The richly textured fabric of fur trade society provides material for learning and doing at any age. In character as Lisette Duval Harmon, Lynn Noel offers a full suite of educational and interpretive programs for heritage sites and organizations.
As a professional environmental educator and former interpretation director, Lynn works closely with site managers and educators to tailor each event to educational goals and site mission. For each age and interest group, content focuses on an organizing theme of fur trade heritage. Themes mix and match, often on the fly, to support up to a one-week residency of fully bilingual programming and entertainment, tightly integrated with curriculum requirements and interpretive themes. Pre- and post-visit materials are developed with educators upon request.
Show me your beaver teeth! Slap that mosquito! La laine des moutons, c'est nous qui la filaines! Preschoolers and elementary grades sing along in Gaelic, English, French, Ojibwa, and Inuktitut, and act out animal tales from the many cultures of the fur trade.
A great chain of rivers and portages connects every major city in Canada by canoe. Retrace the Voyageurs' Highway as Lisette and Daniel Harmon paddled it in the 1820s, up the Ottawa from Lachine Rapids in Montreal through the Great Lakes to Fort William. Rendezvous with the Athabasca brigades from across the Rockies, and carry a thousand pounds of trade goods across the infamous nine-mile Grand Portage. Lisette divides her greenhorns into hands-on paddling brigades, with a song or a true story for every stop on the map.
Were there really women voyageurs? What was it like to be one? Lisette's biography traces a personal line through historic events, from the discovery of the Pacific and the corporate merger of the fur empires to the coming of the Industrial Revolution and Canadian Confederation. A feminist retelling of the traditional legend of Lac Qu'Appelle grapples with social issues of teen pregnancy, racism, and abortion as documented in Daniel Harmon's journal, while framing the real Lisette's decision to return with her husband to his homeland as the courageous act of a heroic woman.