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Bluewater & Whitewater Music • Sense of Place in Song and Story

FROM THE AUDIENCE

"I have always been impressed with your ability to make history come alive through the characters you researched and recreated, and your ability to develop a script which connected the audience with universal themes through the eyes of one character." (Anne Burzynski, Canadian Parks Service)

On Being a Voyageur

2006 marks the 18th year that I have reenacted the life and times of Lisette and Daniel Harmon, What keeps me with her all these years? A great story.

The Harmon family's Cree, French, and Yankee heritage tells a compelling story that brings to life a less stereotyped and much richer account of the multicultural height of fur trade society, at a time when most of the boundaries of North America were still being drawn. Lisette's own story weaves continental themes of economic and political history into the intensely personal decision she made to return with her husband and their two children to his homeland, and to forever forsake her own.

The voyageur symbolizes adventure, travel, exploration and discovery. Lisette's life spanned the continent from the Canadian Rockies to Vermont and Montreal. Her enduring values of the voyageur's strong esprit de corps blend a respectful love of wilderness and freedom with the camaraderie of campfire, song, and paddle. Lisette Duval was a true voyageur, and I am proud to walk in her moccasins.

Lisette's Journey

Living history of Lisette Laval Harmon, NorthWest Company fur trader (1791-1862) Paddle three thousand miles an hour, from British Columbia to the Northeast Kingdom in 1823, with NorthWest Company "country wife" Lisette Laval (Duval) Harmon, who raised her family in Vermont until 1843.

Participatory fur trade music is rich in the rhythms of paddling songs, the infectious joie de vivre of campfire dance tunes, and the haunting laments for lost love. The audience becomes a voyageur brigade retracing Daniel Harmon's 1800 journey to the western rendezvous from Lake Superior to Fraser Lake in the Rockies, and reliving Lisette's stark choices and her reasons for voyaging to Vermont in 1816. The rivers of the voyageur know no boundaries, and Lisette's journeys cross the boundary waters again and again as her parentage, marriage, and family crossed boundaries of language, race and politics. Her songs and tales become paddles for the mind's canoe.

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FROM THE AUDIENCE

On Being a Voyageur

Lisette's Journey