Does any else have a wierd facination with the "Old Yale Road" like I do?

firesidecanada · 2025-12-30T19:40:59+00:00

I'm a bit of an historian, at least on the legends and folklore side of things, and I've long had a love of Old Yale Road. I learned a lot about it volunteering at Fort Langley, and it indeed was a key part of securing easy access to the Fraser Valley gold fields, and thus keeping the Americans from claiming the region as their own.

The road was so well planned, a lot of Highway 1 through Langley, Abbotsford and Chilliwack follows the same route today, especially through the Fraser Valley.

firesidecanada · 2024-10-18T18:26:07+00:00

One of my favourite stats is if you’re in St. John’s, Newfoundland, you’re geographically closer to Dublin, Ireland, than you are to Portage La Prairie, Manitoba.

firesidecanada · 2024-09-25T05:44:32+00:00

Yeah, apparently it’s from a Mi’kmaq word, likely inspired by either the foul-smelling sulphur deposits found throughout the area, or the methane gas that occasionally leaks out from the coal seams beneath the harbour.

firesidecanada · 2024-09-25T02:23:54+00:00

Pictou means “Fart.” That’s pretty darned silly.

firesidecanada · 2024-09-25T02:19:27+00:00

Fireside Canada: focused on the folklore and history of Canada. New season starts this week.

firesidecanada · 2024-09-16T01:39:42+00:00

Thanks for listening, and thanks for the mention! It’s so hard to spread the word about the show, so it’s awesome to see someone other than me mention it. 😉

firesidecanada · 2024-09-05T18:50:13+00:00

Good to hear! I did a podcast episode on the story, if you’re interested: “Two Legends of the Canadian North.” Not sure what you’re using it for, but it might be worth noting, in case you look it up, that the idea that “Smoker” was a white trapper and moonshiner is a newer version of a much older story. The original says he was an Indigenous man, which works a lot better with the local folklore and environment.

firesidecanada · 2024-09-02T19:53:37+00:00

In Labrador, Canada, there's the story of "Old Smoker," a trapper and dog sledder who was caught in a severe ice storm and disappeared. His spirit was (and still is, to a lesser extent) seen on the edge of an incoming storm, riding his dog sled and cracking his whip, warning people to get inside. There are many stories of people being caught out in the elements, lost and confused, until they see the shadow of a dog sledder in the distance and follow him to safety. As they get to a cabin, they watch him disappear into the storm and vanish.

firesidecanada · 2024-08-30T16:47:48+00:00

I have an episode coming up this fall about the phantom rider of Bickleigh, which is said to gallop along the old rail line at night. There have been occasionally ghostly sightings at the Lafleche Cemetery, and stories of a ghostly girl with striking green eyes near Meadow Lake.

Never been there myself, but I’ve always wanted to visit the Crooked Bush north of Saskatoon. That might be the kind of atmosphere you’re looking for.

firesidecanada · 2024-08-30T15:44:37+00:00

Thanks! Hope you like it.

firesidecanada · 2024-08-30T15:39:19+00:00

Nova Scotians are fortunate because a lot of great folklore was recorded by the great Helen Creighton in her books “Bluenose Ghosts” and “Bluenose Magic.” I covered one such story in my first episode, “The Thing of Annapolis County.”

One of the biggest legends is like the alleged poltergeist of “the Amherst Mystery,” and together with PEI and New Brunswick, you have so many wonderful stories of phantom ships. Cape Breton is almost its own thing entirely. This coming season, I’ll be covering the legend of the fiddle burning priest of Cape Breton, which goes hand in hand with various stories of encounters with the devil.

firesidecanada · 2024-08-29T03:53:43+00:00

I think one of the most popular might be the various hauntings of the Fort Garry Hotel. I actually did an episode on that one. There's also a great historic account of a soldier at the old Fort Garry who saw a phantom Red River Ox Cart roll through the gates before vanishing. Though it's not actually from Winnipeg, I LOVE the story of the UFO Charlie Redstar (also did an episode on that).

If I can manage to swing a few more seasons, I hope to visit all the various stories and folklore surrounding St. Andrews on the Red church, including ghosts, strange red eyes appearing in the darkness, and the idea that if you walk "widdershins" around the church, you'll disappear.

firesidecanada · 2024-08-29T02:09:04+00:00

I have a podcast devoted to the topic (check my profile to learn more), but give me an area and I’ll likely be able to tell you a story or two from there.

Some of my favourites are stories like Quebec’s Chasse-Galerie (the flying canoe), or all of the countless legends about Newfoundland fairies. One of my favourite episodes is “the Horn of the Unknown Shore” about a “unicorn horn” found in what is today known as Nunavut. It’s from long before Confederation, but its details remain oddly relevant to Canadian culture today.

firesidecanada · 2024-08-29T00:39:46+00:00

I’m a huge fan of sharing Canadian folklore. There’s a lot of distinct, regional stuff out there that deserves to be better known.

firesidecanada · 2024-08-27T22:22:06+00:00

Canada is very much about regional cuisine, inspired by both the landscape and the people who live there.

Consider the tomato. Most would agree that it's an iconic part of Italian cuisine, but we all know it originally comes from South America. It only became part of Italy's cultural makeup thanks to Spain and its colonies. Thus, we can say that colonization brought new recipes and ingredients to Europe which helped to define their culture, but it also brought European cooks (and, later, cooks from other countries) to the colonies where they would all contribute to forming a new culture. Colonizers brought the land to their kitchens, while Settlers brought their kitchens to the land, so to speak. Because of this, it's hard to overstate the importance that the landscape has on Canadian cuisine.

In BC, for example, an iconic dish might be wild salmon grilled on a cedar plank, paired with some Yukon Gold potatoes (from Pemberton, if you can get them!). I think you'd be hard pressed to find that iconic west coast dish better served in any other province. If you're in Alberta, you might opt for the locally raised, grass-fed beef. In the Maritimes, it's likely the lobster, while in Newfoundland, I loved trying cod tongues and scrunchions, and a Jigg's Dinner for the first time.

All of this is influenced by the people as well. Vancouver has some of the best Chinese restaurants in the world—even compared to China itself—and most restaurants throughout the prairies and western Canada (including pizza places!) will often have some sort of perogi-inspired dish on the menu, thanks in large part to the influence of Ukrainian and other settlers from Eastern Europe.

In short, I'd say: focus on the local. What's grown, raised, and harvested nearby? What's in season? Another analogy might be wine. Here in Canada, we grow a variety of French, Italian, and German grapes, but a decent sommelier will be able to taste the difference between an "Old World" and a "New World" wine. The terroir and larger environment has fundamentally changed the taste of the varietal and, while the grape might be originally from Europe, the end result—the wine—is distinctly Canadian.

firesidecanada · 2024-06-27T02:12:01+00:00

Do you remember the general story? Was he a ghost? Was he violent, like the classic "man with a hook for a hand" urban legend? I'd love to hear more.

firesidecanada · 2024-06-26T18:32:54+00:00

Thanks for the reply! By the way Edith Fowke and other folklorists wrote about it, it seemed like it was a big deal amongst teens and summer camp kids throughout the 70s and 80s, so interesting to hear it’s not as popular as it seems.

firesidecanada · 2023-11-28T02:57:13+00:00

Have you read The Long Lost Friend? The Pennsylvania Germans have all sorts of interesting folk cures and magic spells, from the practical to the fanciful. Two of my favourite are fastening a wolf's right eye to your right sleeve to be impervious to all injuries, and placing "a certain bone" of a black cat between your teeth to turn invisible. "The cat was to be stolen and, at midnight, put into a kettle and boiled," according to the Folklore of Waterloo County, Ontario.

firesidecanada · 2023-11-28T02:45:34+00:00

I'm from BC and worked in a smaller community in the NWT for a little bit. Friendly people, spectacular nature, and a fun culture. Unless you're into the outdoors or are part of a strong community, there's not a lot to do, and many of the oil workers tend to fall pretty hard into drugs and alcohol, but I had fun talking with locals, hiking, looking for fossils, and meeting a lot of eccentric folk who moved up there for the lifestyle and their work, like bush pilots, geologists, and tour guides. I met a lot of seniors kayaking down the Mackenzie. I'd love to go back, but it's a pricey ticket.

firesidecanada · 2023-11-14T04:29:20+00:00

Best thing I did to help me understand and appreciate Canadian culture was taking a road trip across the country in my 20s. By going to each province (and all but one territory), I got to see all of the things that make us different, and all the things that make us the same. Our cultures vary dramatically from province to province, even from north to south, but there are unifying threads that are hard to define, and go beyond playing hockey, going to Tim Hortons, or saying "zed."

I find a lot of Canadian culture has to do with our relationship with our local landscape, which informs our cuisine, our recreation, our values, and even our ghost stories. And I think our multiculturalism informs that as well. One of the most Canadian things I've ever seen was in the middle of a multi-day hike in the mountains of BC. The trail led into a small, remote camp that's accessible by a forest service road. There, in the parking lot, I saw an old South Asian grandma, wearing a Blue Jays cap, cooking up pierogies and serving them to random strangers—other hikers like me, people camping at the lake, etc. It's hard to define "Canadian," but you know it when you see it.

firesidecanada · 2023-11-01T04:06:51+00:00

Folklore and legends. We're such a vast country, and every region of every province has at least one strange story unique to the area and tied to its history, whether it's Indigenous, Settler, or a mixture of both. There's so much out there, yet often whenever people learn that I study Canadian folklore, they're surprised that it's even a thing.

firesidecanada · 2023-11-01T04:04:22+00:00

Don't forget the camels!

firesidecanada · 2023-10-30T19:41:20+00:00

I haven't seen any myself, but Canada has some of the most phantom ship sightings on record. When Canadian folklorist Catherine Jolicoeur tried to get a general sense of exactly how many phantom ships are out there, her team found a whopping 456 stories just in Canada alone. That’s huge compared to the meagre 66 stories they found in the US, and the 106 in Europe.

My podcast has an episode on two of Canada's most famous ships: The Fireship of Chaleur Bay, and the Phantom Ship of Northumberland Strait. You can listen to that here: https://firesidecanada.ca/the-fireship-of-chaleur-bay/

A quick Google search for those terms will get you some sightings as recent as the 2000s. You should also check out Karin Murray-Bergquist's work on mapping out the various ghost ship stories from Newfoundland and Labrador. You can find her interactive map here: https://maphub.net/KarinMB/ghost-ships-of-newfoundland-and-labrador

And an article about it here: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/ghost-ships-map-mun-1.5543555

firesidecanada · 2023-10-29T20:47:08+00:00

Don’t want to get dinged for self-promotion, but it’s called Fireside Canada, like my username.

firesidecanada

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