Eddie & George Wake Up in Wawa...Ontario!

The boys finally got to Wawa, Ontario.  They'd been hearing so much for so long about Wawa from Uncle Tom, that they figured it must be heaven-on-earth.

They were right:

The campground even provides free camp chairs for campers:

The boys also met Gitchee Goomee, a totem figure carved by a local Michipicoten First Nation artist, Shane (Spike) Mills, variants of which appear all over the Wawa community:

"Gitchee goomee" is said to mean "all-powerful waters" in the Ojibwe dialect.  It was also memorialized in the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem, "The Song of Hiawatha":

On the shores of Gitche Gumee,

Of the shining Big-Sea-Water,

Stood Nokomis, the old woman,

Pointing with her finger westward,

O'er the water pointing westward,

To the purple clouds of sunset.

Longfellow set "The Song of Hiawatha" at Pictured Rocks, along the south shore of Lake Superior. The town of Wawa, Ontario is on the north shore.  But the boys think it's just all right for Gichee Goomee to hang out in Wawa if the local First Nations people think it is.