Northwest Miramichi River, Exmoor, Northumberland County
New Brunswick, Canada

Way Back When

In the 1940’s, my father assisted as a cook during a log drive down the north west branch of the Miramichi River.  I say “assisted”, as I am skeptical his cooking abilities were solely responsible for the lives of hardy woodsmen who spent much of their day hopping precariously among logs as they floated down stream.

On this particular day, with beans and stew at hand and travelling in advance of the logs and their human cargo, he came upon an unusually long, straight stretch of river water.  It was highlighted by steep embankment on the far side, with spruce, pine and birch trees towering high overhead.  On the near side, a rolling hill gave way to a clearing where a number of small logged buildings known as Craig’s Camps sat perched above the river.

As legend has it, my father was so taken by the wonder of the site he stated he would return and spend future summers there.  Fortunately, for my family, friends, and a zillion or so relatives, life gave him his wish.

The property caretaker, Bill Craig, was a well-known sportsman and businessman from town who established the camps for hunting and salmon fishing expeditions.  In subsequent years, my father became well acquainted with Mr. Craig.  Following my father’s marriage to my mother in the mid-1950’s, he began renting out a camp for a couple of weeks each summer at Craig’s.  By the time I arrived in 1960, summer vacations at Craig’s Camps were an anticipated event for my family.

Early Recollections

Heading off to camp for summer vacation was always exciting.  We would all settle into my father’s station wagon, some of us sharing the bumper seat in the back compartment and off we would go.

Our typical route was via Chaplin Island Road.  We would drive up way back the road past Masie Ryans and beyond the Mill Stream where we would often go trout fishing with a glass jar filled with worms and fresh soil from Arthur Hartery’s garden.  We would drive up further on, past the schoolhouse where mother would state she attended class and up to the forest ranger tower.  The tower’s long stairwell was brought to life by “The Forest Rangers” on CBC TV with Joe Two Rivers, Chuck and a “A” for Apple and “B” for Bob.

We would then sweep down into the valley beyond the tower and out to the Hilltop Road.  After delivering a gigantic view of the river’s northwest arm, the Hilltop would deposit us into upper Sevolge, just beyond the old church where Kingston heritage rested in peace.

The rest of the drive was easy by then.

As we neared our destination, Dad would sometimes pull into the fish counting station where we would lay down and look into big wooden bins and see the mighty Atlantic salmon, live and before your nose, swimming in the river’s current.

Our other great adventure was a bit further down the highway where the wagon would pull off and drive down to the water’s edge at Swinging Bridge, where my brothers and I sometimes bounced hard on the narrow wooden walkway to encourage shrieks from our older sister.

Upon arrival at Craig’s Camps, we use to take the Old Indian Road down to the river, on the far side of Astles where Leslie and his brother Wiet lived.

The wagon would slowly make its way to the river, pausing a few times to cushion the bumps from water filled potholes by the swamp.  We would then swing down in front of the building they called the Kitchen.  It was by far the largest of Craig’s camps.  The Kitchen along with its nearby neighbour, a tiny log schoolhouse being partially overtaken by the approaching forest, both sat across a gravel roadway from the other camps that were perched on the rolling hill overlooking the river.

There were more camps back then.  The Indian line had yet to be revised and swallow up half the place.

Each year, we would often have a different building to reside in.  Dad would typically enter our camp of the day first to do a quick walk through to check for visible signs of any bats or resident wood snakes.  Dad would sometimes find a snake in a front porch woodpile and one year, we found a large one curled up the middle of the master bed.

When you stepped inside a camp, an old wooden spring door would slam shut behind you and a strong musty odour greeted your senses.  The air smelled of old woolen blankets and stacks of Life and Beautiful British Columbia magazines, sprinkled with a touch of wood that was slowly rotting somewhere.  It was one those smells which reminded you that for days and days, summer was yours to be had.

For us kids, our immediate priority was to get into our bathing suits, which we always managed to do in lightening speed.  With towels in hand, we would run down the hill through the tall blade grass in our bare feet, which felt refreshingly cool on the clay path beneath us as we went.

Once at the shore, getting into the river was tricky!  You had to quickly get through the soft clay and out onto the rocky bottom.  Leaches lurked at the shoreline and you always had to be sure you got through the sand quickly or god forbid, one would stick themselves on you and suck your blood to potentially life threateningly levels - or so we sometimes thought.  When a leach did occasionally show its ugly self, a runner was dispatched up to the camp for a salt shaker.  A few shakes and usually the small monster could be peeled off.

During an extended period of hot weather, the river water was often warm, however most of the time; it was cool if not at times, outright cold.  It always seemed to take forever to wade out over the rocks before plunging in, gasping for air as you went.

We were always diving for special rocks and building rock piles.  The sound of someone knocking rocks together under the water would travel from far beyond the field of view your eyes would offer.

The river was full of life.  Catching minnows was a common past time and you would proudly show them off to your peers in a small bent up pot with a big handle that was retrieved from the bowels of a camp cupboard.  It was somewhat of an art form to catch a pot full of minnows as you had to scoop the water as fast as you could.

In the deeper water where the pebbles were easier to walk on, the only known fear to humankind was the lamprey eel.  Its very name brought chills to us tiny mortal souls.  It was considered the blood-sucking monster of the rivers deepest channels and its much-discussed methods of attack were of folklore proportions.  The beast had no eyes, would wrap itself around you like a snake, puncture you skin with a throat full of sharp teeth and suck-your-blood.  The only recorded attack, which served as a vivid reminder to be forever watchful, was when my first cousin Keith had one try to wrap itself around a limb while he was swimming out to the Big Rock.  He fortunately lived to talk about the experience, as he was able to fling it off before the lamprey was able to get a good hold.

In later years, I remember hooking a lamprey eel by accident while fly fishing at Craig’s Pool.  As I was reeling it in, I noticed lots of kids swimming down in front of the camp.  I released lots of line, ran down along the bank to our camp shore, and soon had my catch swimming about my fellow cousins.  With one hard pull of the rod, the lamprey came flying out of the water amongst them as I roared from the shore - “Eeeeeeeeeel!!!”.  I recall plenty of screams, widespread panic, and kids choking on river water.

Each summer we would have a raft that was anchored by big cement bricks we would find under the water while canoeing.  They were typically the remnants of a poacher’s gill net that was cut away by wardens during some middle of the night journey down the river.  A tell tale sign of a submerged brick was to find a long yellow rope swaying in the current as you searched for a glimpse of a salmon while floating over Craig’s Pool in the canoe.

Inevitably, our raft would most often disappear after a large period of rain, swept down the river by the high current.  The current was always respected.  One time up river at the Old Ellison Place above the Wayerton Bridge, my fully dressed father had to run out and retrieve Willy from the river after the current had decided to invite my younger brother along on its journey downstream.

At Craig’s, when the wind came up, the Northwest’s smooth surface would transform into a sea of rolling waves that broke quickly.  Kevin was caught in one once on the river’s far side just beyond the Big Rock.  His tiny body was dwarfed in one of the heavy big cedar canoes and he paddled furiously against the waves, going nowhere.  When you headed back to shore on a windy day, you didn’t mind landing at shore as far down as Morris’s Camp as long as you made it back to the shallow side.

Canoeing was a most popular of past times for us kids.  Although the cedars were standard fare early on, we later got a Styrofoam Radisson canoe which came from Fredericton.

Our Radisson had a square butt end which the Indians loved as you could set your gill net’s serving tray on it before running a forty footer with a four inch mesh through Craig’s Pool in the wee moonlit hours of the morning.

I use to like the Radisson for that reason as well.

We knew the canoe was popular with poachers because we were forever finding it parked elsewhere when we woke up in the morning often with fish scales on the floor.

Occasionally, the odd canoe would slip away down river only to have us retrieve it a few miles away.

It was always fun to canoe up towards the island and look for schools of large chubbs swimming about.  Occasionally visiting relatives would mistake them for salmon and later on, they often had me charging up the shoreline with my waders on and fly rod in tow convinced that the mother load of salmon schools was passing by.

My favourite canoe trip was always up to the island and then floating down river hugging the shoreline as you went.  You would discover dead fish in the smelly water grass along the bank and even the odd turtle as you drifted down past the Big Slide.  We even kept a turtle as a pet occasionally.

On adventurous days, we would canoe further up the river.  Having spawned, dead lamprey eels were always on public display in the low, choppy, murky water just above the island.  Despite the fact there were only dead carcasses strewn about, we always took the liberty of chopping them up further with our paddles.

Often, we would make it up to the second island, which was a hard paddle in the current.  The island was located across from Percy Smith’s camp and ran along the Highbridge Pool, which many felt was the nicest salmon pool on the river.  The river turned just above the pool, with loud, low, fast moving water flowing into a deep channel.

Percy Smith always hated strangers fly-fishing at Highbridge.  Early some mornings, well before the sun would begin peeking through the surrounding forest, he would discover my presence and walk down to the river to yell across at me above the roar of rushing water.  I’d often just ignore him and continue throwing my fly line across the pool, my yellowed butted butterfly sometimes landing within inches of Percy’s rubber boots on the far shore.

We did not often canoe above Highbridge Pool.  The water was to low for an extended stretch of the river.

When you canoed down-stream, you could really fly with the current.  We sometimes would go well down past Frank Morris’s camp, through the roaring Jack Rapids and over Joe Wall’s Pool at the elbow.  You had to be careful if you pulled the boat up at Wall’s as loose cows would be strolling about and we were always leery of them.  The paddle back up the river to our camp was occasionally insurmountable.  We would sometimes carry the canoe back along the bank of the river until calmer waters were restored.

In our teens, the ultimate canoe ride was to go all the way out to Newcastle.  On my maiden voyage, a friend and I got lost among the islands near the Johnson Bridge.  After what seemed like a full day of paddling, I phoned and had Dad come rescue us in the wagon, just a few miles down the road from our camp.

Nighttime

The most exciting nighttime excursion was to go see the bears.  Big black bears frequented the area dump that lay up beyond the old Johnston Bridge.

Often dressed only in pajamas, we would all squeeze into someone’s car and off we’d go.  The key was to sneak into the dump quietly, parked in the right location, shut off the car’s lights and sit quietly.  Sitting quietly was the tough part as we always had a hard time muffling our laughter as we waited for black bears to appear.  Every few minutes our adult driver would suddenly turn on the exterior lights and often times, there before us sat large black bears, eating among the refuse.  To encourage screams from within, just for a moment, someone always managed to open a car door.

The camp was an exciting place at night.  We often had a campfire going, fuelled by a never-ending supply of plastic milk cartons from the dairy.  Building “towering infernos” with cartons was quite common.

We were mesmerized at night by fireflies, which had the ability to glow in the dark.  We use to fill a bottle with them and then secretly let them escape in our bedrooms so that we would be treated to a natural “light show”.  The practice never last long however as we’d wake up with a room full of large ugly bugs.

Out on the deck at night, the sound of the brook gurgling from across the way at the Big Rock was complimented by the echo of an old dog barking from down below.  Bats were usually flying about and we were forever protecting our precious hair from their hungry mouths.

The most exciting nighttime entertainment was to bring a sleeping bag out on the deck and listening to the Indians poaching.  The odd clank of an oar hitting a boat would piece the black stillness.
 

The Wardens

During daylight hours, we too were watchful of wardens as fishing with a spinner and worm was illegal.  Uncle Allan devised the password “MILK” as a warning signal.  At times it seemed we were forever yelling “MILK” out on the river.  “TIME TO COME BACK AND GET YOUR GLASS OF MIIIIILLLLLLKKKK!!!”

You never could be sure what the Indians or the wardens were up to.  At the time most of the wardens were former poachers themselves who drank a lot and who were hired for their expertise of negotiating the river in the dark.

Hubert was an Indian who lived nearby and a notorious poacher.  We came to know Hubert as a result of my father assisting him and some companions when they came knocking in need of motor oil one evening.  The following morning, a fresh salmon was left at our door and a long-term relationship was initiated.

Hubert knew many of the warden’s tricks.  He would tell us the wardens would occasionally send a bright conspicuous canoe down the river about midnight with two uniformed officers chatting it up and making lots of noise.  Then when some poachers thought they could then have their way with the river, along would come a second canoe, only this time a dark cedar floating along close to the far shoreline, propelled by the silent current.

Hubert would sometimes walk over to our deck at night and allow us to view with wardens floating by with his night vision, infrared binoculars.

One night in my teens, Hubert asked if I would assist him in paddling the canoe while he set a 40 foot 4 inch mesh net across Craig’s Pool.  It was scary but fun.  The fear was that a dark cedar could quietly drift up within feet of you and our boat would suddenly be besieged with a brilliant spotlight as the sound of sudden, violent swishes of water filled the air as the wardens swooped in to catch their human prey.

Hubert always said there was nothing to worry about.  The shoreline was always close by and once on shore, all you simply had to do was crawl on your hands and knees into the woods.  Apparently, at night people are almost impossible to catch that way however I was afraid to ask exactly what a person did after getting to where ever it was they were going.

Up The Hill

We use to spend lots of time up exploring up around the swamp.  It was a great place to find frogs amidst the bull rushes.  We would sometimes soak a bull rush in a flammable fluid and light it ablaze.  The swamp was also a popular place to spot a moose or deer while driving down over the hill at evening time.

Further up across the highway were the gravel pits where we would occasionally go to pick blue berries.  I was always leery of the place because a big black bear was spotted back there.

The pits were great fun to climb and jump from.  You would leap through the air and down into mounds of loose gravel causing a small avalanche to slide down the embankment with you.

The Swamp

Occasionally a group of us would head out and trek down to Shirley McKibbon’s store.  It was about a mile or so down the main highway beyond the bridge at Wild Cat Brook.  As was the case at Shirleys, I always thought it would be heaven on earth to have a large store full of goodies just out the door from your living room.

We would all go digging through her place looking for a favourite treat, plunk ourselves on her front porch consuming our purchases and then begin what seemed like the long trip back home.

Aside from the Astles and maybe the Sweeney’s, we didn’t know many of the locals however they all seemed friendly enough for when we walked along the highway, no matter how fast cars drove by, the drivers always managed a big wave.

Relatives

We always had a good supply of visiting relatives at Craig’s Camps.  It was wonderful for us kids, as just when you had to say good-bye to your best summer friends another contingent would show up.  They would come from all over the county, the province, the country, and sometimes the world.  They arrived in cars, trucks, motor homes, boats, and planes – all modes of transportation.  In our teens it was like having, great new neighbours move in every couple of weeks and we loved it.  Our visitors would profess wonder at the splendor and beauty of Craig’s Camps as well as puzzlement at how one was able to poke a small plastic straw into a mini-sip bag without getting drenched with juice.

Craig’s Camps are quieter today.  There are fewer kids swimming out to the Big Rock or jumping from the latest river raft.  Like the brook at the Big Rock that continues to trickle water down over the soft clay along the bank, life moves forward, in its wake offering a treasure of distant memories of a very special place…

The End :)