Have you seen the movie " Grey Owl? ", a friend, knowing my personal canoeing history, asked me the other day.

" Yes! And you should too! " was my enthusiastic reply.

The scene is almost as clear to my recollection now as when I experienced it almost 40 years ago.

It was early afternoon, after the rains, on Tuesday July 16, 1963, when we paddled into Wachigabau Lac from Lichen Lake. It was the 18th day of a 9-week canoe trip through the Canadian wilderness 300 miles north of Montreal. Our fleet of Hudson Bay Company Peterborough, Chestnut, and Ross canoes moved in formation up the calm lake, with Jim Bossum, our Cree guide from Lac St. John, leading the way.

Our ashen paddles
gleamed and flashed in the sun to the stroke set by the rhythm of an old Keewaydin voyageur chant:

"Otta, Ottawa, Temiskaming,
Matta, Matta, Mattabitchouan,
Waboss, Waba Mokwa Sagaigan,
And fair Temagami "

Two lines from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's " The Song Of Hiawatha " inspired this picture. ' The acrylic rendering on hand carved and tooled leather was done in homage to the great North Woods artist Frank E. Schoonover and in memory of the boys and men with whom I traveled the Great Keewaydin Wilderness during the twilight of the era of the wood and canvas canoe.'

Paul D. Hammersten