The Quetico

Quetico.  Say it like Quebec and calico.  Mysterious and intriguing word. inclusive word. the quetico is in ontario, itself the huron word for "great lake".  Quetico.  Like Quetzcoatl.  Like Ojibwe.  it is for Quebec, which is from the Ojibwe, which is from the algonquin.  It is for the old QUEbec TImber COmpany.  Composite word. Pieced together word. the thing about the word, however, is that there has never been a quebec timber company. it might come from the French voyagers. some extreme bastard cousin of "quête de la côte". search for the coast. certainly feels true when you're lost up there. and then it might be ojibwe after all but theres no one left knows the language well enough to say. it might mean a great spirit that inhabits places of beauty. quetico, also, might mean something else, something immense and significant. it might be another world for Turtle island. it might mean the world. you can be in a state of quetico. people say that. that might be it too. quetico might mean legend and it even might mean hypertext.

The Quetico is a big chunk of protected lake land in Ontario.  It is over 600 lakes and rivers and these little paths between that are seriously ancient.  Animal history and geography conspired in the Quetico to produce a natural transportation network.  Long before Lewis and Clark, Europeans were penetrating the inner reaches of the continent in birch bark canoes and long before the ojibwe that the europeans fought and traded with there were algonquin-speaking people here. for as long as the quetico has existed it has been continously occupied.

so quetico is from everyone. it's "new/old". it has many namers. anyone who has walked one of its portages or gazed into one of its campfires is a namer and a founder.