May, 1919 
FOREST 
A N D 
STREAM 
215 
THEIMEN OF TEMAGAMI 
ONCE A MAN FALLS INTO THE LIFE OF THE NORTH HE HATES TO GO 
BACK WHERE RIVERS ARE SLOW AND BUSH ONLY GROWS IN PATCHES 
By R. J. FRASER 
I T was MajTime and the steady, 
muffled roar of the Lobstick Rap- 
ids, a half mile down the stream 
gave promise of a pleasing lullaby. 
Our little tent was pitched inside the 
treeline that fringed the Abittibi’s 
flow. Supper for two was bubbling 
in the pot. Seated on a pile of 
resinous spruce brush, my back 
against a tree, I watched “Tiny” 
Becker deftly turn the bannocks in 
the pan. The fire was burning 
bright and evenly and the self-sat- 
isfied set of the guide’s lean, tanned 
features, as he tested his work with 
a pointed twig, told me the baking 
was proving a success. 
“You’re some cook. Tiny,” I ven- 
tured to remark, as he sank back 
into a more comfortable position and 
settled his head on a softer spot on 
his duffle bag. 
“Oh, just fair ” he responded with 
a smile. “I’ve made a good many of 
these cakes in the last ten years and 
usually manage to turn out some- 
thing fit for more than canoe bal- 
last.” “Strange, though, ain’t it,” he 
added, after a pause, “Flipping ban- 
nocks for a living.” 
I agreed with “Tiny,” but after 
short consideration decided for my- 
self that, in spite of being strange 
it was by no means an unprofitable 
way of earning a livelihood. Becker, 
like the most of the guides from the 
Temagami Lake region, each fall made 
from four to eight dollars a day with 
the moose hunters, and in the summer 
months drew from the tourists — better 
known to the Temagami men as the 
“sports” — four and five dollars daily, for 
trips sometimes e.xtending over four w'eeks 
at a stretch. When he accompanied me 
down the Abittibi to James Bay, Tiny was 
paid three fifty wdth food and outfit 
found. “With the sports there are often 
good pickings, too,” he told me. “Lots of 
them never return , 
for a second cruise 
and leave their 
outfits with us — 
tents, clothes, some- 
times a new canoe. 
One summer a man 
engaged me a good 
while ahead and I 
waited a month for 
him to show up. 
When he came he 
paid me three-fifty 
a day for all the 
time I w’as wait- 
ing. 
In the long win- 
ters the guides 
keep the pot boil- 
ing with the pro- 
fits from their 
traplines, for the 
fur-bearing 
creatures of the 
‘wilds’, but after a two days’ wet 
spell they crawl shivering out of 
their tent and its ‘Mister Guide, we 
w'ant to go back to the hotel.’ I’ve 
looked after a few who even wanted 
to make love but that kind are un- 
pleasant customers. We’ve got re- 
putations at stake, we guides have, 
and the fellow who takes liberties 
loses his license like a shot.” 
T he Temagami guides are all 
licensed men and directly re- 
sponsible to the provincial for- 
est ranger, from whom they obtain 
their papers. To qualify for these 
they must show proficiency in woods- 
manship, cooking and the handling 
of canoes — the latter, of course, be- 
ing most important. A first hand 
knowledge of the country is also nec- 
essary. Slight indiscretions dis- 
courteous treatment of a patron — 
may result in the suspension of one’s 
license for a year or longer period. 
“Once,” said Tiny, as he related 
some of his experiences,” I guided 
three old maids and took them single 
handed through the lakes for over a 
three weeks’ jaunt. Say, but they 
wer6 gTGGn — didn’t know nn nxG 
from a paddle, a tent from a duffle 
pack. I had to wait on them same 
as they were children — made their 
blankets in camp and brought them 
hot water in the morning. Used to have 
to stand outside with a pailful till one of 
them sang out: ‘Already, Mister Becker. 
Then I closed my eyes and passed the pail 
in between the tent flaps. At night, after 
they had rolled up into the blankets, they 
made me come and close the front ^ of 
the tent for them. I did most everything 
for those three old girls except tuck them 
in their beds.” 
A refusal to go away with a party may 
cause a guide to forfeit his papers. As 
Tiny told me, they cannot always pick 
their charges. “I 
refused a party but 
one e,” he said. 
“They were a cou- 
ple of Englishmen 
and I had just 
come through a 
spell of work with 
one of their kind 
that took away all 
appetite for an- 
other. This fellow 
certainly asked too 
much. One day — 
and it was a long, 
hard one at that — 
I had portaged 
twice and paddled 
against headwinds. 
The bloke never 
touched a paddle 
himself and I was 
(CONTINUED ON 
PAGE 238 ) 
Tiny Becker on the trail 
woods still haunt the Temagami country 
and in numbers surprisingly great. 
American “sports” are always well 
liked. “We get lots of women, too,” said 
Becker. “Those with plenty of coin and 
a husband who’s afraid of the bush. 
There are all kinds of skirted sports — 
from the oldish ones who want to be a 
mother to you and wash your shirts and 
supply the missing buttons on your pants, 
to the novel-reading girls who see heroes 
in us all. After the first day in the 
canoes these want to live forever in the 
Temagami men waiting for something to turn up 
