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Fire Canoe: Prairie Steamboat Days Revisited
Years before railroads arrived, the Canadian West was opened up by an unlikely breed of steamboats plying Prairie waterways. Their aboriginal pilots, experts at reading the tricky waterways, called the ships “fire canoes.” By day they chased freight contracts, but at night they introduced the Edwardian Prairies to pleasure cruises.
385 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 31, 2015
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17 people want to read
About the author
Ted Barris
25 books39 followersTed Barris is an accomplished author, journalist and broadcaster. As well as hosting stints on CBC Radio and regular contributions to The Globe and Mail, the National Post, and various national magazines, he is a full-time professor of journalism at Centennial College in Toronto. Barris has authored seventeen non-fiction books, including the national bestsellers Victory at Vimy and Juno.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 10, 2020
In the earlier years of European exploration of Canada, the canoe was the primary vehicle for travel and goods movement. Once the fur trade got going, the York boats became the freighters for moving furs and supplies along the waterways. Steam powered boats were introduced into Canada in 1859, starting with the Red River between the U.S. and Fort Gary. River hazards made their introduction hazardous but in spite of many losses, they eventually demonstrated their advantages of speed and capacity. The timing was opportune as steamboats came at the time when the West was being settled. Barris tells the story of prairie steamboats by region, focusing on those who developed the business.
John Walter, originally from the Orkney islands, built a cable ferry across the Saskatchewan River at Edmonton, and went on to become a successful builder of ferries and other boats such as dredges. In addition to a hugely successful lumber business, he developed a regular excursion service down river to Fort Saskatchewan and up river to Big Island. The 1915 flood destroyed his business and swept away "The City of Edmonton".
Captain Richard Deacon built the first steamboats in Prince Albert largely for the logging industry. The "Saskatchewan", the "Alberta" and the "Marquis" followed, again the evening excursions being very popular. Two men built a gold dredge with the intention of recovering gold from the Saskatchewan River, but were unable to separate the iron oxide from the gold effectively.
William Pearson working with others, developed a real estate business in the Qu'Appelle named Last Mountain Valley where land purchased from CNR was sold to U.S. farmers. He developed all the infrastructure to support the farming communities including a transport business featuring the steamboat "Qu'Appelle", known locally as the Queer Apple. The boat travelled the length of Last Mountain Lake primarily moving goods, but also providing a popular excursion business.
John Cornwall developed the Northern Transportation Company which had four steamboats serving the Athabasca - Lesser Slave Lake area. As he felt that the area north of Edmonton was attractive land, he hosted a two thousand mile junket whereby journalists, agronomists and academics were given a tour of the Athabasca - Peace River District. Immigration to the peace River area increased significantly when the participants wrote up their trip.
Tom Sukanen, the Mad Finn, was a recluse with amazing fabrication skills. He build a boat, the "Sontiainen", which he intended to sail down the rivers from Saskatoon and across the ocean back to Finland. In the end he was unable to transport it to the river. This amazing boat has been preserved along with many of Sukanen's possessions, at Moose Jaw.
While most men who started steamboat businesses were undistinguished, Captain Horatio Hamilton Ross was of the Scottish gentry. He started in Medicine Hat with the "City of Medicine Hat" and the "Assiniboia", but there was not much freight business so they primarily did excursions. After the "City of Medicine Hat" crashed into the Saskatoon pedestrian bridge, Ross went east and formed the Ross Navigation Company at La Paz. There he freighted ore for the Mandy Mine and lumber for the Winton Brothers, building the "D.N. Winton".
The Winnipegosis fish and lumber trades were served by the "Manitou" and the "Armeneon", until the 1930's when the more economical diesel boats took over. During the 1897 flood of the Red River, steamboats provided relief service, operating u to two miles away from the normal river course. Lake Winnipeg supplied millions of pounds of fish to the eastern U.S. annually, steamboats supplying most of the freighting capacity. The "Keenora" was converted to diesel in 1960 and abandoned five years later. It has been preserved by the Manitoba Martime Museum.
In the end, steamboats faded as they were overtaken by railways and diesel boats. Even at their height, operation was tenuous due to hazards such as shallows, sand bars, flooding into swamps and even mounds of dead buffalo in the river courses.
Barris brings the characters of the steamboat business to life. He had apparently conducted many interviews, recording many anecdotes of the times that make entertaining reading. The book provides insight into the period when the west was settled, and the importance of the steamboat between the use of wagons and the arrival of the railways.
John Walter, originally from the Orkney islands, built a cable ferry across the Saskatchewan River at Edmonton, and went on to become a successful builder of ferries and other boats such as dredges. In addition to a hugely successful lumber business, he developed a regular excursion service down river to Fort Saskatchewan and up river to Big Island. The 1915 flood destroyed his business and swept away "The City of Edmonton".
Captain Richard Deacon built the first steamboats in Prince Albert largely for the logging industry. The "Saskatchewan", the "Alberta" and the "Marquis" followed, again the evening excursions being very popular. Two men built a gold dredge with the intention of recovering gold from the Saskatchewan River, but were unable to separate the iron oxide from the gold effectively.
William Pearson working with others, developed a real estate business in the Qu'Appelle named Last Mountain Valley where land purchased from CNR was sold to U.S. farmers. He developed all the infrastructure to support the farming communities including a transport business featuring the steamboat "Qu'Appelle", known locally as the Queer Apple. The boat travelled the length of Last Mountain Lake primarily moving goods, but also providing a popular excursion business.
John Cornwall developed the Northern Transportation Company which had four steamboats serving the Athabasca - Lesser Slave Lake area. As he felt that the area north of Edmonton was attractive land, he hosted a two thousand mile junket whereby journalists, agronomists and academics were given a tour of the Athabasca - Peace River District. Immigration to the peace River area increased significantly when the participants wrote up their trip.
Tom Sukanen, the Mad Finn, was a recluse with amazing fabrication skills. He build a boat, the "Sontiainen", which he intended to sail down the rivers from Saskatoon and across the ocean back to Finland. In the end he was unable to transport it to the river. This amazing boat has been preserved along with many of Sukanen's possessions, at Moose Jaw.
While most men who started steamboat businesses were undistinguished, Captain Horatio Hamilton Ross was of the Scottish gentry. He started in Medicine Hat with the "City of Medicine Hat" and the "Assiniboia", but there was not much freight business so they primarily did excursions. After the "City of Medicine Hat" crashed into the Saskatoon pedestrian bridge, Ross went east and formed the Ross Navigation Company at La Paz. There he freighted ore for the Mandy Mine and lumber for the Winton Brothers, building the "D.N. Winton".
The Winnipegosis fish and lumber trades were served by the "Manitou" and the "Armeneon", until the 1930's when the more economical diesel boats took over. During the 1897 flood of the Red River, steamboats provided relief service, operating u to two miles away from the normal river course. Lake Winnipeg supplied millions of pounds of fish to the eastern U.S. annually, steamboats supplying most of the freighting capacity. The "Keenora" was converted to diesel in 1960 and abandoned five years later. It has been preserved by the Manitoba Martime Museum.
In the end, steamboats faded as they were overtaken by railways and diesel boats. Even at their height, operation was tenuous due to hazards such as shallows, sand bars, flooding into swamps and even mounds of dead buffalo in the river courses.
Barris brings the characters of the steamboat business to life. He had apparently conducted many interviews, recording many anecdotes of the times that make entertaining reading. The book provides insight into the period when the west was settled, and the importance of the steamboat between the use of wagons and the arrival of the railways.
September 13, 2020
Really fascinating period in prairie history. Going to have to come back to this one for my own research.
October 28, 2015
I always find that picking up a book and turning the cover is similar to opening a door, you never know what is on the other side… once that door or book cover opens, will it be a rush of cold air or a gentle breeze of warm air.
Reading the new book Fire Canoe by Ted Barris is akin to that. I turned that first page and there was a gentle rush of warm air that met me. I am an avid reader and never have I been so surprised by a book and what it contained as Fire Canoe. Never in my wildness dreams did I envision the Prairies of Canada entertaining a generation of steamboats on what I always thought as streams and lakes that were only navigable to canoes, barges and beavers.
In the winter of 1858-59 a Captain Anson Northup set out to win a reward from the St Paul Chamber of Commerce to put a steamboat on the Red River. With 34 horses, 26 oxen and 30 teamsters Northup set out with an 11,000 pound boiler, engine works and rough timbers on a 150 mile odyssey through the winter wilds of Minnesota erecting makeshift bridges on his journey. On May 17th 1859 Captain Northup floated his steamboat and proceeded to become the first steamboat on the Red River and made his way to Fort Garry and his $2000 reward put up by the St Paul Chamber of Commerce. Thus, introducing the Fire Canoes, as the Native population called them, to the windswept prairies, rivers and lakes. This was a beginning of a 50 year love affair with these steamers and their escapades.
The steamboats were never far from a calamity. In the spring of 1879 a Captain John H. Smith had the dubious distinction of travelling up the Battle River with his boat the Lily and upon entry to the town limits caught a telegraph line on her forward jackstaff and pulling out all the poles up and down both sides of the river. Whenever one of these boats ran aground or worse yet started to take on water, it was everyone for themselves and if you were a passenger it was your responsibility to get yourself to your destination after getting ashore.
Always dealing with low water, high water, storms, rapids, sand bars, runaway barges and men overboard these steamers brought lumber, people, goods, and even the circus to town. During the Riel Rebellion they transported troops for the Canadian government.
Whenever the steam whistles of these Fire Canoes pierced the air, it brought the local populace to the riverbanks to watch them go by or to come into dock. For many prairie people the steamers supplied entertainment in evening cruises and dances.
Barris tells many stories of the captains and owners who plied their trade on these waterways. The much loved John Walters who owned the Walterdale Lumber Mill and the steamers the Strathcona and City of Edmonton. Then there was Captain Richard Deacon who was the direct opposite of John Warren in temper and business sense.
You will read about William Pearson who opened up the Peace River country with his steamers. Then there is the amazing story of the Finland native Tom Sukanen who spent most of his life building a steamer 50 miles from the nearest waterway so that he could go back to his homeland. You decide if he was crazy!
One of the more amazing stories is of Levie Bellefeuille’s delivery of the steam wheeler Alberta in the early 1900’s down 500 miles of the Saskatchewan River from Prince Albert and then along 500 miles of shoreline of Lake Winnipeg including 48 sets of rapids, leaving May 30th and arriving in Winnipeg June 19th.
The sad thing about reading about all these wonderful boats is realizing that only one remains. The Keenora is the last survivor of these denizens of a bygone era. It now sits in the Maritime Museum in Springfield Manitoba.
I love reading books that surprise me with facts that I had no idea existed beforehand. This book by Ted Barris fit that bill perfectly. It enlightened and educated me. The period pictures gave you that sense of being. A perfect book, for anyone that is a fan of Maritime history, Canadian history, and the opening of Western Canada. 5 stars.
Rick Revelle
Author of I Am Algonquin and Algonquin Spring.
Reading the new book Fire Canoe by Ted Barris is akin to that. I turned that first page and there was a gentle rush of warm air that met me. I am an avid reader and never have I been so surprised by a book and what it contained as Fire Canoe. Never in my wildness dreams did I envision the Prairies of Canada entertaining a generation of steamboats on what I always thought as streams and lakes that were only navigable to canoes, barges and beavers.
In the winter of 1858-59 a Captain Anson Northup set out to win a reward from the St Paul Chamber of Commerce to put a steamboat on the Red River. With 34 horses, 26 oxen and 30 teamsters Northup set out with an 11,000 pound boiler, engine works and rough timbers on a 150 mile odyssey through the winter wilds of Minnesota erecting makeshift bridges on his journey. On May 17th 1859 Captain Northup floated his steamboat and proceeded to become the first steamboat on the Red River and made his way to Fort Garry and his $2000 reward put up by the St Paul Chamber of Commerce. Thus, introducing the Fire Canoes, as the Native population called them, to the windswept prairies, rivers and lakes. This was a beginning of a 50 year love affair with these steamers and their escapades.
The steamboats were never far from a calamity. In the spring of 1879 a Captain John H. Smith had the dubious distinction of travelling up the Battle River with his boat the Lily and upon entry to the town limits caught a telegraph line on her forward jackstaff and pulling out all the poles up and down both sides of the river. Whenever one of these boats ran aground or worse yet started to take on water, it was everyone for themselves and if you were a passenger it was your responsibility to get yourself to your destination after getting ashore.
Always dealing with low water, high water, storms, rapids, sand bars, runaway barges and men overboard these steamers brought lumber, people, goods, and even the circus to town. During the Riel Rebellion they transported troops for the Canadian government.
Whenever the steam whistles of these Fire Canoes pierced the air, it brought the local populace to the riverbanks to watch them go by or to come into dock. For many prairie people the steamers supplied entertainment in evening cruises and dances.
Barris tells many stories of the captains and owners who plied their trade on these waterways. The much loved John Walters who owned the Walterdale Lumber Mill and the steamers the Strathcona and City of Edmonton. Then there was Captain Richard Deacon who was the direct opposite of John Warren in temper and business sense.
You will read about William Pearson who opened up the Peace River country with his steamers. Then there is the amazing story of the Finland native Tom Sukanen who spent most of his life building a steamer 50 miles from the nearest waterway so that he could go back to his homeland. You decide if he was crazy!
One of the more amazing stories is of Levie Bellefeuille’s delivery of the steam wheeler Alberta in the early 1900’s down 500 miles of the Saskatchewan River from Prince Albert and then along 500 miles of shoreline of Lake Winnipeg including 48 sets of rapids, leaving May 30th and arriving in Winnipeg June 19th.
The sad thing about reading about all these wonderful boats is realizing that only one remains. The Keenora is the last survivor of these denizens of a bygone era. It now sits in the Maritime Museum in Springfield Manitoba.
I love reading books that surprise me with facts that I had no idea existed beforehand. This book by Ted Barris fit that bill perfectly. It enlightened and educated me. The period pictures gave you that sense of being. A perfect book, for anyone that is a fan of Maritime history, Canadian history, and the opening of Western Canada. 5 stars.
Rick Revelle
Author of I Am Algonquin and Algonquin Spring.
October 12, 2015
Fire Canoe: Prairie Steamboat Days
Review by David A. Poulsen
Fire Canoe—Another Barris Literary Treasure
Ted Barris’s recently released Fire Canoe (Dundurn, Toronto) confirms once again the writer’s position as one of Canada’s pre-eminent purveyors of our nation’s history. In the tradition of Pierre Burton (and others), Barris once again combines exhaustive research, compelling story-telling with his clear love of this country’s stories to create a thoroughly readable look at the largely forgotten story of the steamboats of the Canadian prairie waterways.
Fire Canoe—the name came from the First Nations people, some of whom were terrified at the noise and sight of the wondrous vessels while others were employed to pilot them through often tricky waters. The ships themselves were the very definition of multi-taskers and their stories leap off the pages of Barris’s book. The vessels played important roles in war (The Riel Rebellion), in transporting the goods needed for a growing west , in dredging for gold at river’s bottom and in providing fun, not only for those who toiled on the ships but those on shore as well. But perhaps, most of all, the steamboats were home to a cast of characters--rascals, builders, villains and heroes and Barris, as he does so well, has them leaping off the pages and into our hearts.
One of those characters, Jimmy Soles (his father had rafted his family over six hundred miles from Medicine Hat to Prince Albert) eventually became part of the crew of the Hudson Bay Company’s stern-wheeler, the Saskatchewan.
“We danced at every place we stopped downriver—The Pas, Cumberland, Chemahawin, Cedar Lake—if we were going to be there overnight, we had a dance. . . . The Indians called them fiddle dances,” mused Soles, who called at all the dances “especially if I knew I didn’t have to get up ’til about noon the next day. . . . Oh those square-dances. . . . The first trip I made with the Saskatchewan, we had a dance at Cumberland and there was an Indian fellow playin’ the fiddle. He had a fiddle alright, and a willow bent with horse hair on it. And he only could play the one tune, ‘Little Brown Jug.’ We danced to that all night.”
Ted Barris has become one of the most important and gifted chroniclers of Canada’s often fascinating and sadly, just-as-often forgotten past. Barris is doing all he can to remedy that unfortunate reality, and Fire Canoe is another feather in his well-decorated cap.
Review by David A. Poulsen
Fire Canoe—Another Barris Literary Treasure
Ted Barris’s recently released Fire Canoe (Dundurn, Toronto) confirms once again the writer’s position as one of Canada’s pre-eminent purveyors of our nation’s history. In the tradition of Pierre Burton (and others), Barris once again combines exhaustive research, compelling story-telling with his clear love of this country’s stories to create a thoroughly readable look at the largely forgotten story of the steamboats of the Canadian prairie waterways.
Fire Canoe—the name came from the First Nations people, some of whom were terrified at the noise and sight of the wondrous vessels while others were employed to pilot them through often tricky waters. The ships themselves were the very definition of multi-taskers and their stories leap off the pages of Barris’s book. The vessels played important roles in war (The Riel Rebellion), in transporting the goods needed for a growing west , in dredging for gold at river’s bottom and in providing fun, not only for those who toiled on the ships but those on shore as well. But perhaps, most of all, the steamboats were home to a cast of characters--rascals, builders, villains and heroes and Barris, as he does so well, has them leaping off the pages and into our hearts.
One of those characters, Jimmy Soles (his father had rafted his family over six hundred miles from Medicine Hat to Prince Albert) eventually became part of the crew of the Hudson Bay Company’s stern-wheeler, the Saskatchewan.
“We danced at every place we stopped downriver—The Pas, Cumberland, Chemahawin, Cedar Lake—if we were going to be there overnight, we had a dance. . . . The Indians called them fiddle dances,” mused Soles, who called at all the dances “especially if I knew I didn’t have to get up ’til about noon the next day. . . . Oh those square-dances. . . . The first trip I made with the Saskatchewan, we had a dance at Cumberland and there was an Indian fellow playin’ the fiddle. He had a fiddle alright, and a willow bent with horse hair on it. And he only could play the one tune, ‘Little Brown Jug.’ We danced to that all night.”
Ted Barris has become one of the most important and gifted chroniclers of Canada’s often fascinating and sadly, just-as-often forgotten past. Barris is doing all he can to remedy that unfortunate reality, and Fire Canoe is another feather in his well-decorated cap.
January 9, 2016
A great book for anyone interested in Canadian history. Mr. Barris is an expert and writes with great detail and passion. He never ceases to amaze me with his story telling ability.
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