A heartbreaking and dismaying scene greets the eye on Ontario’s Spanish River, near Sudbury, Ontario. The river’s edge and surrounding slopes are lined with dead, grey skeletons, the victims of a huge, ongoing outbreak of spruce budworm. Spruce budworm is a highly destructive parasite whose larvae feed on the buds and needles of white and black spruce and balsam fir, the dominant species in the boreal forest. While a tree may survive a year or two of infestation, three or more years of infestation deprives the tree of its ability to produce nutrients through photosynthesis. The trees typically die from the top down. The Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources has opted to leave the trees standing to allow for natural regeneration.

The remote river was the site of an intensive river-based logging industry between about 1880 and 1967, when the last drive was held. This was rich territory for lumber companies, the river basin draining 14000 sq km of prime boreal forest. River life was picturesque, the draveurs, the “cowboys of the forest”, working from the long, double-ended pointer boats or bateaux, or jumping from log-to-log in huge tangled booms of logs. Wearing the characteristic spiked boots and working with pike-poles, peaveys and dynamite, they struggled to free the key, or kingpin, log causing the jam. The work was often deadly, as jams often formed at rapids where the river narrows. The perilous work of the draveurs gave name to Graveyard Rapids. The loggers buried dead comrades on the riverbanks, forming wooden crosses, or nailing their spiked boots to trees as markers. Time off the river may have been no safer: local towns like Biscotasing, or “Bisco”, earned a reputation as the kind of wild, hard-drinking, brawling frontier town that we associate with Dawson City during the Gold Rush.

The many sinkers, deadheads and sweepers are a constant reminder of the role of the river as a timber transport route. They also present navigational challenges and dangers to whitewater canoeists descending the rivers many rapids. Remains of logging cribs, bridges and dams can also be seen along the length of the river.

That being said, “The Spanish” is a dream destination for canoe trippers, as they travel through Ontario’s rugged landscape and equally rugged history. The dream starts by loading canoes into the “Budd Car” train, and being dropped in the middle of nowhere, with no choice but to head downstream on this beautiful, historical river.