(click on any photo to enlarge)
note: The headline has a typo: I think they meant "approves" instead of "appears"
This was a big freaking deal for the time. The French Club in 1970 planned a boys and girls class trip to Huronia, i.e. Midland and Georgian Bay. The ostensible reason was that they wanted to visit and absorb the history and culture of when the French established a colony near Midland Ontario on the Wye River called Saint-Marie-Among-The-Hurons (Sainte-Marie-au-pays-des-Hurons) way back in 1639. The settlement was built by French Jesuit missionaries as a central residence and headquarters for their mission to the Wendat (Huron) people. It lasted ten years until 1649 when the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) wars devastated the region. Eight French Jesuit missionaries, collectively known as the Canadian Martyrs, were killed. They consisted of six priests and two lay helpers (donnés). The entire settlement is rebuilt with the log cabins, native longhouses and displays of life among the Hurons. Photos below. Also built in 1925 was the Martyrs Shrine cathedral near Midland across Highway 12 from the recreation of Saint-Marie-Among-The Hurons (first photo below). If you want to go to church there, fergitaboutit! Last summer we were vacationing in Georgian Bay and it was over $10 just to get into the parking lot at the church. I did pay to see Saint-Marie-Among-The-Hurons though and the photos below are from there.
Below is the recreation of the log church built by the Jesuits when they arrived in Huronia in 1639. There are graves in the building of Fr. Isaac Jogues and bits of Fr. Jean Brebeuf. His skull is in the Martyrs Shrine cathedral across the highway.
Saint-Marie-Among-The Hurons had wooden palisades and spiked walls in a fort configuration outside the settlement. They had this neat little canal where you could paddle up from the Wye River in a canoe without opening the gates and it also supplied drinking water when they were under seige from the Iroquois. Inside the fort, friendly Hurons pitched tents and built longhouses.
The interesting bit about the French Class trip to Huronia, was that they had to get permission from the school board because it was overnight for four days. The girls got to sleep in cabins and the boys had to tent it. I must admit that being a teenager at the time created certain biological propensities that welcomed overnight trips with girls, but for me, there was one problem -- you had to be a member of the French Club. Since it was French and you had to like it, joining the French Club was onerous for me. I had to pass. I took French for three years at OCHS, being taught by Mrs. Kearns, Mr. Bellehumeur (who I later found out with the brother of Mrs. Kearns, and Gary Ranalli. Gary used to take us outdoors during French class under the trees on summery June days. The irony was that I didn't particularly enjoy French, but ended up having to study it at the University of Ottawa which was an officially bilingual university and you had to learn either French or English whatever was opposite to your mother tongue. For two years, my roommate in residence was a French speaker from Senegal and I learned to speak fluent French. I lived for a couple of decades in Quebec and I was a technical architect for the Government of Canada, where I operated in a bilingual milieu. So ultimately, my aversion to the French language was in vain, and I missed out on the trip to Huronia. C'est la vie! I still am fluent in French today, and I have a home in the Laurentian Mountains of Quebec.
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