“The Phantom Canoe” by W. Victor Cook appeared in The Booklover’s Magazine (January 1905). He had appeared previously here with “The Chateau Mirabelle”. Like that story, “The Phantom Canoe” is a “New Year’s Tale of the Canadian Woods”. Once again Gran’pere Latoche is telling us a strange Northern tale. This time it is of La Chasse Gal’rie.
Louis Latoche and his friend, Poleon Desbarres, agree to leave the apple of their eye, the sweet Mamzelle Henriette Manon, alone for one year. Neither man will see her until New Year’s Eve, when she can decide which she wants to marry. Poleon sails off in a canoe and is never seen again.
A year goes by. Louis has spent the summer plying his trade in a small boat across the Great Lakes. Winter comes and he is staying with his uncle. On New Year’s Eve, a terrible storm comes up but Louis insists on going the ten miles to the Manon house where Henriette might that minute be dancing with Poleon. Louis heads out into the storm but soon gets lost in the snow-fog. He finds a snow bank and digs a snow cave. A fox joins him in the warm confines of the cave.
Louis hears singing coming from the sky. The voice is that of Poleon, which he recognizes. There is a giant canoe up in the sky, full of dead men. It is La Chasse Gal’rie, the phantom canoe that has come all the way from Saskatchewan in one night. The dead man calls down to Louis to join them. The front of the canoe bears a corpse candle that doesn’t even flicker in the wind.
Louis finds himself in the back of the canoe as it flies towards the lights of St. Pierre de Beaupre. Poleon offers him a drink of wine. Louis crosses himself and the wine skin produces nothing. The dead men laugh at him. Soon, they are at the Manon house. Lights and sounds of party can be heard. Poleon tells Louis to stay with the canoe so it won’t float off. He shoves Louis into the canoe, the evil in his hands draining his vitality.
Louis sits awhile until he gets a little strength back. He sticks the canoe in a bush then stumbles to the barn. He is freezing cold. The warm straw revives him and he sneaks to the window of the house, climbing up the wood pile.. Inside he sees Poleon though the revelers can not. Louis’s rival is about to take Henriette’s hand in a dance but Louis knows if the ghost touches her she will die. Louis comes crashing through the window, crying, “Poleon–the canoe!”The revelers welcome Louis to the party as well as the priest, Father Jarreau, in his big fur coat. The ghosts and their canoe have disappeared.
We jump to a time later when Louis and Henriette are safely married. Louis tells the priest what happened to him that night. The clergyman recommends that his wife never hear this tale. Time jumps again and Louis is an old man, the priest long dead. The narrator complains it is too late to get to the heart of the matter, and besides not too many believe in La Chasse Gal’rie anymore.
Algernon Blackwood predated Cook with “A Haunted Island” (Pall Mall Magazine, April 1899) that featured a ghostly canoe carrying two deadly Native warriors. That tale seems a different beast to Cook’s phantom canoe. Perhaps the closest tale in similarity is the “The Phantom Coach” made famous by Amelia B. Edwards in Dickens’ All the Year Round Christmas Number for 1864. In that tale a ghostly coach takes people to Hell. A coach would not be very useful in Old Quebec so a large Voyageur canoe is just the ticket.
