposed to take care of that. We're failing it. Pipelines, all this. I worked in the oil industry for 18 years. I seen how they work. I seen how they work. They set their own fines. So at the end of the day, they will say, yeah, if we don't do this, we don't clean it up, we're going to pay these huge fines.
- Well, it's cheaper for them to pay the fines than to clean. It's only good business practice. To say, here you go. And then we're stuck with it because government, essentially-- I'll say it-- they get paid off. We can't keep destroying our planet. It's just not feasible. It just isn't. You can have all the money in the world, if you haven't got fresh water and good air, and people to love and care for, what have you got?
- It's not sunshine and lollipops out there all the time. It's not just paddling down a river and experiencing rainbows and all this magic. Yeah, you bet, it's dangerous. Weather is your biggest danger. You got some serious storms coming in. And it's in places here on a river-- and everybody has seen this in the news in how fast these rivers flash and flood. So you really got to watch how you place yourself. The dangers are very real.
- One of the biggest danger I got, is with Spitz. I really got to watch how he deals with animals, also. You He's an amazing dog when it comes to critters. But you can only do so much. That one time we flipped the canoe in the Cam River, and we lost him. He got to shore. We walked it. I tied off the canoe, and it happened to be into a pack of wolves. It's just one of those elements we got. He either got put the run on, or he ran to drew them way. But either way, I lost him overnight.
- And I couldn't tell you the roller coaster ride of emotions I went through after having my best friend for eight years in the bush, and all of a sudden-- gone. And for what? It was pretty discouraging. It was pretty hair raising. And then we found him two kilometers down the way. I didn't find him. My uncle Bert found him and brought him back to me. I had half of Thunder Bay beating down in the bushes there. They really came out of the woodwork.
- My cousin jokes with me that I think more people would came out looking for him than me. So there are elements out there. It's just, well, you place yourself and and where you're at. And it's keeping good sense and hunkering down at times. But yeah, I would say that the biggest challenge you got to deal with is whether. I've got indirectly hit by lightning on the Winnipeg river two years ago. And that was a scary, scary situation. It drained the energy right out of me. It fried my camera, my flashlight out in the canoe. And Spitz got nailed in the paws, and he was hut. Yeah, it was a pretty desperate moment. Wrong place, wrong time.
- I love it. It's a challenge. And it's not an easy task, by any means. It's putting in long hours in a day. But there's nothing more beautiful than a Canadian sunset and a Canadian sunrise. And sometimes, that's all you get at the end of the day, is just that sunset. But man, it's a beautiful sunset. You really learn how to appreciate it. Stay strong, stay true, and paddle your own canoe.
- So take me right from the beginning to the end.
- OK, well, I started in Vancouver. I left in Richmond at the memorial for the fishermen. And I headed up the Fraser. I paddle up to Fraser to Hope. I then walked over the Cascades over into the Similkameen River in there for half a day. And then I walked over the [INAUDIBLE] Hills. And eventually made my way up to Nelson. And Nelson up the Kootenay Lake, then to Creston. And then walked from there over to Crow's Nest pass.
- I took the Crow's Nest River into the Old Man River. The Old Man River into the South Saskatchewan. The South Saskatchewan into Lake Diefenbaker. I then branched east and took the Qu'Appelle Valley and the Qu'Appelle River all the way to the Assiniboine to Saint-Lazare. And took the Assiniboine all the way to Winnipeg.
- And got into the Confluence there to Red River. The Red River all the way into Lake Winnipeg. Around the southern shore of-- the southeast shore of Lake Winnipeg around through Victoria Island, or Victoria beach. Up through Traverse Bay. Up the Winnipeg River to [INAUDIBLE] into Lake of the Woods. Took the high water Voyager routes-- that's my stomping grounds, in Atikokan. And took the old Voyager routes to the big lake-- Gitche Gumee, Lake Superior.
- Took the North Shore of that all the way to Sault St. Marie through the locks into Georgian Bay. Took the shores all the way to the French River. Up the French River into Lake Nipissing. Lake Nipissing I did the [INAUDIBLE] portage into Trout lake. That brought me into Pine Lake. And then into Talon. And then took the Mattawa River into the Ottawa. Down the Ottawa into the St. Lawrence.
- Pulled out just before Riviere-du-Loup. Portaged over to Lake Temiscouata. Took the Madawaska River down into the St. John River. Turned north at Lower Cambridge, up the Canaan River. I paddled up there until I ran out of water. And then portaged from there through Moncton and over to Shediac. Took the coast to Cape Breton, and then through the Bras D'or Lakes through St. Peters. And then come out at Sydney and then made my way here around the corner and portaged over to River Ryan. And the paddled across into Dominion. And bob's your uncle, she was a done deal-- 200 days later.
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