The Happy Camper: Craig MacDonald’s Work Is Truth and Reconciliation Put into Practice
“Being around Craig is like getting on a speeding freight train that is accelerating faster and faster. Unless you look to the horizon for the big picture, it’s often difficult to know exactly where you are or where you’re going.” – James Raffan, Echo Maker (2025)
I was in my late 20s when I first met Craig MacDonald. I had an idea floating around in my head of writing a series of guidebooks for Ontario canoeists, and I was told he was the perfect person to chat with about it. Craig was working for the Ontario government as a trail’s specialist (a job he held for 47 years). I’ve got to say, it was an awkward meeting at first. Craig wasn’t one for small talk. But when I started asking about Canadian canoe routes, you couldn’t shut the guy up. It was like listening to a robotic encyclopedia; he knew every portage, lake, river and even every rock and tree along thousands of kilometres of routes across the country.
Needless to say, Craig helped me quite a few times during my years of documenting canoe routes for a number of my guidebooks. I grew to know him well beyond that of some government employee who marked and maintained waterway trails. After all, he’s a bit of a legend in the canoe community here in Ontario, and beyond.
Craig’s main profile started back in the mid-1960s when he began a crazed obsession with documenting both summer portages and winter snowshoe trails by simply talking and travelling with Indigenous trappers and travellers. He gained respect from the Anishinaabemowin of Temagami, became a Cree-Ojibwa place-name linguist expert, interviewed over 200 Anishinabai elders, travelled well over 1,000 kilometres along “nastawgan” backcountry trails; and by doing so, he sparked “truth and reconciliation” decades before it became a common term and desire for us Canadians.
True to his character, he didn’t do his work for praise and profit. But thanks to a bunch of people who admired his dedicated addiction to documenting and sharing the old ways, two books were released in 2025. Here’s my review on both.
Echo Maker: Craig MacDonald and the Lives That Produced One of Canada’s Most Significant Historical Maps
Best-selling Canadian writer James Raffan is the author of this biography of Craig MacDonald. James is an incredible writer, and I think he is the only one that could have written this life story of Craig and the story behind the infamous map he created—Historical Map of Temagami.
When I was at the book launch at the Canadian Canoe Museum recently, I asked Craig if he was comfortable with James writing his prosopography. Craig responded, “Sure, but I doubted that James would take it on. He’s too famous.” I asked James if he was comfortable being the author behind the book, and he responded, “Sure, but I doubted if Craig would be comfortable with me doing it. He’s much too famous.” It was a match made in heaven.
The map project started as far back as 1966 (released in 1993). The initial premise was based on Craig’s love of canoe tripping, winter sledding and extended snowshoe travel. He soon found a job guiding for Kirk Wipper, founder of the Canadian Canoe Museum who then operated a kids camp based out of Temagami’s Lady Evelyn Lake. Craig became friends with a Teme-Augama Anishnabai Elder Peter Albany and a family who was living in a canvas-walled tent at the access of Lady Evelyn Lake at the time. After countless cups of tea and conversation, Peter asked Craig to help document over 1,200 portages, 75 snowshoe trails and over 600 Indigenous names for his ancestral region.
It took Craig 22 years to produce something for his friend Peter Albany—a substantial map (96 centimetre x 139 centimetre or 38”x 55”) with heritage graphics covering a wilderness area well over 10,000 square kilometres north of North Bay, east, straddling the Ontario/Quebec border, west to Lake Wanapitei and north towards Elk Lake; with Lake Temagami being in the centre.
It is critical to note that this map quickly became much more than just a map of old portages and winter trails. It became written proof of the Teme-Augama Anishnabais claim of their special ancestral attachment to the lands shown on the map. And by doing so, it was therefore used in provincial and federal court when the government denied the land rights to the Indigenous peoples. This court case is still on-going by the way.
A lot went through my head while reading this book. It was a pure joy to read the opening chapter where Teme-Augama Anishnabais trappers head out on the land when there was “not a map to be found anywhere.” It was a time when the trappers listened to a CBS radio broadcast “War Of The Worlds, narrated by Orson Welles who convinced the listeners—including trappers Larry Turner and Andrew Couchie, that a Martian invasion was actually taking place. It definitely was a different time in the bush back in 1938.
And some deep thoughts came speeding through my noggin when Elder Mary Laronde of Teme-Augama Anishnabais hiked up to Temagami’s Maple Mountain, an ancient Indigenous spiritual hang-out. She was taught as a child in school that they were just dumb Indians because they didn’t even have the wheel. When she climbed up to the mound of her peoples’ alter later in life, to view over their ancestral land, Mary loudly exclaimed, “Holy shit! No wonder we didn’t have a wheel. It would have been completely useless here. We made what we needed. Canoes and snowshoes!”
But the most intriguing point that kept repeating itself in my head while reading was that Craig MacDonald, while working for the government of Ontario documenting canoe routes, was also working on his own time recording some traditional routes of Indigenous peoples. He then found himself in court defending the Teme-Augama Anishnabais land claims and thus fighting against the government he worked for. That’s an interesting story—and made the book a very fascinating read, to say the least.
Traditional Sledding in North America
This is the second book on Craig MacDonalds lifetime work. His name is listed as the author, and there is a prologue by Victoria Grant of the Teme-Augama Anishnabais Kwe. It was also published by the Canadian Canoe Museum.
But it was James Raffan again who helped put this book together. And what a book. Over 300 descriptive pages and countless diagrams on—yep—winter sleds. It’s the textbook for winter sleds, no questions asked.
Not only did Craig spend the majority of his time documenting where the Indigenous trappers and their families travel throughout the winter, he showed how they did it. To do so, he became conversant in Anishinaabemowin and learned smatterings of Cree and Inuktitut before conducting interviews with dozens of Elders over a span of nearly 40 years.
Many have noted that this book is a treasure chest of Indigenous knowledge on wilderness travel; something that may have been lost if it wasn’t for Craig MacDonald’s consuming passion to document it all, and James Raffan for helping getting the word out. And I agree with that. But on my first read-through of this book, and the Echo Maker bio, I kept wondering if there were some Indigenous peoples who questioned the concept of having some white guy recording the “nastawagan” ways, and another white guy writing it all down and getting it published into the mainstream media.
I asked around to some First Nation friends about this possible debate, and it seems there was no debate. It was more of an honour for these two “white guys” to do the work they did rather than have it be frowned upon for doing it. It gave the Teme-Augama Anishnabais and other Indigenous peoples across Canada a sense of identity. They were proud that at least somebody—white or not—took interest in their traditional way of life.
The Anishinaabe teaching of the crane (Ajijaak)—a heron-like bird of the north whose call has an echoing sound—represents wisdom and equal communications for all Anishinaabe. It symbolizes the calling out—the echo—of the voices of the people to gather for Ceremony.
That’s Craig MacDonald—the Echo Maker. He listened and recorded the Elders. Now it is time for the Ceremony.
Check out my Whisky Fireside Chat with James Raffan about both books… and beyond on my KCHappyCamper YouTube channel
