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John Bouchard
Saganaga Saga
These drawings from John Bouchard's book, Life on the Invisible Line, showcase his artistic style and sense of humor.
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John Bouchard
Saganaga Saga
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John Bouchard
Saganaga Saga
A memorable encounter with a moose (left) and a drawing of his wife, Eveline (right).
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John Bouchard
Saganaga Saga
As a conservation officer, John was required to keep a journal, which he filled with drawings.
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John Bouchard
Saganaga Saga
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John Bouchard
Saganaga Saga
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John Bouchard
Saganaga Saga
John sketched this portrait of Judge Oliver Martin in 1954. John was arrested for vagrancy that spring while walking through an upscale Toronto neighborhood on his way to work; the officer said he "did not seem to fit in." Judge Martin, Ontario's first Aboriginal judge, chastised the officer and quickly dismissed the case.
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Courtesy John Bouchard
Saganaga Saga
John retired in 1994 and now lives in Thunder Bay.
“Pursue adventures. Don’t settle for an easy life.”
Looking back on his own life along the remote border lakes separating the United States and Canada, octogenarian John Bouchard believes that is his best advice to young people of today.
Trapper, conservation officer, artist – John and his wife, Eveline, joined the hardy trailblazers in the late 1960s at the border waters between Ontario and Minnesota, creating a community filled with distinct personalities, diverse opinions and dedication to helping neighbors.
By the time John and Eve arrived at Saganaga Lake, they were already northwoods savvy. John had worked a few years for what is today the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and also kept a trapline.
He was sent as a conservation officer to Saganaga Lake for the summer season.
Never having been to the lakes along the Ontario-Minnesota border, he and Eve didn’t know what to expect. Saganaga Lake sits at the end of the 57-mile Gunflint Trail and is a popular destination for people driving up Minnesota’s North Shore of Lake Superior. In contrast, there is no road access from Ontario, so it is relatively unknown to Canadians.
Familiar with the locale or not, it only took one look for John to make a decision when he and Eve flew by floatplane into his new post in 1967. He was blown away by the beauty.
“As soon as the pontoons hit the water, I knew I wanted to be there.”
John and Eve ended up spending 18 years on the lake, living on Government Island in a building adjacent to Canada Customs.
From the beginning, John realized this was an ideal place to pursue his dream of soaking in wilderness charm while continuing to evolve as an artist.
On Saganaga, John could draw inspiration from the landscape, the plentiful wildlife and the colourful human personalities.
It was a long, winding road for John, but he and his soulmate, Eve, found their true home.
John Bouchard was born in 1934 in Falconbridge, an Ontario mining town near Sudbury and about 311 kilometres (193 miles) east of Sault Ste. Marie.
John and his brother, Sydney, were raised by his mother, a cook who took jobs wherever she could find them. She did seasonal jobs on Alberta ranches, in logging camps and for the railroad throughout Ontario and the Canadian prairies. John started drawing when he was 4. His mother recalled him always sketching with pencil in hand. John remembers that his artistic leanings sometimes got him in trouble, earning a strap across his hands when the nuns noticed him drawing instead of doing school assignments.
When he wasn’t drawing, John explored around the ranches, small railroad towns and other places his family alighted. John trapped small mammals, a skill that would serve him later in life.
John’s nomadic life continued beyond childhood. At 18, he left home to ride the rails and hitchhike in a restless drive to experience life. A few experiences would change his life.
One major event came on a pleasant 1954 spring day in Toronto on his way to his shoe-shining job. A police officer took exception to him and another young man strolling through an upscale neighborhood; he arrested them for vagrancy.
In court the next day, the officer told Judge Oliver Martin that the young men “did not seem to fit in.”
Hearing that reason for the arrest, Judge Martin – Ontario’s first Aboriginal judge and quite familiar with “not fitting in” – threw up his hands in disgust, chastised the officer for wasting court time and dismissed the case. After court, the judge gave each young man 50 cents – enough for a decent meal.
A few weeks later, grateful for the kindness, John sent Judge Martin a letter along with 50 cents and a drawing of the judge. The judge replied with a thank you letter for the drawing. “It will remind me of one whom I was privileged to help in a small way, who has helped to restore my faith in humanity. It has been my good fortune to assist many in a small way from time to time over the years, and you are the only one who has seen fit to write me later and to return a loan. … I hope that one day your talent to sketch will help you to do better things financially. Keep it up.”
John keeps his preliminary sketch with the judge’s letter. At the time, it re-enforced his commitment to his art even as he continued his travels.
His footloose days – in fact all his days – almost ended abruptly in his early 20s. Or as John is fond of quipping: “When I was 22, I was shot in the head with a .22.” The incident involved a drunk young man at a party, shooting ducks on a wall calendar with a .22-calibre rifle. Later in the evening, when John and a friend stood up to sing, the gun went off. John recalls hearing shots and then a ringing in his head. There was lots of blood, an ambulance ride and a X-ray showing a bullet embedded just below John’s brain. That John survived, the doctor declared, was a miracle.
John knew how to take a hint from the universe – he believed the omen meant he should do something meaningful with his life. He resolved to become an artist.
In John’s second year at Southern Alberta College of Art in Calgary, a stunning young dancer, recently arrived from Indonesia, posed in her dance costume for his drawing class. John was smitten by Eveline Tinkelenberg and asked her out.
Two years later, John and Eve married. After graduation, John took a designing job with a neon sign company, but hated working indoors. He remembered one of his art teachers had declared running a trapline as the happiest years of his life. So when John heard about Trapline 139 for sale some 225 kilometres (140 miles) northwest of Thunder Bay, he took it with Eve’s full support (even though the first home they would ever own was a trap shack).
After his second season of trapping, John visited the provincial Lands and Forests office to get better maps for his trapline and ended up with work as a seasonal “tower man” west of Thunder Bay watching for forest fires, then as a park ranger and deputy warden. He brought the perspective of his earlier life to his work – mindful of not judging those who “didn’t fit in” and even teaching a few gun safety classes, for which he felt “eminently qualified, having experienced what a gun could do in the hands of drunken or careless people.”
In 1967, there was a summer opening for deputy conservation office at Saganaga Lake.
When John and Eve arrived on Saganaga, they quickly discovered what an extraordinary community they had joined. John was struck by the fact that everyone, no matter if they resided on the U.S. or Canadian side, shared an enduring love of the lake. Some, like the Powell and the Madsen families, have been on Saganaga for generations, John says. “People like Jock Richardson, Art and Dinna Madsen, Tempest and Irv Benson and Benny Ambrose were strong, opinionated individuals who somehow formed a cohesive, sharing community. They were willing to share their wisdom without any pretense.”
John worked as a conservation officer on Saganaga Lake from May to October and made a living as a trapper in winter. Being a trapper himself gained his neighbors’ respect and he also learned a lot by trailing along with area trappers and observing them.
“I suppose I was trapping year around,” John jokes. “In the summer, I’d be trapping fisherman and game violators and in the winter I’d be trapping furs. It gave me a rounded year and it was years of adventure as far as I was concerned.”
Eve’s naturally outgoing personality meant she was quickly known by virtually everyone on Saganaga. An avid baker, she frequently brought fresh bread and homemade desserts to neighbors.
As a conservation officer, John knew well about what he calls the invisible line that zigzags east and west under the waters of Saganaga Lake between the United States and Canada. “For wildlife officers on both sides of the invisible line, enforcement and jurisdiction are especially important,” John notes. “A minor incident has potential for international embarrassment. In time, both sides learn to work together, for they share mutual accord: a concern for people, wildlife and nature.”
John continued to draw and paint – both for pleasure and for work as a conservation officer.
“We were required to keep a journal, and mine were filled with drawings of the day’s events. When I looked back at the journal, I found that days that seemed boring and mundane would come alive on my drawings.”
Reviewing those journals, John finds his drawings bring back more memories for him than the text does. The drawings were even occasionally used as evidence in court or to promote better visitor behavior.
Over the years, John’s experiences created a large stockpile of delightful, off-beat and heartwarming stories.
He recalls, for example, touring a group of young international journalists on a Saganaga Lake canoe trip. One night, waiting near a beaver house on Powell Bay so some of the reporters could see the iconic Canadian critter, a loud snap came from the nearby woods.
“I knew it was too early in the fall to see a moose, but I thought, ‘What the heck.’ Cupping my hands, I let out a few loud grunts. Soon the bushes were moving slowly, and remarkably, a massive bull came out. He could not have been better choreographed. Near the water’s edge, he turned ever so slowly, showing his gold-bronze rack for all to see. The bull not only impressed the journalists, who were hardly breathing with eyes wide open, but he also seemed to impress himself. The moose and we stared at each other for a few tense moments, and then he turned around back into the brush.”
At camp that night, the impressed foreign journalists reported to the others with their broken English: “He called ‘Moose-ee, come to us!’ and he came to us. He big! I scared! So close!’
“The more I listened to them,” John recounts, “the more I felt like Tarzan of the North.”
He also tells about working with his dog, Gypsy, who graduated from trying to eat any evidence of hunting and fishing violations to actually helping to discover it.
Given his knack for art and storytelling, many people urged John to compile a book about his adventures. Late last year, Life on the Invisible Line came off the press. Humorous and light-hearted like John himself and packed with drawings, the book chronicles the fulfillment of John’s dream to live in a wild area and do meaningful work while continuing to grow as an artist.
John says he felt destined to live on an island with an island girl, which he essentially did until Eve’s death in 2000. John retired in 1994 and has since moved into Thunder Bay, but at the 2010 funeral of lifelong Saganaga Lake resident Dinna Madsen, John recalled in a eulogy the welcome that he and Eve received from Dinna, her husband, Art, and other locals when they first arrived.
“It was as though we were adopted instead of stationed. We would spend the next 18 years – the best years – in that wondrous place.”
In that wondrous place, John and Eve Bouchard also became part of the sagas of Saganaga Lake.
Jon Nelson, author of Quetico: Near to Nature’s Heart, and his wife, Marie, worked 12 years as park rangers in Quetico Provincial Park before he went on to teach biology and chemistry at Confederation College in Thunder Bay.