GNRT DAY 32 A LITTLE HISTORY

Today as we traveled from Michigan into Canada across the twin cities of Salt Ste. Marie…. on the 300 miles of this journey…we learned a little more history…. The name Canada most likely came from the Huron-Iroquois word Kanata meaning village or settlement… A frenchmen used it to name the entire country before the Hurons could tell him exactly what it meant. We are currently near Lake Ontario which also got it’s name from the Iroquois. The legend says from an Iroquois chief’s daughter who when she saw the lake said kandario…which means sparkling water. We have been on Lake Superior…named Gitchi-Gami by the Ojibwe this means Big Sea Water…and she is a beautiful lake In Longfellow’s poem Hiawatha…he called it Gitchi-Gumi by mistake. We have felt the waters of Lake Michigan…a little boat trip we did take…. the Anishinabe called it mishigami …which simply means…big lake We have driven my Lake Huron another beautiful place to be. The Wyandot called it karegnondi which roughly translated means freshwater sea . And we spend the next 2 days on Nipissing Lake…meaning little water A name the Ojibwe chose to keep because the crystal clear waters of this lake are not so very deep It seems all around us on this trip…we’ve seen and tried to understand how we travel over the footprints or on the shoulders of those who first walked this land. We have gained a new appreciation…of all they saw the mountains, the rivers, the lakes…the plains and the buffalo too of how they lived…of their philosophy…and of all they have gone through, We offer them our thanks we only wish we could go back in time…and change our history…. and we wonder if things had played out differently…. what kind of beauty in our world the would see.