'Canoeing with Cree' revisited
Two Minnesota men are the latest to plan to retrace the canoe journey from Fort Snelling to Hudson Bay taken by the late newsman Eric Sevareid and a friend in 1930.
CHRIS NISKANEN
Pioneer Press Outdoors Editor 1/25/04

Scott Miller and Todd Foster never saw Eric Sevareid, the famed newsman, on television, but they are big fans of Eric Sevareid the famed canoeist and author of "Canoeing with the Cree."

They have read and re-read the book that chronicles a 1930 canoe trip Sevareid, then 17, and friend Walter C. Port, 19, took from Fort Snelling to York Factory on Hudson Bay.

Miller and Foster plan to retrace the route next year to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Sevareid and Port's trip, which helped launched Sevareid's career in journalism.

"I guess I'm too young to have known Eric Sevareid on TV,'' said Miller, of St. Paul. "But I think the romantic aspects of the book have captured our imaginations. It's fun to think we can leave our hometowns and canoe that long of a distance."

Foster, of St. Cloud, Minn., and Miller represent the latest generation of canoeists inspired by Sevareid's book. Its current publisher, the Minnesota Historical Society Press, sells 1,000 to 2,000 copies of "Canoeing with the Cree" a year, a number that has held steady even after Sevareid's death in 1992.

Graduates of Minneapolis Central High, Sevareid and Port were bored teenagers looking for adventure when they launched their canoe, the Sans Souci (Without Care) and headed north. They received $100 for a series of articles Sevareid wrote about the trip for the Minneapolis Star and in 1935, Macmillan Company published "Canoeing with the Cree."

That "Canoeing with the Cree" is still being read 70 years after it was published is a remarkable achievement, says Kevin Morrissey, marketing director of the Minnesota Historical Society Press.

"The fact that it is still in print is significant,'' he said. "It's a book that has continually been one of our best sellers. I think it's one of those classic adventure stories."

The Minnesota Historical Society has reprinted "Canoeing with the Cree'' nine times since 1968, when it bought the book's publishing rights, and the publisher recently updated the book's cover design.

Sevareid achieved fame as a World War II correspondent alongside Edward R. Murrow. During the war, Sevareid once parachuted out of a disabled airplane over Burma. He covered the founding of the United Nations, the Vietnam War and Watergate. He had a 38-year career with CBS, retiring in 1977, but he remained a highly respected television commentator through the 1980s.

As a celebrated newsman, Sevareid was nonplussed about "Canoeing with the Cree," calling the writing "flat" and the stories "uninteresting." However, he spoke with pride in having paddled more than 2,000 miles in an old, wood-canvas canoe and living to tell about it.

"Now, of course, the kids do it with modern equipment, two-way radios and lightweight, unsinkable canoes,'' he told the Pioneer Press in 1991.

Fans of the book are drawn by the tale's adventure and its concise portrait of a Canadian wilderness that largely was unknown and unspoiled at the time.

Sevareid and Port canoed up the Minnesota River, down the Red River to Lake Winnipeg, and then connected with a network of northern Canadian rivers and lakes that eventually took them to York Factory, a former fur-trading post on Hudson Bay. They had little or no experience paddling a canoe, nearly capsized on Lake Winnipeg and, without adequate maps, often relied on Cree Indians for directions and help. The trip was 2,250 miles long.

No one has an exact count of the number of the groups who have paddled from Minnesota to Hudson Bay since "Canoeing with the Cree," but it might be in the dozens.
Starting in Duluth, Minn., on Lake Superior, Stephen Baker and his buddy Scott Anderson canoed to Hudson Bay in 1987. They were 22 and had read "Canoeing with the Cree."

"That's where we got the idea,'' said Baker, now 38 and a physician in Duluth. "Scott had read it before I did, but he and I had this idea to take some sort of big trip. Scott suggested we go to Hudson Bay, and I said, "That sounds great to me!'''

They made it to Hudson Bay, and Anderson wrote a book documenting their journey called, "Distant Fires," a classic in its own right in canoeing circles.

Said Baker of "Canoeing with the Cree, "It's a quick read, but it grabs you."

Dennis Smith, 51, of White Bear Lake was a counselor in the 1970s with a nonprofit organization called Expeditions of North America. He helped lead a group of seven teenagers from Lake Saganaga in northern Minnesota to Hudson Bay in 1975. The teens were "troubled youth,'' Smith said, and the trip was a means of turning their lives around.

Smith said the group, in addition to bringing guitars and a huge frying pan, had a portable tape recorder.

"We listened to tapes of 'Canoeing with the Cree,' '' he said. "The book has a mystery and adventure with it. It's the challenge of being able to survive."

The trip, taken in a 26-foot Fiberglas canoe made to look like a voyageur boat, shared an outcome with "Canoeing with the Cree." It changed the lives of the participants, Smith said.

"I remember from our kids that they had this exuberance when they came home, that no matter what they encountered in their lives, they would be able to manage and overcome it,'' he said.

Others have accomplished the trip. According to newspaper accounts, Judd Hoff of Forada, Minn., and Steve Morgan of Brookings, S.D., re-created Sevareid and Port's journey in 1993, launching from Hidden Falls Park in St. Paul. Last summer, St. Paul residents Christopher "Kip" Barrett and Kees van der Wege, along with friend Chris Gorton of New Jersey, paddled from Grand Portage, Minn., to Hudson Bay, a distance of 1,300 miles. Their trip also was inspired, in part, by "Canoeing with the Cree."
Port, who fought in World War II, moved to Bemidji, Minn., and worked in the photo department of Johnson Drug Store for 25 years, did not achieve the same fame as Sevareid, but people still sought him out to talk about their famous canoe trip.

"Most every summer someone would come to the drugstore to talk to my father about duplicating the trip,'' said his youngest son, Mike Port, 56, of Minneapolis. "I'm amazed at how many people have read the book."

Walter Port died in 1994 at age 86, but not before the National Audubon Society flew him and Sevareid over their canoe route for a magazine story in 1980. Sevareid and Port wrote to each other every year, Mike Port said, and Sevareid often would send his friend a royalty check for his share of "Canoeing with the Cree."

Mike Port said he has fond memories of canoeing with his father, but he never decided to re-create his father's trip.

"I re-read the book and decided to take my own journey,'' said Mike Port, who operates the Minneapolis nonprofit Solar Oven Society, which seeks to bring solar cooking ovens to Third World countries.

Port said his father later donated the compass used on the 1930 trip to the Minnesota Historical Society, which also has one of Sevareid's canoe paddles.

Miller and Foster plan to start on the Sauk River, near Foster's home, paddled to the Mississippi River and begin retracing the "Canoeing with the Cree" route where it began at Fort Snelling. Their trip will start in May 2005. They recently began to collect gear, maps and advice. Their goal is to compare the condition of rivers today with their condition when Sevareid and Port took the trip.

Miller and Foster established a Web site (www.hudsonbayexpedition.com) that gives descriptions of Sevareid and Port's trip and will keep readers abreast of their progress in 2005.

Miller is a part-time camp counselor; Foster is a full-time emergency medical technician. They're unconcerned about the fact that their trip has been duplicated many times before.

"People have done it, but it's still a big deal for me to paddle 2,000 miles," Miller said. "I think a lot has changed with these rivers, but a lot has stayed the same. There are hydroelectric projects in Canada; maybe we'll call attention to them and other issues. You get used to seeing things from a road, but they look different from a river. And I've never met a Cree."

Nearly 75 years have passed, but the pull of the north country is the same for Miller as it was for a young Eric Sevareid.
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Chris Niskanen can be reached at cniskanen@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5524.