We’re going to continue on our tour of the Great Lakes, moving from Lake Huron to its partner, Lake Michigan. As I’ve shared before, Huron and Michigan are really one body of water, joined at the Straits of Mackinac. 

Southwest from the Straits lie a chain of islands. The two most prominent islands are North and South Manitou. The islands are part of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore and can be seen from the mainland – two distinct humps rising out of the water in close proximity to each other. 

There is a ferry from Leland that will take visitors to both islands. South Manitou is the smaller island (8 square miles) and attracts day visitors with a small museum, lighthouse, and old Coast Guard station, and a wagon tour out to the site of a shipwreck. North Manitou is much larger (22 square miles) and, other than a small village where the ferry docks, is managed as a wilderness area. Visitors come for solitude, hiking and camping. Neither island has food or medical services. 

On our visit to Sleeping Bear Dunes in 2019 I bought a children’s book at the National Park Service Visitor’s Center called The Legend of Sleeping Bear by Kathy-jo Wargin, illustrated by Gijsbert van Frankenhuyzen. It has a subtitle “Michigan’s Official Children’s Book”. Given this designation, I was underprepared for the story told but probably should have been tipped off by the dedication: For all mothers, whose love and dedication will be rewarded.

A synopsis of the legend, an Anishinaabe story of a sacred place: Long ago, across the inland sea that is now Lake Michigan, in the forests of what is now Wisconsin, lived Mother Bear and her two cubs. They lived happily along a stream. Sometimes Mother Bear would take her cubs to the shores of the lake and gaze out on its endless horizon.

One day there was a thunderstorm and lightning struck a tree and started a forest fire. Mother Bear and her cubs ran to the lakeshore. They had no choice but to leap into the lake and start a swim across to the other side. The cubs promised Mother Bear they would swim with all their might all through the night. Mother Bear kept checking to make sure her cubs were not far behind her. But by morning, as she saw the sun coming up, she no longer saw her cubs. Mother Bear made it to the sandy shores of the lake, surrounded by dunes. She was exhausted. But she paced up and down the shoreline, calling to her cubs. Eventually she climbed to the top of the highest dune and sat, watching and waiting for her cubs.

She waited as the seasons changed. She waited through the winter. Eventually Mother Bear fell into a deep slumber of sorrow, blanketed by sand. The great spirit of the land felt her sadness, her dedication, and her love. And so the spirit raised the cubs from the water and made them two islands, close together and within view of Mother Bear. They are North and South Manitou Islands, resting eternally near their mother.

Welp. Oh man. You can be sure I was wiping away tears when I read the book. But this story of a mother’s love is deeply touching and adds further life and meaning to this special region on Lake Michigan. The bears’ resting place brings awe, joy and peace to visitors year after year. 

Manitoulin Island in northern Lake Huron is the largest freshwater island in the world at 2,766 square feet. It is large enough to have over 100 freshwater lakes and multiple rivers itself.    

Manitoulin Island is also the home of an incredible young activist named Autumn Peltier. I was introduced to Autumn in the beautiful picture book Autumn Peltier, Water Warrior, written by Carole Lindstrom with illustrations by Bridget George. 

Autumn is Anishinaabe and an Indigenous Water Protector from Wiikwemkoong First Nation on Manitoulin Island. The rapid evolution of her activism is nothing short of remarkable and Autumn has been nominated several times for the International Children’s Peace Prize, including being a finalist in 2022. 

2012 at eight years old: Autumn learned that many First Nations in Ontario often live on short or long-term boil-water advisories and began speaking out about this in her own community. 

2016 at 12 years old: At the Assembly of First Nations in front of thousands of people, Autumn pointedly asked questions of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about water protection and told him he is not doing enough on the issue.

2018: Autumn addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York City on the topic of clean water access.

2019, at the age of 14: Autumn was appointed Chief Water Commissioner for the Anishinaabek Nation. She meets with leaders of Tribal Nations and speaks nationally and internationally about Indigenous and water rights. Her voice and messages are often directly about the waters that flow in and out of the Great Lakes.

Autumn is the great-niece of the late Josephine Mandamin, an internationally recognized water and Indigenous rights activity. She was widely acknowledged as the leader of the Water Walk movement. Josephine co-founded the Mother Earth Water Walkers in 2003. The Mother Earth Water Walkers is comprised of women from different clans of the Anishinaabe who work to bring attention to water crises in their own communities and others around the world. They do this by walking the perimeter of the Great Lakes. The first Water Walk was in 2003 when the group walked 2,726 miles around Lake Superior. They carried a copper pail filled with lake water. Over the next 14 years, there were thirteen Water Walks, covering a distance of over 15,000 miles to bring attention to the issue of clean water. 

If one thing stands out in Autumn Peltier, Water Warrior, it is the voice of women and girls. To the Anishinaabe, speaking for the water is a matriarchal act. There is something that seems so right and also deeply ironic about this. Around the globe, it is often women and girls who bear the burden of accessing clean water.  In communities without easy access, women and girls may literally spend their days walking miles to and from sources of water for drinking, cooking and sanitation needs. Here’s hoping that Autumn and other young climate and environmental activists inspire all sorts of people from across the globe to take action.       

In our culture, we look at water as a living being, and we’re taught to treat it with the same respect we would show another human. Water is the lifeblood of Mother Earth. It gives all life, and there is no life without it. Autumn Peltier, Foreword to Autumn Peltier, Water Warrior

In my March 2023 post about the Great Lakes as the characters of the movie The Breakfast Club, I referred to Lake Huron as the dark horse of the lakes. Despite being the second largest Great Lake, its identity feels less specific, somewhat unknown, perhaps a bit mysterious. I gotta be honest – it took me a while to even find a decent map of the lake to post (feel free to check my googling!). 

Some of this is likely due to the fact that despite having the longest shoreline of all the Great Lakes – almost 3,800 miles – there are only three million people living on or proximate to the lake. There are no large cities on its shores. The west side of the lake is the thumb side of Michigan’s “mitten” with lake waters flowing down towards Detroit where they will pass into the St. Clair river and then on into Lake Erie. Most of the shoreline is in Ontario.

At one point in history, the lake was called La Mer Douce, or “the freshwater sea” by French Explorers. It was later named for the indigenous Huron people who have lived around the lake for centuries. Much of the lake and land surrounding it has remained in a fairly wild state. Like all the Great Lakes, Lake Huron was carved from glaciers. Over time sedimentary and volcanic rocks carved away and what were likely smoother expanses of rock along the shore. Hills and small mountains of jagged rock form what is called the Canadian Shield around the northern side.

Lake Huron has over 30,000 individual islands including the largest freshwater island in the world – Manitoulin (1,068 square miles) – which has over 100 freshwater lakes of its own. The shipping economy on the lake has historically been focused on the lumber industry present in the deep, dense forests north of Lake Huron in Ontario.

The eastern side of the lake is the Georgian Bay, a popular destination for Toronto area residents in the summer months. The bay is created in part by the Bruce Peninsula, home to a popular Canadian national park.

The waters of Lake Huron off the shore of Alpena, Michigan are home to the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary, which was formally designated and opened in 2000 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Most people are not familiar with our 15 national marine sanctuaries – essentially national parks in bodies of water. Most are dedicated to protection and advocacy of aquatic life, others like Thunder Bay also pay honor to maritime economies. Thunder Bay protects an area home to over 100 historical shipwrecks that can be visited in glass-bottomed boat, kayak, or with scuba gear. It is also home to the Great Lakes Maritime Heritage Museum.  

For more things to do along Michigan’s “sunrise coast”, see this article from Midwest Living magazine. As I shared in my post two weeks ago, my daughter and I were lucky to witness daybreak over Lake Huron. It remains a favorite memory of 2023. 

Note: Other than above, credit goes to others for pictures in today’s post.

While I have shared pictures mostly of calm Great Lakes waters, the late fall and early winter each year brings a reminder: The inland seas are dangerous. Since 1979 there are records of over 8,000 boats and thousands of lives lost on the lakes. One of the most recent, famous, and mysterious wrecks was that of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald in the waters of Lake Superior. 

The “Fitz” was, when it launched in 1958, the largest ship on the Great Lakes at 729 feet long. It mostly carried iron ore from mines near Duluth, Minnesota to iron factories in Detroit and Toledo.

The ship left Superior, Wisconsin at 4:30 PM on November 9, 1975 bound eventually for Toledo, Ohio. By late that night, conditions had changed from what had been predicted. A storm turned into a November gale with waves greater than 35 feet high reported and near hurricane force winds. A November gale, also sometimes called the November witch, is caused by low atmospheric pressure over the Great Lakes pulling cold arctic air from Canada and warm air from the south. When these two collide they can create substantial, dangerous wind conditions. 

The Fitzgerald remained  in contact with another ship, the Arthur M. Anderson, once the storm started. The Fitzgerald came in and out on the radar. The afternoon of November 10th, it reported that two vents were damaged and the boat was taking on water, but said both pumps were working. At 7:10 PM Captain Ernest M. McSorley communicated “we are holding our own”. But by 7:15, the Fitzgerald disappeared from the radar and never reappeared. All 29 people on board were lost including 15 from Ohio. The wreckage was eventually found about 17 miles from Whitefish Bay and the Sault Ste. Marie area. 

The cause of the wreck remains unknown. The boat lies 530 feet below the surface making exploration and investigation hard. The most common theories from government agencies and industry organizations: (1) The boat “shoaled” on an underwater mountain range, essentially scraping itself and potentially incurring more damage than the crew was aware of; (2) The boat experienced leaking hatches (doors) from faulty or improperly closed clamps; (3) The boat experienced hatch damage caused by unknown debris. 

The event was memorialized and inscribed into cultural knowledge by Canadian singer Gordon Lightfoot, who was inspired to write his hit “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” after reading a Newsweek magazine article about the shipwreck. After the wreck, new regulations and policies were put in place for Great Lakes ships including mandatory survival suits, increased freeboard (height between water level and deck), depth finders and more frequent inspections.

May we keep the memory of the ship and those lost.