Just Us Folk

For seven years, singer-songwriter David Newland worked with Adventure Canada acting as a Zodiac driver, performer and host on their trips to the Northwest Passage. On these excursions passengers could get a closer look, and a better understanding, of the land and the people of Canada’s North. It’s from these experiences that David released his album, Northbound, featuring historic and contemporary stories in song. His stage presentation included his band, Uncharted Waters, along with Inuit throat singers Siqiniup Qilauta and Inuit cultural educators Lois Suluk and Johnny Issaluk. David was able to tour his show from coast to coast to coast so that even more Canadians could get an insight into life in the Arctic.

His latest project, In Search of Lost Trees, is an adventure that’s closer to home. In 1990, David was part of a tree planting crew in northwestern Ontario. In the summer of 2023, David and his 10-year-old son, Jasper, and the family dog went looking for the trees he had planted so long ago. They packed everything they needed, including a canoe, into and onto the family car and headed north. What followed was a discovery of not only trees, but of who David was all those years ago. It was also a once-in-a-lifetime bonding experience for father and son.

At this year’s Summerfolk Festival in Owen Sound, David expanded on the backstory to In Search of Lost Trees.

“I was a tree planter for six seasons in the early 90s,” he said. “For bizarre reasons I still had a hand-drawn map of where my first trees were planted.”

The Northumberland Learning Connection commissioned David to present a show related to trees as part of their The Power of Trees program. Needing inspiration to create some songs for the show, David decided it was the right time to retrace his past. He planned a nine-day trip with the hope of not only finding the trees but also writing nine new songs to accompany the handful of songs he already had.

Stops on the trip included David’s hometown of Parry Sound, plus Sudbury, Massey, Sault Ste. Marie, Mitchipicoten Harbour near Wawa and, finally, Thunder Bay. A final stop was a B&B accessible only by canoe on Cheeseman Lake, north of Thunder Bay.

“From there, we were able to plot on Google Earth how we would actually get into the site,” he said.

“From a gravel road to a bush road that most people wouldn’t attempt in any vehicle let alone a Kia Soul, we got to where the road had been washed out by beaver flooding.”

Hiking an additional 45 minutes, David and Jasper came to the location of the “lost trees”.

“Jasper was a really great road trip companion who was up for anything we did,” David said. “He liked quirky things like the snowmobile museum in Cochrane, the train museum in Kirkland Lake and the random details of those northern Ontario towns. They often look like they’ve fallen on hard times but they’re interesting.”

Jasper was also in charge of the merch table at a gig David had on the way up north.

“I don’t know if it meant as much to him to be standing underneath trees I had planted as it did to me, but I think it will one day."

Adding to the emotions of the trip was the fact the summer of 2023 was a time of extreme wildfires.

“We were driving into smoke the whole time, never knowing if the trees would be there,” David said.

So actually, finding the trees David had planted was for him a surreal experience. Instead of being in a clear-cut that used to be a forest, he was in a forest that used to be a clear-cut.

“It was really profound,” he said. “The trees were at least 50 feet tall. They towered over me, and kind of over anything else I’ve done in a way.”

After staying a while with the trees and taking some photos, David and Jasper left a little memento on one of the trees and then made their way out of the forest.

“In the end, the little moment of finding the trees was a small thing in the scope of the big journey of a nine-day trip to northern Ontario and back, along with the memories invoked in the process,” David said.

And it’s those memories that are the basis of In Search of Lost Trees. Using photos, David and Jasper had taken during the trip, plus those from David’s time as a tree planter, you’re given a great visual context to the songs David wrote during the trip.

The premiere of the new show was recorded in Cobourg, ON last November but David hopes a proper studio release will be in the future. At the moment he’s working on a Ph.D. in Canadian Studies at Trent University.

All these months later David has had time to reflect on his trip to northern Ontario and put it all into some perspective.

“As a sensitive tree planter and ecologically-minded person, I believe I had a degree of psychological trauma that was difficult to live with,” he said. “Having spent so much time in the devastation that clear-cuts represent, I understand we need lumber but what is done to the boreal forest is difficult to witness. It’s brutal to look at and to live in. I did that for six seasons. Some measure of that was healed in this journey because I could see something I had done made a difference.”

David feels he’s been somewhat cynical about the process of replanting forests given that it’s part of an industrial cycle.

“The fact of the matter is, the Canadian wilderness is actually a patchwork quilt of trees, and very little of it remains in its primal form,” he said. “But these are still forests, a home for living creatures, and I came to some peace around that. The land is still interesting, and it beckons us. You’re not paddling into a Group of Seven painting but there’s something profound and special still in the northern woods.”

For more on David Newland and In Search Of Lost Trees, go to https://www.davidnewland.com/