Mystical Michipicoten: Memories from a Majestic Island

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To the Anishinaabe, it was a mystical floating isle that eluded approaching canoes – disappearing, then emerging again from the mist. At creation, Gichi Manidoo veiled Michipicoten Island in a shroud of mystery still palpable.

My wife, Donna, and I sensed it that July morning in 1992 when we visited. After three hours in a dense fog on a southwest course from Brad Buck’s Michipicoten River marina, the curtain parted and Point Maurepas Lighthouse, one of the island’s three lights, appeared. We steered left, skirting the island’s south shore in sunlight for 10 miles to Quebec Harbour.

Michipicoten Island, Lake Superior’s third largest after Isle Royale and St. Ignace, is a “natural environment” provincial park, mainly zoned as wilderness with only vestiges of development. Its 183 square kilometres (71 square miles) have never been logged except patches opened for mines or dwellings.

Many who came sought copper. The Ojibwe people valued the workable metal. Later a procession of European explorers, prospectors and westbound missionaries arrived.

Michipicoten is recognized on French maps as early as 1647, noting early accounts of malleable surface copper. Serious mining attempts were made for about 50 years starting in the mid-1800s.

Indirectly, mining stirred our interest in the island, too. Donna and I were on our first exploration cruise of the eastern shore and decided to check Michipicoten’s secrets for ourselves because it is where my grandpa, Axel Lindberg, came to the new world in 1881.

He was 12, oldest of four children brought by Axel Sr. and Mathilda from Örebro, Sweden. Axel Sr., a machinist, had been hired by the Michipicoten Native Copper Company. The family’s passage was paid by the company, to be deducted from his salary until recovered. It was early in the biggest decade of Swedish immigration to North America, 1880-1890, when 330,000 fled the poor harvests, growing unemployment and falling wages.

The Lindbergs traveled with the Moreaus. August Moreau, a zinc miner in Sweden, had taken a job in the copper mine, too. His wife, Hedda, was Mathilda Lindberg’s sister. The Moreaus brought three children, including a 5-month-old infant.

The two families followed an extended journey – a train to Göthenberg on Sweden’s west coast, a passenger ship to Hull on the east coast of the United Kingdom, a train across England from Hull to Liverpool, Allan Line passage to Montreal, then rail to Collingwood, Ontario, on Lake Huron, and a lake steamer to Michipicoten’s Quebec Harbour, arriving in early fall.

Vessel traffic through St. Marys River and its locks was well-established, but Canadian Pacific Railway wouldn’t extend to Lake Superior until 1885.

Michipicoten Native Copper, a new syndicate of investors from the U.K., had just taken over the inactive Quebec Mine on the island’s northwest coast. It was the largest and most promising of three efforts to profitably extract copper. Headframes and a mill were 12 kilometres (7 miles) from Quebec Harbour by primitive road.

Shanties housed the few families and boarding houses were for the mostly bachelor workforce. Population likely peaked at 200 in the early 1880s with about 150 on the mine payroll. Early accounts report two births at that time; one was my grandpa’s newest sister, Lydia, born May 21, 1882, so Mathilda was pregnant that first severe wilderness winter.

The island did have a doctor, at least for a few years. The mine manager was justice of the peace. A lighthouse keeper served as constable. An Anglican priest held separate services for various denominations. We find no account of how he dealt with language barriers. A post office opened in 1881, but the government closed it after four years.

A small farm supplemented the food supply and a sawmill cut lumber for the buildings. The company sank four mineshafts, the deepest 160 metres (524 feet) and built a steam-powered mill to treat the ore.

In 2001, while researching for his book An Introduction to Michipicoten Island: Lake Superior’s Wild Heart, David C. Whyte kayaked around the island. His journal mentions the rusty remains of a lathe in the ruins of a workshop at the Quebec Mine site. Chances are, my machinist great-grandpa used it to turn bushings for machines that sank shafts and lifted ore.

Nobody had electricity and few had indoor plumbing in those days, but the Lindberg family’s life on Michipicoten with five small children must have been especially grim. There was no re-supply during the harsh winters, scant social life, no school. It’s easy to understand why they – and the Moreaus – left after two years, heading west to Duluth as soon as they had paid back the cost of their passage.

Axel and his family made a fresh start in northern Wisconsin, had one more baby, Hildur, in October 1883, and, in 1891, were granted a 160-acre homestead in Poplar.

I’m sure all families with any record of their arrival in the new world reflect on the relative comfort most of us experience today, but it wasn’t until our visit to Michipicoten that I realized how profound the difference is. Our obstacles in life cannot compare with the privation that our forebears met with will and determination. I better understand why Donna’s Swedish immigrant grandmother often exclaimed, “Oh, we have it so good in America!”

Attempts to mine copper were always spotty and unrewarding. The island’s more sustainable commerce was commercial fishing, which began in 1839 when the Hudson’s Bay Company set up at Quebec Harbour. Booth Fisheries succeeded it and flourished for years. In the 1930s, Purvis Fisheries expanded operations, taking advantage of an active market for inexpensive Lake Superior fish during the Great Depression.

When we arrived at the island, we found Ferroclad Fishery’s fish tug James D. tied to the old Purvis dock at Quebec Harbour. We anchored our Keeper in the sheltering end of the bay near the bones of the Billy Blake, one of three boats scuttled there.

We launched our dinghy and inspected the frames of the Blake, Big Jim and the 149-foot steamer Hiram R. Dixon, a Booth fleet boat that burned near its resting place in 1903.

We paddled to the James D. Its friendly crew showed us their catch, including a small lake trout just right for our supper. Besides the buildings of the fishing station, the island’s only cluster of cottages rims the shore, some in the same family for generations. Walking westward, we admired the owners’ resourcefulness, maintaining camps in such a remote place. We’d hoped to find a trail to hike, but the forest’s edge was far too dense to penetrate, with the possible exception of an occasional caribou trail.

Hunting had wiped out the island’s native woodland caribou herd by the time the Lindbergs arrived, but Ontario re-introduced it 100 years later in 1982 with eight animals from the Slate Islands. Today a modest caribou colony remains, along with red fox, plentiful beaver and smaller mammals. Hope Island near Quebec Harbour has a heron rookery.

Michipicoten is Ojibwe for “big bluffs,” an accurate description of majestic palisades that we saw along the north shore. The highest point on the island is about 300 metres (1,000 feet) above Lake Superior.

There are about 30 interior lakes; Michi Lake has a float plane outpost used for sport fishing. Some lakes are high in the hills, more than 200 metres (700 feet) above the shore. These feed picturesque waterfalls and cascades. From the rocky outcrops of the north coast, the hills’ southern slopes descend into marshy areas, often engineered by the large beaver population. There are three inviting south sand beaches.

The island’s spare topsoil, varied terrain and elevations promote forest diversity. Lower coastal growth is mainly boreal conifers laced with white birch, poplars and mountain ash. Sugar maple, yellow birch and red oak rule the higher ground. Most areas have an impenetrable understory. Trails would require continual maintenance.

While there are not maintained trails, for those who brave the journey today, Michipicoten Island offers captivating attributes.

Cottagers and visitors have long hunted amethyst and agates, mainly on the south side and nearby smaller islands. Since the island became a regulated provincial park in 1985, natural objects may not be removed.

No development is planned, but there could be limited preparation of primitive campsites that would confine impacts, keeping traffic away from sensitive places. Ontario Parks is refining a management statement.

Among divers, the island is known for two accessible shipwrecks. The 1,101-ton wooden Canadian steamer Strathmore was downbound from Fort William with 31,000 bushels of wheat in November 1906 when gales drove it into rocks on the western shore. In a fierce October 1929 blizzard, the 3,191-ton Chicago drifted out of control 240 kilometres (150 miles) from the Keweenaw Peninsula to a reef at the island’s southwest tip. No lives were lost in either wreck, but the vessels were not recovered.

Kayaking or canoeing seems to be the most popular and rewarding way to visit. Several mainland outfitters offer guided expeditions. Camping is limited to coastal clearings and beaches because of junglelike growth. There are no hiking trails or public facilities.

If you have a small craft plus time and provisions to adapt to fickle wind and weather patterns, Michipicoten can be a noble and magical sanctuary. It can also be moody and forbidding.

Since my grandpa lived there in 1881, the island has seen an impressive relentless reversion to its natural origin, and while we were intrigued by our own visit to my family’s history, I can’t imagine any social pressure to civilize the island again.

Donn Larson is a member of Lake Superior Magazine’s Editorial Advisory Board and a frequent contributor.