“The place just blew their minds,” he says. Travelling with us is Mike’s friend, Jean-Pierre Chabot – a thirtysomething development officer with the MoCreebec First Nation.

Todd Haynes, the lodge’s outgoing fiftysomething general manager from Nova Scotia, greets me on the grounds with all the enthusiasm and nervous energy redolent of a state visit.

Come visit the only tidal water in Ontario, James Bay! “If this weather holds you might get a light show in the next few nights.

I lose myself in the spectacle, at one point realizing that I’d never spent so much time looking up at the sky in one go. Over dinner Mike tells us about a group of Inuit from Nunavut who came to Moose Factory in 2002 to visit the graves of some ancestors who died here after coming to get treatment for tuberculosis.
Moose Factory Tourism: Tripadvisor has 83 reviews of Moose Factory Hotels, Attractions, and Restaurants making it your best Moose Factory holiday resource. Canoeing, camping, snowshoeing, and cultural activities are just some of the exciting experiences you can enjoy here in Moose Factory and surrounding area. “We’re gonna need a bit of extra muscle,” Mike says, before instructing J.P. and I to each grab a pair of wooden poles lying on deck. Moose Factory Tourism: Tripadvisor has 83 reviews of Moose Factory Hotels, Attractions, and Restaurants making it your best Moose Factory resource. The men on the boat have their arms raised. Mike points to his depth finder and compass. True to Todd’s description, Mike, who refers to himself as “Spirit Buffalo Man” (his traditional name), is big, burly and loud. Though not north in earnest, I have entered an in-between realm, a kind of lower north, where the frequencies of deeper north resonate. He flips between a manner that is silent and serious with one that is comedic and tinged with a boyish mischievousness.

Though Moose Factory sits at the same latitude as Calgary, London and Berlin, it is a key node of aurora activity – one of the best places in the lower northern latitudes to see them. Yet no one says a word. Before becoming a guide, he worked in different parts of Canada as a logger, a truck driver and an oil patch labourer. more, Moose Factory Tourism: Best of Moose Factory, Create a Trip to save and organise all of your travel ideas, and see them on a map, Hotels near Cree Cultural Interpretive Center, Hotels near Toronto Pearson Intl Airport (YYZ), Motels near Toronto Pearson Intl Airport (YYZ). I’m waiting for Mike or J.P. to pull the plug on our mission. If you are a resident of another country or region, please select the appropriate version of Tripadvisor for your country or region in the drop-down menu. Originally called Moose Fort, it was established in 1673 as a trading post of the Hudson’s Bay Company – arguably its first. I asked an aged man in a tattered blue railroad suit standing near me how long the ride would be. Let me look into it. The words are equal parts suggestion and question. Tourism. The conditions are now more than sketchy. That afternoon, before dinner, I come across an illustrated book of verse in the library at the lodge, written by Dennis Lee of Alligator Pie fame. It is a renowned aurora borealis viewing hub. You’ll get swept out to sea.”. Leading the trip is 52 year-old Mike Naponse, an Ojibwa from Sudbury who married into the MoCreebec. Located approximately 19 km southwest of James Bay, the communities of Moosonee and Moose Factory are home to more than 3,500 people. In it is a limerick-type poem called ‘Homage to Moose Factory, Ontario.’ It has a particular resonance, especially the third and final stanza, on this day of journeying with my intrepid hosts: A version of this article ran in the Summer 2017 issue of Explore magazine. “Keep dunking the poles into the water so I can see how deep the river is. We want to emphasize how important the preservation of the James Bay Watershed is to the people and wildlife here; We want to be able to reconnect people and their love of the wilderness.

In contrast to Mike’s flamboyancy, he is quiet and mild mannered.

We stop and tie the boat and J.P. and I make off on our own for the afternoon to explore in a canoe, which we brought with us. As we transition from the murkier waters of the Moose River into the crystal clear North French, we start to encounter shallow rocks. But that sense of extreme remoteness was an illusion. Moosonee, and neighbouring Moose Factory, my final destination, was quite north when seen from the comparatively southern precincts of my hometown of Toronto. No sooner had the invisible gavel come down were Mike, J.P. and I on the boat racing north past Moosonee, bobbing up and down in chop whipped up by winds coming from the bay. Maybe six? The two make a complimentary team. But there’s a separate quality to it, a cosmic charge, that gives it a special glow. Come and experience our reality. Our daytrip will take us as far up the North French River as we can get. Our exact destination is the outer shores of Ship Sands Island – located on the western flats of the river mouth as it becomes the bay. “Maybe four hours?

Depends on how many people request a stop.”. Children skipped circles around mountains of baggage bursting with purchased goods unavailable or prohibitively expensive at our destination, 300 kilometres distant. At times it recedes, teasingly, before extending itself again with the furtiveness of an octopus.

Everyone says this is the brightest display of the lights so far this season. © 2023 by Moose River Tours. The aurora morphs, forming additional concentric smears of flaming green light with a purple penumbra that twists and turns in the sky like curtain bottoms blowing in a breeze. And because the treeline in Canada reaches its lowest latitude in Ontario, the slow transition from boreal to tundra begins earlier here, belying your true position. At one point we get stuck and J.P. jumps into the knee-deep water to yank on the stern, while I push with the pole. Cochrane straddles the 49th parallel – south of every major city between Manitoba and mainland B.C. J.P., who has East Coast and Quebecois roots, grew up in Moose Factory, and knows the region well. Near to me are three onlookers, hotel guests, engrossed in their cameras.

“Hmm… that’s going to be tricky,” he says.

When I tell him I’d like to take a boat up to James Bay, his expression becomes tentative. I set up my own and spend the next few hours with my neck craned, staring into the sky. But we’ve covered a lot of distance – the return journey will be just as rough. We’re banded – and bonded – together like a greeting party awaiting visitors from outer space. “There isn’t much traffic out there, and most boaters here don’t have VHFs,” Mike says, tearing off a piece of bannock.
It can be dangerous. Located on the edge of the Arctic, the Town of Moosonee was originally settled in 1903 by the Revillon Frères of Paris as a fur trading post to compete with the Hudson’s Bay post across the river in Moose Factory. A heavy quiet, punctuated by a restless wind, pervades the place. I get a taste of that ambience as I step out onto the lodge’s back promontory overlooking the Moose River and tree-lined shores of Sawpit and Charles Islands. The swells grow. Like everyone else his response is iffy: the weather would have to be nearly impeccable to risk the trip. If we’d left an hour or two earlier, we’d have been in real trouble.”. We believe Moose River Tours is restoring peoples connection to the outdoors being able to provide such life changing adventures to people across the globe. You’re just too loud.’ I say to them: ‘The reason I’m too loud is because I’m calling the far-away moose.’”. The whole scene, with the biting autumn cold, made it feel like I was leaping into the distant north. Moosonee, the area’s travel and services hub, sits directly across the river on the left bank. Others, hoping for a second (solar) wind, remain glued to their cameras. Our clients will get the full experience of the mighty Moose River and mouth of James Bay. In a nutshell: enough of the trappings of the north without being the deep north.


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