Dawson Trail Arts and Heritage Tour Transcript

PIERRETTE: What is the Dawson Trail? I mean, it is the result of our work over, you know, multiple years and multiple phases… is that we have indeed this, you know, massive collective historical commemoration which includes a website that is very engaging, that is being referred to by, you know, residents, tourists, researchers, schools and scholars and that features, you know, thousands of historical insights. And then we have a permanent land-based interpretive trail that consists of 23 trail markers and exhibits all the way along 120 km worth of trail from St. Boniface — historic St. Boniface — in Winnipeg which was the original terminus of the trail all the way to the northwest angle at Lake of the Woods, which is also significant because back in 1873, that was the location where they signed Treaty 3 in the presence of 1400 Anishinaabe. 

MIREILLE: One of the big learnings of this research was that this is actually a 4000-year-old trail. We actually found, Pierrette actually found a 4500-year-old projectile point right along the trail. So this is a confirmation for us that this is an ancient traders’ trail. And there's lots of historical evidence of that trail having been used, you know, in the late 1700s by the La Vérendrye soldiers and later by the Selkirk, you know, mercenaries as well as others. But the the point is now we know for sure because we have material confirmation of that, that this has been in use for 4500 years. So when we're talking about this minute period in time from like 1868, the beginning of its construction and its opening 1871, and the end of its use in 1890, really marking the end of the fur trade, right? We're really talking about like the last 11th-and-1/2 hour of that formal trail in use. Yeah. Yeah. And so that's a cool part of it is the ancientness of it all.

PIERRETTE: And you know like beyond what we were able to bring to this story, which is of course rich in itself. I mean, the Dawson Trail does have, you know, both provincial and federal historic designation and is intimately tied to the Red River Resistance as we've seen with the incidences of, you know, confronting the surveyors along the trail and so many other details. But it's also intimately tied with Manitoba joining into Confederation and the eventual building of the Trans-Canada Railway. I mean it was all very instrumental and led to that.

MIREILLE: We wanted to mark the actual trail itself because we noticed that parts of it were disappearing, and so we didn't want that aspect of it to be lost. So there are 15 trail markers all along the way at every key spot. Sometimes you can actually drive this, you know, and in five minutes pass by like 10 different historically significant places. So, it was really hard for us to decide where exactly to put these. But to be honest, where it came down, what it came down to was often what was the most practical and often also: which one did we have information on about the traditional place name because a huge aspect of this project was to commemorate the original place names in the michif language in French and in Anishinaabemowin.

PIERRETTE: The trail markers themselves are bright and colourful and innovative. You know, they've got, they feature kind of the silhouette of a canoe because it's the land and water route. That's traditionally how it was referred to. And then we have kind of a simile of the corduroy roads as a centrepiece where we place the interpretive panels. And then we have our artistic interpretive exhibits which are very interesting in and of themselves. We have a total of eight of those wonderful exhibits that dot along the landscape and really beautiful complimentary features to the trail. This project has just gained so much momentum and there's been all kinds of really wonderful ripple effects from that. And one of those things was that there was a Dawson Trek initiated just this year with 40 people getting together and cycling a good portion of the Dawson Trail and raising funds to help with the long-term maintenance of the trail. So that's just, again, one of the ways that the community is getting involved and it just continues to grow this way. Partnerships and collaborations were absolutely crucial to the making of the Dawson Trail. There's no question about it. The sheer complexity of this project, you know, required an entire collective to really come together to make it happen.

MIREILLE: I ran the content advisory committee. So for me the last word goes to the members of that committee. They came through big time. We could never have done it without them and their critical eye, that ability to look at it from an Indigenous perspective that someone like me cannot do. So our perspective, you know, being my perspective as a settler and as a researcher is very much this sort of paper-oriented kind of stuff and they brought an entire other dimension to this that is what made it good. The linguistic aspect of this, the preservation of our Franco-Manitoban language, the michif language, aspects of Anishinaabemowin on the land and that whole land-based aspect of it. I would dream and love to see one day, you know, schools doing like bus tours in June and May along the trail. That's where I see the future of this and the legacy of this being. But I'm so darn proud that we managed to capture this before it was gone. And I think again that is the biggest win here for everybody.

PIERRETTE: It’s my hope as well that the trail inspires people, right? That it — there's so many wonderful themes that are being talked about through our interpretive trail. I mean we talk about compassion, we talk about leadership, we talk about, you know, survival, we talk about community, we talk about family values, about the environment. I mean these are all wonderful themes that can inspire future generations and, you know, I mean ultimately it's our hope that the story of the Dawson Trail is never forgotten, right? And that this becomes a pillar for, you know, tourism and economic development for all of our communities for many generations to come.