10 
CHAPTER II 
ECONOMIC LIFE 
The Parry Islanders engage today in various occupations. During 
the winter months some of the men trap and hunt, others find employment 
in the lumber camps; the women make baskets of birch bark and sweet 
grass for the summer tourist trade. When summer opens a few men work 
in the grain sheds at Depot Harbour, others serve the summer tourists 
either as fishing guides or as caretakers of cottages and boats. Steady 
employment all the year round practically does not exist. To help in 
maintaining themselves and their families the Indians raise a small quan- 
tity of vegetables and gather the wild fruits in their seasons; but for most 
of their food supply they depend, like their white neighbours, on the stores. 
In early times the Indians of Georgian bay cultivated maize, accord- 
ing to some informants. Others denied it, asserting that they lived solely 
by fishing, hunting, and the gathering of wild fruits. This contradiction 
in their statements evidently reflects the mixed origin of the people, for 
we know from Champlain that the Ottawa who once occupied the region 
cultivated maize, and from other early authors that the Ojibwa farther 
west, some of whom emigrated to Georgian bay during historical times, 
grew no corn. Even those who did not practise agriculture, however, were 
better supplied with vegetable foods than the majority of Algonkian 
peoples in eastern Canada. Their country contained many groves of sugar 
maple, and wild rice grew abundantly in certain localities around the 
margins of the lakes, so that they were able to store away large quantities 
of sugar and rice for the lean months of early winter. Berries, too, were 
plentiful, particularly blueberries and cranberries; and there were acorns 
and other nuts. Women often gathered the tubers of the Jerusalem arti- 
choke ( Helianthus tuberosus) and the root of the wild bean. In times of 
stress the natives could resort to more unusual foods, the sap from under 
the barks of the hemlock, basswood, black birch, and black oak, the moss 
that grows on the white pine, the roots of bulrushes, and the flowers of the 
milkweed. Even the brown lichens that grew on the rocks yielded a pala- 
table and nourishing soup. But most of these exceptional foods were pro- 
curable only in summer when there was generally an abundance of other 
foods. In winter hunters occasionally obtained honey by noticing the 
frozen bees round the base of a tree and chopping down the trunk; but 
perhaps this occurred only after they obtained steel tomahawks or axes 
from Europeans. 
Just as all these vegetable foods were seasonal, so also were the fish 
and game on which the Parry Islanders depended still more for their live- 
lihood. The moose, which was their principal quarry during the winter 
months, was difficult to overtake except in deep snow, and in any case 
was too lean during the greater part of the summer to possess much food 
value. Rabbits and grouse, too, were easiest to obtain in winter, but 
