GOING UPRIVER: Tour Highlghts

Here are some of the highlights of GOING UPRIVER's adventures.

ATLANTIC APPROACHES

NEW BRUNSWICK: After a "sneak preview" concert for Environment Week in Halifax, NS (sponsored by the Canadian Parks Service), we kicked off the exhibit tour with a special program for the Canadian Heritage Rivers Board on the St. Croix River in St. Stephen. The display then moved to Market Square, St. John, where our trip "upriver" officially began on the St. John River with a boat tour through the famous Reversing Falls. We headed inland from the Gulf of St. Lawrence at Kouchibouguac National Park (see sidebar).

QUEBEC: La Corporation pour la Restauration de la Jacques Cartier, a citizen's group, hosted us for nine programs in French (ably led by Alain) and a visit to a salmon ladder with "bus service" (to help spawning salmon around the dam). We canoed the wild rapids of the Jacques Cartier, a nominated Canadian Heritage River, in the spectacular Jacques Cartier Provincial Park.

INDUSTRIAL HEARTLAND

ONTARIO I: As participants in Ottawa's Canada Day celebrations, we joined in the Voyageurs' National Campfire program and opened the awards ceremonies for the Voyageur Cup for an estimated 2000 visitors. St. Lawrence Islands National Park on the U.S./Canadian border made the perfect backdrop for songs of the Lakers, as the heavy-laden Great Lakes freighters steamed majestically downbound from Duluth to Panama.

We crossed the Ontario peninsula for a tour of Georgian Bay: SWEET SEAS concerts at Fathom Five National Marine Park (Canada's newest!) and Bruce Peninsula National Park at Tobermory; WATERWATCH programs at Georgian Bay Islands National Park; and a visit to Saint-Marie-Among-the-Hurons, site of the first Jesuit mission in the New World. We topped our end-to-end tour of the Niagara Escarpment at Niagara Falls, the only place one can see four of the five Great Lakes at once. Our regional vision gave us new eyes to appreciate the hugeness and power of the Lakes as they thunder over the Falls.

OHIO: The industrial heartland welcomed us to Cleveland, where we displayed the CHRS exhibit in the historic Old Arcade and celebrated urban rivers at the Sohio Riverfest with our hosts, the Cleveland Waterfront Coalition. Their Annual Meeting capped our outreach programs to the Cleveland Children's Museum, the Ohio Sierra Club, Bowling Green State University, and Aullwood Audubon Center and Farm in Dayton, where Teresa led a workshop in "Citizen Action for River Conservation."

THE VOYAGEURS' HIGHWAY

ONTARIO II: The high point of the summer was the dedication of the Mattawa River as a Canadian Heritage River. Lynn led the singing in the voyageurs' canoe as it paddled upriver to the ceremony platform, where she and Alain opened the dedication ceremonies with "O Canada." Time telescoped at the Voyageur Heritage Center, where the exhibit was displayed: our characters "Lisette" and "Pierre" took on a life of their own as we voyageurs led the audience in songs and stories of the fur trade. An overnight paddle on the Mattawa was a magical chance to follow in Mackenzie's footsteps and attune to the power of the river at an Indian ocher mine in Samuel de Champlain Provincial Park.

WISCONSIN: After a concert and workshop at the Sault Sainte Marie Heritage Locks, we followed the Michigan lakeshore southward to Green Bay. Bay Beach Nature Center staged a whirlwind of activities for us: thirteen programs, two TV spots, and an all-day "Super Saturday" at their outstanding facility. At the other end of the Fox/Wisconsin Waterway in Prairie du Chien, the State Historical Society of Wisconsin's Villa Louis hosted two performances of C'EST L'AVIRON, and displayed the exhibit and our own Great Lakes map collection at the Villa's Fur Trade Museum. Our final trip "upriver" was a symbolic paddle down Marquette's route. After tracking the explorer across the continent, we paddled down his beloved Wisconsin River, and in his words, "entered the Mississippi with a joy I cannot express."

CLOSING THE CIRCLE

Officially, C'EST L'AVIRON at Minnesota's St. Croix State Park was the final program of the summer. But demand continued, and the return journey included a special presentation to the National River Preservation Conference in Columbus, Ohio. After a week at the University of Wisconsin Center-Richland, the exhibit made its eleventh and final display here, and was then returned to Ottawa with thanks to the Canadian Heritage Rivers System. The circle widens this fall with CROSSCURRENTS programs in Massachusetts schools and a special invitation to join Trent Unversity's annual Canadian Studies Retreat at Wanapitei Wilderness Canoe Centre in Temagami, ONT.