Tom Jensen, in front paddling and portaging, and his partner Steven Orr will arrive at the Grand Portage Rendezvous Days celebration after completing a canoe trip of more than 300 miles that covers trails and waters once taken by the original voyageurs. The two are volunteers for the Dive Pirates Foundation that raises money for wounded veterans.
Shades of Blackbeard, ring the warning bells and hide the children, two swashbuckling pirates will arrive by canoe in Grand Portage on August 9, just in time to participate in the Grand Portage Rendezvous Days celebration.
But it won’t be mayhem and madness they bring, just hope for wounded veterans.
Tom Jessen, 57, and Steven Orr, 67, hope to use the trip to raise funds to help support wounded veterans participating in Dive Pirates.
The two Bemidji men will be “historically trekking,” dressing in 18th century clothing, using equipment, and eating food that travelers would have eaten from that time period.
For Jessen, who like Orr has been camping and paddling canoes for more than 40 years, this trip will be something of a return to his roots.
“My ancestors came here from France in 1641. From 1680 to 1820 many of them worked as interior voyageurs. They have traveled this route many, many times, so for me this will be like a homecoming of sorts.”
Dive Pirates began as a social group of divers who liked to play practical jokes on each other and share them on their webpage. In 2003 they began fundraising and forming chapters throughout the country. In 2004, the Houston chapter began focusing on the needs of returning veterans who were amputees returning from battle.
Today there are many Dive Pirate chapters throughout the country, and their main mission is to support, train, equip and provide dive travel to individuals with disabilities through classified scuba diving lessons and trips.
Along the way Orr and Jessen will carry the names of veterans honored for their service and sacrifices as well as the names of others to be remembered. These names will be committed at the Grand Portage Rendezvous closing fire with original song, In Memory composed and performed by Chris Cheney and Ric and Berit Allison. The closing ceremony will also feature piper Jeremy Kingsbury of the Grand Portage National Monument.
Orr and Jessen will follow the old fur trade routes recorded in Alexander Mackenzie and David Harmon’s diaries. The 300-plus-mile canoe trip will include more than 40 miles of portaging their canoe and gear on trails and around rapids and falls.
“Everybody knows about the nine-mile Grand Portage, but for the voyageurs there is petite Grand Portage that was tougher for them. That’s where many of them got their hernias. The main reason voyageurs died was from hernias. The second leading cause of death was from drowning,” Jessen said.
Orr and Jessen make their own period clothing. Orr said it is important to travel just as the voyageurs traveled, wearing the same types of clothing. They don’t carry a watch or cell phones with them on their journeys.
If Jessen has blood ties to the voyageurs, then Orr is the historian. He owns every explorer or voyageur diary (or parts of several diaries) published from 1723 to 2010, he said.
“In those diaries there is no reference to 1 p.m. or 3 p.m. or any specific time. There are references to morning, midday, evening and night. From 900 B.C. to 1840 people made fires with flint and steel. They brought candles, but mostly sat around fires at night. I have had a 2-inch high candle that is five years old that I have brought on many trips. I just don’t have need to use it,” Orr said.
Retired only three weeks, Jessen said his connection to Dive Pirates is new.
“I told my friend (Orr) that I was going to go into the woods for three weeks after I retired, and he said, ‘Can I go with?’”
“I told him sure. And then he said, ‘I know just where we are going, and as long as we are going to do it, we might as well do it for a charity.’”
Orr, a retired chairman and CEO of Banner Health systems, a 2½-billion-dollar company with 34,000 employees, said the daughter of a good friend started Dive Pirates.
“I saw a short film Dive Pirates put out 4-5 years ago. It was of a veteran in Walter Reed. He had one arm and his legs were gone. Then it showed him getting lessons from Dive Pirates. The film ended when he came out of the water, looked straight into the camera and said, “in the water I am as good as you.’ I knew then this was an organization that I could support.”
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