Lake Superior Circle Tour: Thunder Bay Day Friendship Garden and Fort William

The white arch across the pond is one of the entrances to the Friendship Garden

Today was the warmest on our trip - reaching 29deg.  And I now know what a dry heat feels like.  lol definitely more pleasant but then need an extra 10 deg to be warm!   Also it’s insanely windy here - good at times but not for sheer warmth.    We had some time to kill in the am so started the day w a Let’s Roam in the “International Friendship Garden” which I had no idea what it was but ended up loving it!   

Mum going to visit Lithuania

This gorgeous garden, public space - no parking or entrance fees - that has monuments to many different countries from which people have immigrated here.   Once I figured out what it was all about I really enjoyed it.   

You may be able to guess which country this one represented ;)

It was gorgeous and very well done, and if I lived up there, Sasha would probably get walked there semi-often.

Scotland was one of my favourite ones,
but almost impossible to photograph (esp w my phone) because the art was all reflective and it was dramatically perfect weather.  So you just get to see the simplistic castle ;)

The only thing that might've strengthened it (for me) would've been info on why some of the monuments were what they were - what was the significance of the thing portrayed to the country it's from.    A few of them had info that sort of addressed that (the Ukraine one, while not my favourite monument, had all the details), but not for the most part.

The Ukraine Monument
and below the details

And to wrap it up, right before we left I discovered:

A map we found right at the end of our explorations  🤦‍♀️ 

From there we headed off to Fort William where I learned that not all forts were military.  

From the outside, Fort William looks like most forts of that time period in Canada;
Spoiler alert.  It's not.

This one was a business centre and the tour we took was fascinating - honestly far more to my personal interests than military would've been although those are interesting too.  Essentially Voyageurs from Montreal (a 6 week paddle) bringing European goods, would meet here with trappers from the interior bringing furs for a few week meetup before everybody left to paddle home before the water froze.  There was a medic (think old school, not what we'd have now), significant trade exercises, and essentially an annual "town hall" type meeting of anyone involved in the business.  

Learning about how they flattened, packed, and weighed furs to be transported

We toured most of the main area, but didn’t go around to the farm or a few of the farther buildings.  Mostly cause by this point we’d done a lot of walking and were ready for both a break and a drink, so we caught an “express canoe” (aka shuttle) back and good to go ;).  

Canoe building and repair area with someone actively working the craft while we were there

The top muckymucks got good meals and actual beds to sleep in (of course that didn't apply for the average human).   Interestingly the guides and the translators were allowed in these hollowed grounds - but only at the back tables ;) 

Fancy - we learned all about the hierarchy of who ate where, and when

A not top-level room, but pretty high up there comparatively

The average person would've been lucky to find space to set up their tiny tent
(outside of the fort walls of course!)

I mean, at least the tiny tents (far left) had a good view?

 

I felt like I was a kid back on a field trip 😂. And possibly learned a ton more cause I was there by choice.  The staff are all reenactment based and have full characters - at least some of which (I wouldn’t be surprised if all) were based on historical record.  Apparently during “rendezvous” during mid-July it’s really quite the show w a cast of a few hundred.  I enjoyed this WAY more than I expected to, and would do it again planning for a longer visit if I were ever back out that way.  Highly recommend.   We also got lucky cause we had half-price entry compliments of the lovely woman at the Terry Fox monument.  So double win.

Normally part of the tour is done inside here

But today it was deemed way too hot!

Again our timing of after-school-trips and before-summer was awesome.  Our tour only had one other couple and their little, and there were very few other non-staff people around (pretty easy to identify who was being paid here by what century their clothing was from ;)).   

I'm not kidding when I say we had the place to ourselves;
We were definitely outnumbered by staff

They also referred to the "two week paddle" it would've taken us to get there from York and a few other references that were both educational and entertaining.   By far the most entertaining though was the woman who called for our express canoe through a walkie-talkie, and then you could see the moment she realized she'd broken character and that wasn't period-appropriate (it's obviously VERY drilled into them) so made a comment about "fastest and strangest looking messenger pigeon ever" lol.  I gave her full credit for that one.

Period-appropriate hobbies are encouraged while waiting for express canoes ;)

So in complete randomness to close out the day, as if I hadn’t already learned a ton today, today I also learned that Thunder Bay has produced the most pro hockey players per capita of any city.  And where we ate dinner had pictures of them all - in what looked like a loose chronological order (loose cause I’m going based strictly on photo style and cause they weren’t in a line but all over a wall).  It was well done and kept my attention for longer than I would ever have expected.