Along the Shore

By Michelle Miller

DULUTH—The Northland is rich with history; natural spaces, industries, people, and cultures. Preserving it in all forms for future generations to enjoy takes vision, which is what motivated the Tweed family to create the Tweed Museum of Art in Duluth.

Established in 1950, the Tweed home was donated to serve as a community museum. However, it quickly outgrew its space and was moved to the University of Minnesota-Duluth campus in 1958, with most of the construction funded by family donations. The initial collection began with American and 19th century European pieces, gathered by George P. Tweed and then gifted to the museum by his widow, Alice Tweed Tuohy. The comprehensive collection is made up of mediums ranging from prints, ceramics and photography, to textiles, animations, and paintings, in addition to contemporary Native and Indigenous art.

The Tweeds were ahead of their time in terms of appreciation for art, focusing on the diverse cultures and techniques from around the world. The artwork continues to stay relevant to the community still, growing globally—the permanent collection now consists of 8,000 works of art. Not only is the collection size impressive, but the state of the art, professional display of the items, and the artwork itself engages visitors and tells an in-depth story as visitors tour the rooms and hallways of the museum.

As part of the Tweed’s family vision, the museum also serves as a teaching museum. In addition to study spaces, interpretive workshops, lectures, and student exhibits are featured throughout the school year. Three floors of nine exhibit spaces allow for self-guided tours and it is recommended to plan on a two-hour visit. Staff and volunteers are on site to answer questions and provide historical and exhibit details. The extensive collection allows for rotating exhibits and the visiting seasonal curated shows keeps art enthusiasts coming back for more.

The Tweed Museum has partnered with the Duluth Fiber Guild for its current spring exhibit, featured in several rooms on the first floor of the museum. The guild is celebrating its 50-year anniversary this year and the exhibit includes 30 pieces selected from a juried show held last fall. The first space is dedicated to the guild’s founder, Janet Meany. Board member and organizer of the anniversary event, Kit Sitter, is thrilled with the design Tweed curators created for the exhibit. Sitter says the group was researching several locations and “this partnership was a serendipitous ending.” The Duluth Fiber Guild exhibit is on display now until May 20.

Events for the Duluth Fiber Guild’s anniversary includes four additional state-wide exhibits throughout the coming year, wrapping up at the Textile Library in the Twin Cities. Categories of fiber arts that members of the guild specialize in include spinning, weaving, felting, and dying, and they recently added a new group working with reused and repurposed fiber products. Sitter says participants range from beginners to full time professionals and is open to all ages.

“We would love to see more college-aged participants though,” says Sitter.

For more information about the Duluth Fiber Guild, visit: duluthfiberguild.org.

One of the newest additions to the permanent display at the Tweed Museum does not hang on the walls or sit in a display case; it can be enjoyed on a ride in the elevator. Midwest classically trained painter, Iashia “Mana Bear” Bolton, created a vibrant, 360-degree mural last summer that is available for the public to enjoy. Her colorful and expressive work can also be viewed at: artstation.com/manabear.

The Tweed Museum is open Tuesdays through Thursdays and Saturdays, and admission is free. For more information, call 218-726-8222 or go online at: tweed.d.umn. edu. The museum is located in the Humanities Building on the University of Minnesota-Duluth campus at 1201 Ordean Court.

By Chris Pascone

DULUTH—How does it feel to paddle a 100-year-old piece of Northwoods history?

To ply the waters of Wisconsin’s Bois Brule River in a wooden canoe designed and built with hand tools? Let’s add to the mystique that this particular boat was made by master boat-builder Joe Lucius. Would you feel the spirit of the Brule, or would the leaky relic just give you wet feet?

The answer can still be found today thanks to the handiwork of Damian Wilmot of Superior and Lloyd Hautajarvi of Duluth. The two Brule history buffs have a strong passion for keeping the river’s culture and story alive. Together, they are currently doing their third restoration project of a Lucius wooden canoe out of Hautajarvi’s workshop nestled high up in Duluth’s Woodland neighborhood. The two take river-beaten Lucius canoes, some built as far back as the 1890s, and reconstruct the wooden ribs, floor planking, thwarts and seats as necessary to get the boats back on the river. Their goal is to make these venerable boats operational again, all while recapturing the beauty and heritage of the Lucius originals.

Joe Lucius contributed to the legend of the Bois Brule River in northern Wisconsin for over 60 years. Lucius worked as a contractor for members of the famed Winneboujou Club—a landowners’ association started in 1895 on the banks of the Brule. Lucius built freighter canoes designed to transport raw materials for constructing the wooden estate houses that the Winneboujou Club owners called “lodges.”

Lucius’ distinctive design idea was to make his canoes longer and wider than traditional birchbark canoes, thereby giving them a greater hauling capacity. According to Wilmot, “There was no network of roads back then. When Lucius was hired to build one of these lodges, all of his purchase parts, like fasteners and fixtures, came to Winneboujou Station in the upper Brule valley on a train. He needed a way to get those materials upriver to his building sites. Lucius would pole the boat upriver from the train station.”

Meanwhile, the Brule was gaining fame as one of America’s premier hunting and fishing grounds. The rich and powerful were beginning to congregate on the spring-fed, wild river, hiring local Ojibwe guides to teach them the river’s secrets. Lucius contributed to creating the Brule’s legendary stature by building the boats that opened this paradise to wealthy railroad barons (and U.S. presidents).

Lucius’ creations are unlike the aluminum and fiberglass canoes that gained popularity over wooden boats in the latter 20th century. Weighing in at up to 200 pounds, and built out of native cedar planking with ribs of white oak, a Lucius canoe is culturally a part of the Brule itself, to be used with respect and awe for the past.

Now, on a sunny Sunday morning in late February, Wilmot and Hautajarvi are in Hautajarvi’s backyard workshop finessing steambent ribs for a canoe restoration project ordered by customer Jeff Day. Having grown up fishing the Brule, Day says his whole family sees sentimental value, as well as functional purpose, in getting the family’s Lucius back on the water after a stint of 40 years waiting patiently in the boathouse.

Wilmot and Hautajarvi are bending the white oak cross-ribs to hold the boat’s planking together. They’ve already ordered bronze nails from Hamilton Marine in Maine: the bronze hardware resists pull-out stresses even when wood swells or shrinks. The two are surrounded by hand tools—staying true to Lucius’ original building methods.

The duo knows how much work this third restoration is going to take: Wilmot and Hautajarvi spent 750 hours restoring the Lucius 20-footer that Wilmot uses as the guide boat for his Fly-By-Night Guide Service fishing trips on the Brule. That project, which took two winters to complete, was a much bigger undertaking than the current restoration the two are doing for Day.

But for Wilmot and Hautajarvi, every boat they can get back on the river in fine working condition is about more than preserving a boat: it’s about preserving a culture, a way of life. Wilmot takes the culture even further on his guided trips, adding cane rods, local “Brule flies,” and the traditional Brule dinner. Wilmot’s satisfaction comes from keeping the river’s heritage alive.

The Lucius boats themselves are “living” remnants of the past for Wilmot and Hautajarvi.

“We took this current boat out of the Winneboujou Club boathouse at the end of September (2022), and it sat on the trailer outside for six weeks before we hauled it to Lloyd’s shop,” says Wilmot. “It’s probably been 40 years since this boat was last on the water. You know, you could see daylight through some spots in the canoe. But just in the three weeks that it sat outside at my cabin, we got quite a bit of rain, and all the wood rehydrated and swelled. It was holding water like a bathtub.”

Day is partnering with Robert Graumann, one of the Winneboujou Club members, to share the cost of restoring the boat, “because we both care about the history,” says Day. “It’s kind of a legacy, just to recapture a little bit of the 19th century. I want to set something up that will be there in another 100 years.”

Day had seen the results of Wilmot and Hautajarvi’s earlier restoration work, and approached the two to work on his family’s Lucius as well. Day says Wilmot was the person he could entrust the cultural importance of the project to: “He’s a font of information. He’s a dictionary about materials and tools and building methods. He told me a lot about what Lucius canoe restoration entails, and how to restore it very close to its original state and splendor.”

For Day and Graumann, the boat is something to be used, not just looked at, saying “Our idea is to have it be a club boat, open to all, with the due respect it deserves. A boat like that needs to be in the water.” The restored boat will also be a way for the family to honor Day’s late mother.

“My mother passed away 17 years ago and she loved the Brule,” says Day. “She had a history there her entire life. She actually had her feet in two places. She married my step-father, who was the last person to be accepted into, and build a house, as part of the Winneboujou Club. So, she was both a Hannaford and a Drake. The idea is to maybe christen the boat as ‘Char,’ or ‘Cha-Cha,’ as her grandkids called her. It’s going to be a consensus thing, and there are a lot of voices. I like the idea of remembering her in that way, leaving her legacy for the next generations.”

Currently, Wilmot and Hautajarvi aim to have Day’s family boat back in the water again after its 40-year hiatus by mid-April of this year. The boat will soak up water, expand, and become water-tight again, ready to carry the Brule traditions on.

For Wilmot, this restoration, like the previous two undertaken together with Hautajarvi, is a way of paying homage to Joe Lucius. “He built a lot of these boats. We have to keep it going.”

Hautajarvi concurs, “We love them. They are early attempts to build something better than birch-bark canoes. Are they the epitome of wooden boat building? No. But, they’re history. They’re brilliant.”

Some of the brilliant features that Lucius installed on his hand-built canoes were permanent livewells that used river water to transport trout alive, sliding bow seats, and a hull shape that allows the boat to be poled upriver without scraping lurking underwater rocks.

Look for these beautifully restored boats on the Brule—at 200 pounds of solid wood, they won’t be going anywhere else without a trailer. But the Brule is where they’re meant to be. For Wilmot, “In a big wide boat like this, even though it’s heavier than hell, you can carry a couple of 200-pound guys, your fishing gear, your cook kit, and everything for a day on the Brule. You’ve probably got an 800-pound payload, and the boat is hardly underwater thanks to its hull design.”

These boats are built for the long haul and Wilmot and Hautajarvi are making sure they keep hauling.

By Chris Pascone

THUNDER BAY—Imagine skiing into a remote northern Ontario lake, right past a big sign that says “No Fishing: Provincial Fish Sanctuary.” You ski onward, knowing you have an official invitation in your pocket to do the province a big favor and catch lake trout out of this protected gem—all for the benefit of science. Does this sound like the ultimate fishing dream come true?

The Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry’s (OMNRF) Science and Research Branch made this fantasy a reality for anglers over nine days in midMarch at Squeers Lake, in Ontario’s Thunder Bay District. This year, the “Squeers Lake Winter Fishery” was opened to the public for the first time since 2016, meaning that the trout inhabiting the deep, cold water hadn’t seen a hook, line or sinker in seven years.

The Squeers Lake Winter Fishery is an OMNRF-run program aimed at doing scientific research by providing anglers with excellent conditions for catching lake trout, so that the trout can then be sampled and studied by OMNRF technicians. You get to take your catch home with you (up to five lake trout per person). But first you hand your precious research subjects over to a team of prodigious fish processors who gut the trout for you after taking biological samples. The OMNRF gets its data and you get dinner—everybody wins.

The 2023 Squeers Lake Winter Fishery was well advertised. This public engagement really impressed me—an angler from Duluth. Never before had I come across any government actively recruiting anglers. Ontario rocks.

The Fishery was promoted in posts on the “Ontario Fish and Wildlife” page on Facebook starting on January 19, then again on January 24 and February 3. There were articles previewing the fishery in Thunder Bay media like the CBC news website, and there were posters promoting the event in many local outdoor retail shops.

I signed up in February. It took two minutes on Eventbrite. The listing said: “Whether you are an experienced angler or just want to try ice fishing, you are invited to participate. It’s a great opportunity for families or first-time anglers to enjoy a full day of ice fishing on a lake with plenty of fish.” I was in!

The day arrived. My Canadian friends drove us 100 km northwest of Thunder Bay, and we made the mile-and-a-half trek in to Squeers. My heart was beating with expectation and pride when I skied onto the ice and saw the tents (check station) set up by the OMNRF to greet anglers and provide final instructions on this public research endeavor. We each got our License to Collect Fish for Scientific Purposes (a memento to be cherished dearly), and went out fishing.

I spent the next eight hours happily jigging a Little Cleo spoon a couple feet off bottom. While the action wasn’t exactly dream-like, I did get three trout on the ice, which was triple the number I had caught winter-to-date.

According to Tony Trogrlic, an OMNRF technician, the main purpose of the winter fishery is to see how angling pressure affects the fish population of the lake.

“We control entrance to the lake, so we know exactly how many people are fishing,” says Trogrlic. “We know how many fish are removed. We have previous population estimates, and by measuring this year’s harvest, it gives us a really good metric on how angling affects a lake.”

The harvest data from the Winter Fishery allows biologists to estimate the lake trout population size. They can do so by using the number of lake trout tagged the previous fall, which was over 2,000 fish, and the number of those fish that are recaptured in the Winter Fishery. Sure enough, one of the four trout our party caught was tagged.

Blair Wasylenko, Provincial Aquatics Monitoring Program Lead of the OMNRF’s Biodiversity and Monitoring Section explains more about the science.

“Traditionally, the fishery monitored annual sustainability but has since transitioned to monitoring lake trout recovery, which could be done at a five-year interval using the winter fishery,” says Wasylenko. “This process allows our biologists to estimate the lake trout population to inform our provincial broad-scale monitoring of inland lakes program.”

Squeers is a good candidate for this kind of study because it was overfished in the 1970s after a new nearby logging road made fishing there more accessible. The lake was closed to angling in 1979 due to overharvesting, and designated a provincial fish sanctuary in 1981. Since then, the OMNRF has conducted its controlled harvest experiment, using anglers to harvest lake trout.

Back at the check station, Trogrlic and his team are sampling the biological attributes of the fish we brought in: “We analyze each fish’s length, weight, stomach contents, sex, and sample the fish’s inner ear bone (or otolith) to determine its age.”

Fishing for the sake of research is a tough job, but as they say, somebody has to do it.