Along the Shore

Dusty Nelms has spent years researching her family history, amassing a wealth of information about her ancestors. Shown here is Moose Valley School in Hovland, where her grandpa, his siblings and cousins all

attended. | SUBMITTED

Dusty Nelms has been able to collect lots of old family photos. Show here is a photo of Mary Sundquist, Nelms’

great-grandma. | SUBMITTED

Stories, old photos and new connections

The journey of genealogy

HOVLAND—The desire to know and understand where we come from has been part of the human experience for as long as human history. Today, starting the journey into genealogy has never been easier. Dusty Nelms, of Hovland, has spent years researching her family history, witnessing the changes in information and technology over the years and amassing a wealth of information about her ancestors. For Nelms, it was a middle school classroom assignment that sparked her interest in genealogy: the theme was autobiographies, and for the assignment Nelms did research on her family tree. That research was the beginning of a lifelong interest that she has been pursuing ever since.

“Family has always been an important part of my life,” Nelms said. “There is always more to learn, and once you get started it can be hard to stop.”

Nelms’ great-grandparents came over from various countries, with some of her ancestors arriving at the Hovland Dock on the America. Early on, her work involved talking with family members about past stories and collecting hand-written letters. She has also been able to collect family photos, including all four sets of her great-grandparents’ wedding photos.

“I’m really thankful that I saved letters from people who are now gone. And it’s always fun to be able to see pictures since they add so much to the story,” Nelms said.

Now, technology has introduced incredible resources for those wishing to learn about their family history, including sites like familysearch.com, ancestry.com, and the Minnesota Historical Society. Some sites like Ancestry require a subscription, but offer lots of information as well as the ability to meet and connect with others who are researching the same family line. (Nelms said to always verify information found online, as sometimes it can be incorrect.)

Those interested in learning about their family trees, including when certain ancestors moved to a specific area, can also look into state marriage records, land records through county recorder offices, or census records.

“Different census years contain different information,” Nelms said. “Some list occupations, some have whether residents rented or owned their land, some include current ages, and by piecing together different years you can start to paint a clearer picture. Newspaper obituaries are also great if you can get ahold of those, as they will often list the names of siblings and children.” Farming at the Moose Valley school in the Hovland area. | SUBMITTED

To keep track of all of this information, Nelms creates a separate binder for each relative, where she keeps relevant photographs and information learned from various sources. She has also created books for her family members with the information she has collected over the years. No matter one’s preferred organizational method, Nelms recommends that those getting started in genealogy always keep a record of where they learned their information. Sometimes she has found conflicting information from

different people and sources, and keeping records of what you learned and where you learned it can help solve discrepancies.

Perhaps the greatest adventure that Nelms’ journey into genealogy sparked was a real-life journey to Scandinavia. As someone with Swedish and Swedish-Finn ancestry, Nelms had joined the Finlandia Club in Thunder Bay, and in 1987 was the lucky winner of a prize trip to Finland and Sweden. She was able to travel to some of the areas her ancestors came from, including some of the old family farms. Nelms said it was striking how the area bore such a close resemblance to Minnesota.

Her trip was also touched with serendipity: while traveling by train from Stockholm to southern Sweden on Midsummer Eve, Nelms got talking to a woman about how she was traveling to the region of her ancestors. The woman then invited her to a party, and when Nelms announced at the party that she was from Minnesota, she ended up meeting a distant relative.

“I met the grandkids of my great-grandpa’s brother,” Nelms said. “They were strangers, but when they found out who I was they just took me in and showed me around. They showed me the farm where my great-grandpa was born—back then, the oldest son in the family inherited the farm. My great-grandpa was a younger brother which is why he moved away, and why their branch of the family was still in the area. The fact that these relatives just welcomed me and took me in was so kind.”

Through all that she has learned and the changes that technology has brought to genealogy research, Nelms said that the best way to get started in genealogy remains the same: talk to your older family members. Werner Sundquist, Nelms’ great-grandpa, is shown here logging. | SUBMITTED

“If you have living parents or grandparents, try to talk to them and get their stories,” Nelms said. “See what they did, what their living conditions were like, and start to collect their memories. It’s so important to talk to the relatives that you can, while you can.”—Rae Poynter

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Two polar bear cubs and their mother along the Beaufort Sea at Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The cubs are born in snow-hidden dens dug in the fall by the mother where she gives birth and nurses them, staying up to eight

months before emerging in the spring. | SUSANNE MILLER/USFWS

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Polar Bears don’t have white fur

THUNDER BAY—Polar bear cubs are adorably cute. At birth, they only weigh up to 1.5 pounds (.6 kg) and within a few months, have grown to 15-30 pounds (6.8-13.6 kg). Adult males weigh 775 to 1,300 pounds (350-650 kg), and females, 330 to 650 pounds (150290 kg). The height for adult bears is around 3.3 to 5 feet (1-1.5 metres), measured at the shoulder when they are on all fours.

Polar bears—called “Nanuq” in Inuktitut; scientific name Ursus maritimus—are the world’s largest land carnivore. They live on Arctic sea ice and coasts in Norway, Russia, Greenland, The United States (Alaska) and Canada (including the northern edge of Northwestern Ontario).

There’s a fascination with polar bears and seeing them roam wild and free in their natural habitat is an extraordinary experience. A few years ago, I was fortunate to see 21 polar bears while flying in a bush plane along the western Hudson Bay coast while on a tundra-trekking camping trip at the remote sub-arctic 9,093 square-mile Polar Bear Provincial Park in the Hudson Bay Lowlands. During the summer, as the bay’s sea ice melts, several hundred polar bears travel to the coastal areas in the Hudson Bay Lowlands. We saw a mother and two cubs feeding by a small lake; another bear was standing alone on a sandbar, and others walked the tundra, roamed the coastline or splashed along the bay’s shoreline.

About two-thirds of the world’s polar bear population live in Canada, including 13 of the 19 sub-species.

With home ranges that exceed 370,000 miles, they can travel more than 1,800 miles per month. The Polar Bear Capital of the World is recognized as Churchill, Manitoba on the shores of Hudson Bay.

Though famous for their white fur coats, did you know that their fur is actually not white and their skin is black? Their fur is transparent with a hollow core that reflects and refracts light from the sun and off the snow, making it appear white. Heat from the sun is scattered down the hair shaft and is absorbed by their black skin. Polar bears have two layers of fur and solid body fat up to 4-5 inches thick.

Polar bears are classified as a marine mammal as they spend more time on ice than on land and can live 25-30 years in the wild and 38 years (average) in captivity. Strong swimmers, they can paddle at an average speed of six miles per hour; swim sprint up to 30 miles per hour; dive to depths up to 15 feet; and, hold their breath underwater for more than two minutes. On land, they walk at speeds up to three miles per hour. Their paws are huge, measuring up to 12 inches in diameter and have small bumps (papillae) on their footpads to help grip the ice and keep from slipping.

Unlike other bear species like the black bear and grizzlies, polar bears do not hibernate. The exception are female bears during pregnancy when she digs a den and gives birth to her cubs (often twins). They then stay sealed in the den up to eight months until the cubs can survive outdoors; during that time she doesn’t eat, surviving off her body’s storage of fat.

Polar bears rely on blubber (marine fat), primarily from fat-rich seals which they hunt from the sea ice and can eat over 100 pounds of blubber at one time. Polar bears depend on sea ice for their existence, but due to climate change warming, the sea ice is forming later and melting earlier, resulting in bears having to search for other food to survive (e.g. reindeer, eggs of snow geese, rodents, even seaweed).

If seeing the polar bears in the wild isn’t an option, in Ontario you can view them in a habitat as close to wild as possible. It’s at the Cochrane Polar Bear Habitat (CPBH) in Cochrane, Ontario (8-hour drive northeast of Thunder Bay), the world’s only captive bear facility dedicated solely to polar bears. CPBH’s current three resident polar bears— Ganuk, Henry and Inukshuk—have access to several enclosures with trees, rocks, natural vegetation and a swimming pool (visitors can watch them swim through a clear partition at the visitor’s centre).

Polar bears have become the iconic symbol for climate change. And each year on February 27, the International Polar Bear Day raises awareness of the impact of global warming and reduced sea ice on polar bears. The annual event was created by the Polar Bear International (PBI), a group of conservationists, scientists and volunteers with a mission to “conserve polar bears and the sea ice they live on.”—Elle Andra-Warner

March madness

The season of the dancing hares

TWO HARBORS—When you think of winter animals across the north country, you might envision chickadees, wolves, deer or even some boreal bird species that show up here in winter, only to migrate back north come spring. But few species are more iconic or better adapted to our long, snowy winters than the snowshoe hare.

If the name “snowshoe” isn’t enough to make you think winter, consider the fact these hares completely replace their summer brown pelage with white fur—the perfect camouflage to help them blend into a snowy landscape. Although their feet remain white year-round, starting in fall, white hairs gradually replace brown ones over the course of about 10 weeks. In spring, the process reverses.

Snowshoe hares also have large hind feet lined with stiff hairs that act like snowshoes, helping them move across snow without sinking. This helps them navigate the coniferous forests they frequent and to outrun predators, such as bobcats, lynx, coyotes, wolves and foxes.

But even though snowshoes are “winter’s animal,” even hares go a little stir crazy by the end of a long winter. This leads to one of the most entertaining spectacles in our Northern Wilds. Around March, male hares (called bucks) begin to feel their oats and make advances toward females (does).

But does don’t simply swoon and fall for their prospective mates. Instead, they stand up and fight! The female rears up on her hind feet and boxes with the male. Both combatants stand erect and bat forefeet with each other. They chase each other around, looking for an advantageous place to duke it out. If things get really heated, one may even leap in the air and land on top of the other. Fur flies and tracks pockmark the snowy dance floor. The male may take a real drubbing, because females are slightly larger. But if he backs down, he has no chance of getting what he wants.

But why do hares do this? It’s not known for certain why female hares act this way (and this behavior is not unique to snowshoes; other hare species “box” as well). For one thing, the female is likely not yet ready to breed and she’s fighting off the male’s advances. But also, it seems she may simply be testing him to learn his degree of fitness and see if he is a worthy mate. The fact that sometimes mating occurs after these fights lends credence to that theory. It’s likely a little bit of both.

This behavior is interesting because often males fight other males for the right to breed and the winner gets the spoils. But with hares, the female gets the final say. Hmm, seems like another species I know.

Another interesting fact is that female

Snowshoe hares completely replace their summer brown pelage with white fur—the perfect camouflage to help them blend into a snowy landscape.

| DAVID JOHNSON

hares are induced ovulators, which means they start ovulating when they have sex, which pretty much guarantees they are impregnated. They give birth about 35 days after copulation. A typical litter is two to four “leverets,” although sometimes does give birth to as many as eight. The leverets are born fully furred and with their eyes open. In contrast, rabbits are born with their eyes shut and without fur. Hares typically have two to three litters a year, and males attempt to mate with females immediately after giving birth. The young leverets are on their own after just a month.

So, if cabin fever is making you feel “mad as a March hare,” know you’re not alone. It might be time to get outside. Just try not to throw any punches.—Joe Shead

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From Aleppo with love

THUNDER BAY—Thunder Bay is a far cry from Aleppo, Syria. The Royal Aleppo Food restaurant, operating in takeout mode due to COVID-19, is nonetheless a bit of the Middle East in northwestern Ontario. In the cozy space of the restaurant are stories of flight from war, survival and making one’s way in a new land. Nothing is as it was for 24-year-old Aya Wadi, her 6-year-old brother Alaa, their father Khaled Wadi and mother Duha Shaar.

“I wanted to be an interior designer,” Aya says as she relays a dinner order to her mother, the restaurant’s main chef. “I used to draw all the time. Not much, now...”

“My mother was a seamstress,” she adds as she helps wrap the order for a waiting customer. Her father Khaled is not evident at the moment, as he is out doing the shopping for the restaurant.

The city of Thunder Bay is also a far cry from the Middle East, especially from the Wadi family’s experience in a refugee camp in Istanbul, Turkey, where they lived for three years.

“We worked while we were there,” Aya explains. “We did not take any aid, but we were not welcome in the country. It was the worst three years of my life.”

Eventually, most members of the family made it to Canada in 2017, only to encounter a seasonal challenge: A Thunder Bay winter. In an unhappy way, this was nothing new for them.

“We didn’t have adequate winter clothing when we came here, “Aya remembers. “But life conditions were getting harder and harder in Aleppo. It was a struggle in winter to keep warm.”

Just then, another customer comes in to place an order. “I liked your Facebook page,” she exclaims, as she and Aya read over the whiteboard menu that covers a sizable portion of the interior wall. The illustrated menu board shows such now-familiar Middle Eastern meals as shawarmas and donairs, featuring thinly-sliced meat roasting fragrantly on a vertical rotisserie against the back wall, and mezze (appetizers) or rice platters. The customer agrees to a shawarma and adds, at Aya’s suggestion, a package of special Middle Eastern desserts.

Grateful to be able to start life over, the family cast about to find work. Mother and daughter participated in the local Roots to Harvest Cultural Kitchen program in 2018, a move that was to have far-reaching results. Firstly, Duha Shaar’s cooking skills came to the fore, and secondly, one of their recipes from home was chosen to be included in the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) e-cookbook, Tastes from Home.

Encouraged that food service might be a way to make a living, the family created the Royal Aleppo Food catering business. As catering proved to be too much effort for the return, the Wadi family purchased the popular Toubadji family Damascus Donair restaurant on St. Paul Street in early 2020. Royal Aleppo Food restaurant was born, and took off like a rocket as many Lakeheaders had developed a taste for Middle Eastern cuisine. And then suddenly, COVID-19 hit.

Duhar Shaar (left) and daughter Aya Wadi, of Royal Aleppo Food in

Thunder Bay. | PETER FERGUS-MOORE

“It is important to keep everyone safe,” Aya says, gesturing to the drastically altered restaurant interior. A line of tables leading from the front door restricts customer access, but allows the Wadis to take orders and deliver the finished meals, while protected by large Plexiglas screens.

“The name of our restaurant comes from our home city. My mom wanted to honour that,” Aya says with a smile.

The recent publicity from the UNHCR cookbook has helped boost interest and business from local people; the family are very grateful for the manifest community support from fellow Lakeheaders. Besides the joy of sharing their cultural culinary heritage, the Wadis have an additional mission in mind.

“My brother Mohammed is in Germany right now,” Aya explains. “He designed our logo. We want to bring him to Canada and reunite with him. We will sponsor him. That is one of the main reasons for the Royal Aleppo.”

It is fair to say that every order at the Royal Aleppo Food brings the possibility of family reunification a little bit closer.

For more information on Royal Aleppo Food, visit: royal-aleppo-food.square.site. To view the UNHCR e-cookbook, visit: bit.ly/ unhcrcookbook.—Peter Fergus-Moore

A Loan A Loan in the Woods in the Woods

Boundary Waters Quota Permits for the 2021 season

DULUTH—The Superior National Forest has updated the quota permit issuance process for Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) for the 2021 season. To prevent the spread of COVID-19, the USDA Forest Service will offer alternatives to issuing permits in-person and will conduct a “virtual” Leave No Trace (LNT) education program.

Last season saw unprecedented visitation to the BWCAW and along with that an unacceptably high amount of resource damage, including cutting of live trees, human waste not being properly disposed, trash left in campfire rings, disruptive and oversized groups, and campfires left unattended.

To ensure visitors new to wilderness understand and follow BWCAW regulations and Leave No Trace Principles, we have adopted new methods of delivering this information. It takes a commitment from everyone visiting these treasured lands to ensure that the lakes, waterways and forests of the BWCAW are protected against resource damage, so the wilderness character is preserved for future generations.

All permit holders are required to watch three LNT education videos and review the BWCAW Regulations and Rules prior to receiving their permit. Permit holders are required to watch Part 1 and Part 2 of the series prior to the final step to securing their permit. Video links are emailed to permit holders at the time of reservation and two weeks prior to their entry date. An additional resource to plan for a successful trip is the BWCAW Trip Planning Guide.

Check the Cooperators tab online (recreation.gov/permits/233396) before securing a permit to see which issue stations are issuing permits in-person or virtually. Permit holders who select a cooperator issuing permits in-person will be required to watch the final LNT education video and review the BWCAW Regulations and Rules prior to receiving their permit. Permit holders with permits listed at issue stations operating virtually will be e-mailed their permit by the Forest Service after completing required virtual LNT education online. If a permit holder does not have access to the internet, they must call the Forest Service to complete the LNT education requirement.

More information about the virtual Leave No Trace program will be available prior to the BWCAW on-sale.

BWCAW quota permit reservations for the 2021 season are available on Wednesday, January 27. Visitors are encouraged to book their reservations for May 1 through September 30 online (recreation.gov) or by calling 1-877-444-6777.

For more information on travel in this area and all visitor updates, visit: fs.usda.gov/superior.

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