I first met Joe Seliga in 1972 and for the next thirty-some years kept in touch by stopping to visit whenever I passed through Ely. I think it was two years before Joe died I visited at the wishes of a conservation group to interview him on his environmental ethics. I think that is how it was put. I was skeptical that environmentalists could understand Joe’s ethic because it was so simple and down to earth.

Stories came easily to Joe. I mentioned the mission I was on and he smiled. Then he began “In the old days we’d take snowmobiles in search of fishing spots - you could go nearly anywhere. There’s this beautiful stand of cedar”, he continued, “In it was said to be the largest white cedar in the world. It’s 21 feet in circumference – oh, my, how I would love to bring some of those trees home with me. ‘Course I’d have to have a helicopter to get them out”, he joked.

Did he know this would not be considered “environmental” by conservationists? Joe was a simple man, but I think he was more complex than he came across. Was driving a snowmobile across unspoiled wilderness really less “environmental” than driving an SUV across a crowded city to a Sierra Club meeting? In his work he consumed many a cedar tree. Was using the natural resources less “environmental” than consuming all the paper our urban lifestyles demand? As for the cedar, “it’s the best use they could be put to”, he advised.

The stories flowed fast. Joe’s memory was keen. To be honest, I’d thought he had forgotten completely my stated mission. Many stories centered on fishing. One involved Joe instructing his son Richard, then only about four or five, on how to land an eight pound Northern. “It must have been nearly as long as him,” he said. Though he normally didn’t keep Northerns, this one they brought home. “They’re not bad eating,” he admitted, better than Bass.” Having grown up on Bass, myself, I protested a bit then got to the heart of what bothered Joe so much about Bass. “Small Mouth are not native to the area,” he insisted. “They’ve chased the Walleye out of some lakes.” I remember,” he went on, “seeing Sig Olson and the DNR with 15 gallon pails of Bass fry stocking Burntside Lake.”

So, Joe hadn’t forgotten the mission after all. “I knew Sig Olson”, he continued, “he lived right up the street and was my high school biology teacher. There were a lot of things I agreed with Sig on, but some I didn’t.” Clearly Joe did have an environmental ethic. It wasn’t a stock ethic taken from some environmental handbook, rather, one forged from many years of enjoying the wilderness.

From Joe’s point of view the wilderness was to be used. He didn’t apologize for taking needed trees to build canoes or heat his work shop. Yet, another of his stories began with his wife Nora, a black bear, a canoe trip and flowed into a situation where he was to reprimand a group of teenagers for needlessly chopping down some trees along a lake. All of these stories, I realized, though covering many of his many years and a variety of people and events all had some element of what Joe considered his environmental ethic.

These views were practical, stemming from his every-day life and of course they changed just as so many things changed over Joe’s ninety plus years of life. .”They should have left one motorized portage into Basswood,” he said, after a thoughtful moment. “There is one now, but you have to have a permit. You even need a permit to pick blueberries”, he continued “Don’t quote me on this, but it seems you need a permit to do anything any more”, he mused. “Of course I can see it now”, Joe acknowledged. “So many people come here. You have to put on restrictions to preserve what’s here. Yeah,” he added, “I got the best of it – before everyone else knew about the area.”

Remembering Joe Seliga

By Joe Smith - Property Manager

Joe Smith shared this story at the memorial service for Joe Seliga on August 19, 2006

I first learned of Seliga canoes when I was a camper at Widjiwagan in 1968. I remember a very excited counselor showing off her new canoe that she had bought and by the crowd of staff the canoe attracted it was obvious that a Seliga canoe was special. During the following years as a camper at Widjiwagan I learned to appreciate wood canvas canoes by taking ever longer trips in them. That’s how the Widji program works – each year that you come back means a longer trip further north. Seliga canoes have carried Widji campers just about everywhere from here in the Boundary Waters to North of the Arctic Circle. I learned that a journey in a wood canvas canoe carried values of beauty not experienced when using an aluminum canoe. So as a staff in 1974 I was glad to be invited to go to Seliga’s one evening after supper to pick up some canoe ribs we needed for repairs. I really wanted to see what the factory was like and was impressed that they were so busy at the Seliga Factory that they would be open in the evening. I figured they must work two shifts.

Part of the magic of Joe Seliga is that he was so different from what most of us learn to expect about how people are, and how and why people build things. I came expecting a factory and a foreman with little time for us and found a man in a one car garage motivated by pure love of what he was doing and truly interested in us and where we traveled and the beauty we saw. Beauty we experienced while canoeing was our common ground that made us friends. He told me nothing was more beautiful than Burntside Lake when it sparkled and I remember that because I hadn’t heard a lot of men express feelings of beauty.

As I got to know Joe better, I learned that for Joe, there could be numerous items at the top of his “most beautiful” list – Nora, White pines, blueberries, friends, family, walleyes and trout, good wood to work with, a canoe. Somehow, Joe never lost the wonder of discovery usually only found in the very young. As a man in his nineties he could hold a piece of cedar and exclaim how good it was, with an enthusiasm usually shown when experiencing something for the first time. I remember him being fired up once because the carrots in his garden were especially good that year and was it something to see how Nora had to really tug at them to get them out of the ground.

Joe Seliga was a beautiful person. Beauty is a real thing that goes beyond and encompasses more than pretty, or fashionable, or attractive. Beauty has spirit. Beauty can be hard to realize for a lot of people. When we find it, it is precious. That is why so many were drawn to Joe. When I first met Joe at his shop, I realized the beauty of Joe and building canoes in the one car garage. I wasn’t even a woodworker, but I asked, as so many did, “Could you use a helper?” The answer was a smile, and “no I’ve already got the best helper” - that was Nora’s job. Years later I was in his shop with Jeanne Bourquin, who is a woodworker and canoe builder and has her own shop. She mentioned to Joe that she could spend the rest of her life in his shop. Joe considered this and replied that it would be fine if she did, and with his sense of humor added that if it were to happen he would have to charge her some rent.

I thank you for coming to this event. We are many different people brought together by Joe Seliga. Our common ground is the beauty of this land, of the canoes that Joe built, of Nora and Joe as people. Joe made it easy to realize beauty and that is why so many of us are here. We don’t want to lose that connection with the beauty we found with Joe.

This is what I believe Joe would want to happen during this event.
He would want us to have fun.
He would want us to make new friends
He would want us to share stories
He would want us to appreciate his canoes
He would want us to remember Nora
He would want us to console his family
He would want us to enjoy the food and music.
He would want us to appreciate the beauty that is here for us to discover with the same wonder as he did.
In his humble way, he would want us to learn some lessons of his life and pass them on to others.

Camp Widjiwagan was founded in1929 by a man named Julian Kirby. Joe Seliga was 18 years old at the time and already an experienced canoer and camper. Julian Kirby was a visionary who realized the importance of having a place and a program in the canoe country to help youth grow with experiences not possible in city life. I don’t know if Julian met Joe. However, Joe Seliga would be an example of a person with the values Julian was hoping Widjiwagan could help develop.

Julian expressed the reason for Widjiwagan with the statement – Widjiwagan is the Ojibway word for “comradeship”. We find it easy here, to cultivate comradeship with our Creator, comradeship with other fellows, and comradeship with the best fellow that each of us knows how to be.” As Widjiwagan grew through the years, it became evident that the use of wood canvas canoes helped us in this mission.

It was inevitable that Widjiwagan and Joe Seliga come together. There is so much common ground. In our own ways, Widjiwagan and Joe Seliga have worked towards the same things – using wood canvas canoes and helping people become better people.

Because we value our wood canoes so highly for what they are and what they help us do for youth, Camp Widjiwagan has built a large shop and hired two persons, Jim Schwartz and Gloria Erickson, for the maintenance of our wood canvas canoe fleet with help from the Nora and Joe Seliga endowment fund. Now at Widji, we have books to guide us on how to work on canoes. We have received a lot of training from Joe and other canoe builders. In contrast, Joe was self taught. He worked with Nora in his small shop when he could find time. He did not earn his living building canoes. He became a master canoe builder on his own.

Then there is the part of Widjiwagan about helping people become better people. Seliga canoes help us do this. Widjiwagan sends hundreds of youth out on wilderness adventure trips each summer and provides environmental education and team building for over a thousand kids each school year. We spend a lot of time and money training our staff to work effectively. We work with goals and a strategy. What Widji tries so hard to do, Joe just did.

8/30/2005   As August winds down, Joe takes time away from his garage to come and visit us at Piragis.  This is the time of sweet corn, barbecue dinners and some of the best days to find yourself in a canoe.  What a beauty this red one is that Joe made a few years ago.  I recall a couple of summers ago after making up a batch of "fresh peach BBQ sauce" I grabbed some left over venison BBQ and Joe and I drove out to Steve Piragis' home for an impromptu lunch with the first fruits of fresh sweet corn and Steve's famous pickles as the main course.  Joe had made "sloppy joes" for his dinner the night before and was struck with the difference between homemade and canned sauce.  As we joked and talked and ate our fill, I remember looking over to catch Joe looking at me with a big grin on his face... corn juice and butter gracing both of our smiles.  Joe's summer smile warms the heart and it was good to see him today.  I think I'll have sweet corn for dinner and ride my bike over to Joe's workshop tonight and return the visit.

To fully understand the lore of Seliga canoes, one should know a little about "Charlie Guides." What's a Charlie Guide? Technically, they are men and women who work as canoe trip counselors for Charles L. Sommers Wilderness Canoe Base, run by the Boy Scouts of America and located 22 miles east of Ely, Minnesota. Charles Sommers was a St. Paul, Minnesota businessman and volunteer Scouter who (over his protests) was honored by having the canoe base he supported named after him in 1942. The program started in 1923 as a locally-organized event, but quickly became a regional then national-level opportunity. Scouts and co-ed Explorer and Venturing groups from across the U.S. come to take wilderness trips into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area and Quetico Provincial Park. In the 1970s, satellite bases in Atikokan, Ontario and Bissett, Manitoba were added to expand trip opportunities without further crowding the Boundary Waters. These program’s combined name is Northern Tier High Adventure Programs. All groups have their own adult leadership; the Guides provide expertise in north woods camping and canoe travel as well as safety. Most are college age, but some have been in their 40s and 50s (a range not unlike the French Voyageurs who paddled the same waterways 200 years ago). The Ontario and Manitoba operations are now staffed by Canadian Scouts. Because of an international Scout camp staff exchange program, Scouts of a dozen nations including Japan, Finland, Ireland, and Australia have been Charlie Guides. According to long-time staff member Cory Kolodji, "Charlie Guides are people who enjoy the peace and quiet of the wilderness enough to share it with a bunch of noisy adolescents."

In the early years, typical trips were 10-14 days long. To make one-trip portaging possible, each canoe would have two packs and three people. The canoes had to be large enough to handle this substantial load. Initially, the Scouts used a mixture of canoe models Kennebec, Chestnut, Old Town, Thompson, and Shell Lake. But in 1949, the Scouts discovered Joe Seliga making canoes in his Ely garage. They ordered about a dozen canoes for the next season. Until 1972, they purchased much of Joe's output, 122 canoes in all. His canoes were finally phased out of the operation in 1981. During that era, the Base went from outfitting about 500 to over 3000 Scouts per year. With such rapid growth, aluminum canoes became necessary, but the Guides insisted on Seligas. Why? The glide when empty, the soft sound when paddled, the way they handled headwind, and their balance on the shoulders. A typical crew paddled one Seliga and a couple of Grummans. While the Boy Scouts may have envied the Guides while paddling, they sure didn't at the portages. To protect the canoes (of all kinds) the Scouts are taught to wet-foot at portage landings. With a half-dozen portages or more on a typical day, the canoes absorbed many pounds of water during a summer from wet boots. But the Guides were young and strong; to them this was a progressive workout. All through those 30-plus years, Charlie Guides paddled Joe's canoes tens of thousands of miles and carried them over "many a mile of rough terrain." Traveling with a Seliga seeped into their bones. A vivid memory of Scouts from around the country is of their Guide’s canoe.

Many Guides have also explored beyond the Quetico-Superior. They've paddled Seligas the length of the Mississippi River and to the shores of Hudson's Bay. Inevitably, some of the Guides would traipse into Ely and stop by Joe's garage. His enthusiasm for his canoes and the wilderness surrounding Ely is contagious; Joe remains lifelong friends and, (in some cases,) fishing buddies with many Charlie Guides. No wonder so many of them have bought Seliga canoes many years later.

I purchased my Seliga from Sommers Canoe Base in 1981. It was my second summer working on the staff as a "Charlie Guide" and by then I had learned some of the tradition of the Base and the Quetico-Superior Canoe Country. At the time, I knew only a bit about the history of Joe's canoes; I didn't know the whole story (reaching back to B.N. Morris) nor did I know Joe. As a second-year guide, I had enough seniority to paddle one of the remaining Seligas, if I was willing to put in the time and elbow-grease to sand and repaint it (of course, I was). However, before I had a chance to take it on a trip, I was sent to one of Sommer's satellite bases in Bissett, Manitoba. Because the dark, bog-stained waters of the Gammon and Bloodvein rivers hid many rocks just under the surface, the Seliga, with its canvas skin, stayed behind. The rivers are also full of big, dumb fish--walleyes, northerns, and channel catfish; I was happy and disappointed. At the end of August, I was back in Ely, helping pack away gear for the winter. Each day, a few more of the staff would leave for home. Most were college students who stayed until just before school would start. Then they would sprint home to Ohio, Kansas, or Texas, some driving all night to make their first class. A few people were leaving with Seligas tied on their cars. When I found out that the canoes were for sale, I dismissed the idea assuming that they would be priced beyond my means. When another Guide told me his guess on the price, I was shocked, then ecstatic. Frantically, I ran to see if there were any left. I was told that for anyone else, the price would be $350, but for staff, $175. This amounted to a bit more than two weeks of my summer salary; I borrowed half the price from my mother. (Now that I am a college professor, a new Seliga would cost me about two week's pay). By that time, there were two canoes left. I took number 272 339 because it looked like it was in the best shape. In ten summers of about 5000 miles of use, it had acquired three cracked ribs (one had been repaired), one cracked outwale and several slightly splintered pieces of planking. Later, when I was sanding the canvas, I found a fiberglass patch and (in the right light) I could also see the name “Sunshine” hidden under layers of paint. Over the next few years, I paddled it on a variety lakes and rivers in Minnesota, but (because of trips back to Bissett and my reluctance to take out a wounded canoe), I never used it on a normal Sommers trip.

In 1988, I decided to have the canoe professionally refurbished by a friend, John Beltman. Bob Oliva, another Charlie Guide who had started in 1980, helped me load it on John's truck. It was picked up on a Friday, I was scheduled to take my one canoe trip of that summer on Sunday. As my canoe was being driven away, I asked Bob, "So, can I borrow your Seliga for awhile?" I was a bit surprised and honored when he said yes. Believe me, I took care of that canoe better than my own. Because of Bob, I have been more willing to loan out my canoe (to people who knew what they were doing). For several summers, I loaned my canoe back to the Canoe Base so that a new generation of Charlie Guides could share in the experience of paddling a Seliga. In 2005, I had the canvas replaced, I might hang on to it for awhile.

When I was a Boy Scout many years ago, I took a long trip through the Boundary Waters and northward into the Quetico region of Ontario. Groups of scouts were led by guides who paddled long, graceful wood-and-canvas canoes. Though the rest of us made do with aluminum canoes, we were taught to treat our boats as if they were made of the more fragile canvas. We were exhorted never to let our canoes touch the rocks; so as we approached shore, we jumped into the lake—thigh deep in some cases—lifted the boats from the water, and swung them onto our shoulders. They were heavy-gauge aluminum, but tradition, not common sense, dictated our treatment of them.

The guide for my group weighed little more than his precious wood-and-canvas canoe once it had soaked up several pounds of water in the course of a trip. But he was powerfully built—he was a wrestler for one of the big Midwestern universities, as I recall—and whenever we reached a portage, he threw his pack up onto his back, waded into the lake, shouldered the canoe, and trotted down the trail, carrying everything in one trip.

For several days, we scouts talked of a particular portage we would soon make. It was nearly two miles long, and we viewed each portage as preparation for the portage. Finally the moment arrived.

Our guide, as usual, shouldered his boat, shot down the trail, and soon was out of site. We struggled with our canoes, making sure neither to drag them on the rocks nor hit them on the trees lining the path. After a half-hour we knew we were much nearer exhaustion than the end of the portage. To make matters worse, the trail became wetter and harder to follow. Nothing tests our resolve like the thought that you might be lost. Finally, however, we found our guide. Trudging around a bend, we discovered him mired to his hips in mud and sinking. With a loud curse he lifted the sleek, hand-crafted canoe and sent it sailing from his shoulders. It bounced off a tree, caromed off a rock, rolled, and came to rest in the muck.

Rules, I gathered, are made to be broken.