Riverworkers: Jon Berger

JON BERGER began canoeing at the age of 12, in 1958, at Camp Wabun on Lake Temagami. His first canoe trip into the Little North came in 1961 as part of a 10 person, 8 week camp trip around and across the headwaters of the Kenogami Branch of the Albany River in the vicinity of Nakina. The next summer of 1962, his camp section paddled the Albany River to James Bay via the Savant and Pashkokogan Rivers. These two trips began a life long preoccupation with following the rivers of Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec to James and Hudson Bay. These travels soon began to explore and document the routes across the basin divides in both the Shield and the Lowlands. Since 1962, with friends and family, on the west side of James and Hudson Bay, he has done the connections between and the rivers to Lake Winnipeg, York Factory, Fort Severn, Winisk-Peawanuk, Sutton, Attawapiskatt, Albany, Moose River, Lake Nipigon, Lake Superior. On the Eastmain of James and Hudson Bay he traveled similarly on the Rupert, Eastmain, La Grande, and Great Whale.

During this 46 year period, he came under the influence and tutelage of Sigurd Olson, Ian McHarg, and John Rassias. Olson was a professional ecologist and wilderness philosopher whose ten books explore the land ethic of Leopold in the context of wilderness canoeing and interpretation. The black and white drawings of  Francis Lee Jaques  that illustrate Olson's work inspired Jon Berger to paint and draw out on the trips and to begin a lifelong study of Canadian landscape art. Thus he has found kinship with and inspiration from the Group of Seven- in particular Lauren Harris who painted the north shore of Lake Superior - the southern boundary of The Little North.

Later his interest in ecology derived from Olson's work led him to meet McHarg and become his student at the University of  Pennsylvania where he received his masters and doctorate in ecology and land use planning. Working with and teaching for McHarg gave Berger the opportunity to learn the McHarg method of inventory, analysis, and synthesis to explore patterns of landscape use and abuse. For over 15 years he taught and wrote in the area of human ecology and landscape planning.

Since 1985, The Little North has become the focus of his landscape interpretation. The southern and western parts in the vicinity of Sioux Lookout proved to be a gentle wilderness- ideal for family canoe trips. Slowly the idea of an atlas that recorded  height of land connections and the portage routes along the rivers came into focus as he became more and more familiar with the area between Lake Winnipeg and James Bay. But the Atlas would be more - it would be a place to show his drawings - his own rendition of travel conditions with more than prose and maps - and further the book would be a record of knowledge gleaned from hundreds of conversations with native travelers. And more – it would be the focus of Rassias' "importance of being linguistically earnest,” McHarg's- "the place is because," and Olson's, "the movement of a canoe is like a reed in the wind."