The Dawson Trail, bumpy and largely built of logs, was the first road to connect what is now Winnipeg to eastern Canada.

The cyclists in the Dawson Trek fundraiser, which has started taking registrations, should find their route a lot smoother ride than it was for travellers 155 years ago.

After a years-long effort to restore the Dawson Trail’s memory with 23 installations dotting it from St. Boniface to the Ontario border, the Dawson Trek aims to maintain that history.

“[The Trek is] for people to come out and learn about the history of not only Dawson Trail, but really, the history of Canada ends up along this trail,” said organizer Kyle Waczko.

Pierrette Sherwood put up displays and art installations along the trail with help from other volunteers and the Dawson Trail Museum in Richer, 60 kilometres east of Winnipeg.

“I think this region does well because we have a lot of passion. And when something speaks to your own personal history, and certainly when it speaks to truth and reconciliation, perhaps that’s even more of a push to get it done,” said Sherwood, who is Métis.

Waking dormant history

Her group, the Dawson Trail Arts and Heritage Tour, placed marker number 1 at the landing site near Lake of the Woods, where people transitioned from travelling by water to the overland route.

It is only accessible by boat in the summer, so they rode a snowmobile in –30 C weather to the site in the Northwest Angle, a small part of the U.S. located on the northwest shore of Lake of the Woods.

The remoteness and swampy terrain are why logs had to be used for most of the route when the Dawson Trail road was first built.

Ox-drawn Red River carts, which the Métis made of wood, were the main vehicle on the road. They were notorious for the sound made by their wooden wheels, which weren’t greased to prevent the moving parts from getting filled with dust and dirt.

“It was just this really high-pitched screeching sound, and so many of them would sing along to try to kind of appease the travellers and make it a little bit more bearable,” Sherwood said.

Lady Hariot Dufferin, the wife of Canada’s first Governor General, took the road into Manitoba in 1877 with her husband, Lord Frederick Dufferin.

By then, stagecoaches transported settlers and visitors through the boreal forest and onto the prairie three times per week.

“She did the road once, but she went back another way,” Sherwood said.

“One of the things that fascinated me was the fact that this history was laying dormant, because honestly, it is intimately tied to Manitoba coming into Confederation,” Sherwood said.

The group’s efforts earned them a Governor General’s History Award for excellence in community programming.

The inaugural Dawson Trek had 40 cyclists signed up last July.

Jac Siemens, who started cycling group Mennonites in Tights in Steinbach, was astonished to learn about Mennonite connections to the Dawson Trail and much more when stopping at the displays during the trek.

“This year’s goal will be to stop at more signage and take that in. Plus there’s always that story of the lost gold,” Siemens said.

The story is that a bag of gold was lost in 1870 on its way to pay the military who fought the Métis Red River Resistance led by Louis Riel. While Riel is now recognized as a founder of Manitoba and the province’s honorary first premier, at the time he was considered a rebel whose actions required a forceful response.

“The payroll would have been brought over by a soldier, but as he was coming along the road, he got chased,” Sherwood said, although it’s not clear who did the chasing.

With his horse tiring, the soldier ditched the extra weight.

The legend goes that 25 pounds of gold was buried along the Dawson Trail and never recovered.

The Red River Resistance prompted the Canadian government to hurry the turning of the Dawson Trail into a mostly corduroy road made of logs by 1871.

The road then brought increased migration westward.

“That would change, forever, the face of the West,” Sherwood said.

All cycling abilities

Waczko said cyclists of all abilities wanting to fundraise and maybe spot something shiny along the way can sign up.

The trek will be supported by pilot vehicles, medical help from Victory Training Centre in Steinbach and a repair crew from La Bikequerie in La Broquerie.

Funds raised this year will also help pay for renovations at the Dawson Trail Museum in Richer, a 1910 Catholic church that became a museum in 2014.

“We always used to say without a church in the community, there’s nothing,” said museum president Yvonne Godard. “Now that it’s a museum, it’s still draws in a lot of people, because now we’re having events all the time. So it’s still a community place.”

Cyclists will leave in pelotons based on their experience and speed, with the goal of reaching the museum at the same time.

Those wanting to go the full distance will then continue to a marker in the forest 15 kilometres east of Richer.