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SPEAKER: Thanks, Greta. Six minutes past twelve.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

GARY EICHTEN: And good afternoon. Welcome back to Midday on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Gary Eichten. This is our Midday two Voices of Minnesota conversations. We're going to hear from two men who grew up in fishing families on the North Shore of Lake Superior. It is a way of life that's practically disappeared. And Howard Sivertson has turned his memories now into paintings and books. But Walter Sve is still a commercial fisherman. And that's who we're going to hear from first.

He started hauling fish out of Lake Superior when he was just 10 years old. That was 65 years ago. Sve remembers the heyday of commercial fishing on Lake Superior. But now he's one of a handful of fishermen who are still working along the North Shore. Minnesota Public Radio's Stephanie Hemphill talked with Walter Sve.

STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: Walt Sve is tall and spare. When he's working, he wears a plaid wool shirt topped with orange waterproof overalls, held up by wide suspenders. He wears glasses and a baseball cap. Just about any morning between May and November, you can find him in his fish house. It sits on a narrow rocky beach just below Silver Bay, 50 miles up the shore from Duluth. He's cleaning the herring he brought in at dawn. His son Eric is helping him.

The work goes along smoothly. Reach for a fish, slit it open, tease out the guts, scrape the scales, slide it aside. Later, Sve will deliver the fish to restaurants and stores along the shore. In the time it takes him to clean a tub of herring, Walt Sve can tell you a lot about the old days here. His dad came from Norway via Canada.

WALTER SVE: He landed in Montreal on New Year's Day of 1921. He was his uncle up in Edmonton, Canada that sent money over, so my dad could get over to this country. And so then he went. That's why he went there. And then he worked two years to pay off his fare for getting over here. But he didn't like it up in that prairie country. So he had an uncle here in Two Harbors.

So he came down here. And boy, it was just like coming home for him, because Lake Superior laid on the same side as what the fjord did in Norway. So he was looking out over south, southeast, over the lake, like he did in the fjord, the [? Mostraumen ?] Fjord in Norway. So it was like coming home. And the trees were just pretty much the same birches and evergreen trees. So that's why he decided that this is where he wanted to stay.

My dad was one of the blasters that blasted out the road around Silver Creek cliff. And my mother just lived west of the cliff, just about a strong half mile. So that's how come they met. And then they got married. And so--

STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: He had a blast his way through to meet her, huh?

WALTER SVE: Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, that's about it. And their names were just about exactly the same. So my dad's name is [? Ragnvald. ?] And my mother's name was [? Ragnhild. ?] So--

STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: Pretty good Norwegian names.

WALTER SVE: Yes, yeah. My dad always said he had to come to this country to find somebody with a crazy name like he has. [LAUGHS]

STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: One tub of fish cleaned, one more to go.

WALTER SVE: The last box for today. I got started early this morning on the lake. I went out at 4 o'clock in the moonlight. And yesterday, I went out at 3:00 in the moonlight. And it's so nice out there then that might as well take advantage of the beautiful weather and a nice moon. What more could you ask for?

STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: The moon was bright enough, so you could see what you were doing?

WALTER SVE: Oh, yes, yes. It was bright enough. I could see the meshes on the nets around the fish. And so had no problem picking the fish up out of the nets. Some of the fish, the smaller fish, you can push through the mesh. But the bigger ones, you have to back them out. So you got to be able to see a little bit, anyhow.

STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: How much did you catch this morning?

WALTER SVE: Got 270 pounds of round weight, you know. Yesterday, we had 620. Well, we got six nets. So we got 1,800 feet of net out. So--

STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: So how does that sound to you? I mean, what kind of catch is that?

WALTER SVE: That was-- the 600 pounds, that was a nice catch. Today was, kind of, small for two men. But that's the way it is with fishing. You never know. You never know. Just because you got nets out, it don't mean you're going to catch fish.

STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: You're making this cleaning look pretty simple.

WALTER SVE: Well, I've been cleaning fish for at least 65 years, because I started when I was-- well, maybe even before I was 10 years old. So 75 now. So--

STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: Do you ever get tired of it?

WALTER SVE: No, no, no. [INAUDIBLE] I years ago. And we got lots of herring back in-- well, in the '40s and early '50s when we had a lot of herring. It got, kind of, tiresome standing cleaning fish till 6 o'clock, up to 10 o'clock at night.

When you come in with-- well, with my brother, and my dad, and I, we're three of us. And you come in with a ton and a half of herring, you know, that's a lot of cleaning. This summer, the herring fishing was real bad. The water got too warm in July and August. And there was a lot of days there I had five herring. That's all I got.

STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: You said the water was too warm for the herring? What did they do?

WALTER SVE: Well, then they go. They go out and probably deeper or to get into cooler water. Well--

STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: Do you catch different fish at different times of year?

WALTER SVE: No, it's mainly you're fishing for herring. And that's what you get. But I do fish for the DNR in May, and then in September, and fish for lake trout for the DNR. So that is test netting. So they see how the fish are doing, how the trout are, if there's spawning in the lake. So there's natural reproduction, and what the lamprey situation is.

We used to start fishing around the 1st of May. And you don't get as many. And you got to be further out and down deep. At that time of the year, the herring are real deep. So you're probably down 120 feet with your nets. So it's harder fishing, that's for sure. Now, we were only fishing in 18 feet down from the surface.

STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: This is Voices of Minnesota. We're talking with Walter Sve in his fish house. He's been a commercial fisherman on the North Shore of Lake Superior all his life. He learned the trade from his father and mother. They settled at Split Rock near Silver Bay in 1927.

WALTER SVE: There was nothing here when they settled here. So they built up-- built a little fish house. And with living quarters above, that was 14 by 18. And my brother, he was already born when they settled here. And then I was born in '28. Then when my sister was born in 1930, they decided they had to have a little more room. So he added on 18 feet or eight feet to it. So the building got to be 26 by 28. And that was our living quarters for well until 1936.

STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: And that was upstairs from the fish house?

WALTER SVE: That was upstairs of the fish house, yes. Yeah.

STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: Now, tell me about your childhood. What was it like growing up here?

WALTER SVE: Well, I don't know. We didn't-- it was the Depression years. And nobody had anything. And we didn't either. But we were always happy. And we didn't-- we didn't know no better. And I think we were probably better off for it.

We made our own fun. And we helped my dad with the nets and whatever we could do to help him, the wood, and that because the house was heated with wood. And that was way before we had electricity, of course. So whatever had to be done, us kids, well, we were happy to do it, because we didn't have nothing else to do.

So we were just busy working, reeling up nets for them to dry them, and whatever he had for us to do. He were just busy, busy all the time and enjoying it. And then in the winter time, then we had a little more free time to go and play with the kids in the neighborhood, because we were 15 kids that lived within a mile and a quarter of one another. So--

STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: What did you do for fun? What kind of playing did you do?

WALTER SVE: It was in the-- it was in the winter time. So we all had these runner sleds. And of course, we had the best hill over here. So they'd come over here. And we'd slide down the hill, just running back and forth. And mother always had some goodies for us, and made some cake, or something, or cookies, and stuff. So got cold, we'd run in and have warm, and then have some chocolate, or cocoa, or whatever, you know. And so, yeah, we had a good time.

STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: And tell me about how you met your wife, and when you got married to her.

WALTER SVE: Well, I met Carol through my brother, my brother's wife. Her father was a fisherman. But he lost his life before Carol was-- four months before Carol was born.

STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: How did he lose his life?

WALTER SVE: The northwest wind is the worst wind that we have that we got to be careful with. And he got caught. They were on the nets about four miles out in the lake.

And was a beautiful day when they went out. It was about 65, 70 degrees. And it's warm and nice. So they didn't even take a jacket with-- they were just in the shirt sleeves.

And the wind came up without no warning. Usually, you get a little warning with a northwest wind.

But this time, there was no warning at all. I guess it was about 60 mile an hour wind just out of nowhere. And it dropped from 65 degrees to 10 degrees in one hour and start snowing. And they started in, but they lost their motor on their boat. And the old motors, they vibrated quite a bit.

And the thumbscrews that holds them on the boat worked loose. And they lost their motor. And they just didn't make it in. They couldn't row against it after they lost their motors. So they were at the mercy of the wind.

So they tied themselves in the boat. I think more than likely knowing what is going to happen to them. So they were found 10 days later, had to cross the lake in Cornucopia. And they froze to death.

STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: Were you ever caught out in the storm?

WALTER SVE: Oh, I've been out in a lot of storms. I never got caught out there. I always made it in. But I suppose I got to say, if the motor hadn't kept running, maybe I would have wound up the same way. I don't know. And the wind can come up so fast with northwest. That's the one we got to look out for, the offshore wind.

And I was fishing about seven miles off the lake back in '62, '63, and '64. And I got caught in the Northwester out there.

But it normally took me 19 to 20 minutes to run that distance. And it took me an hour and five minutes to get in blocking that sea. And I had to go real slow to give the boat a chance, or otherwise, he would come over one wave and then go right up on the bow of the boat. And if I went fast, I would have buried the boat. So I had to just go real slow and give the boat a chance. And folks were pretty worried. But I made it all right.

STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: The folks were worried. Weren't you worried?

WALTER SVE: No, I wasn't worried. I knew I was doing all right, but they didn't. So--

STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: Were they waiting for you here at the fish house?

WALTER SVE: Oh, yeah. They had the binoculars. And they had one pair of binoculars. And my mother would be looking. And she couldn't see nothing. And then my dad would look. And he wouldn't see nothing. And she'd look, and back and forth.

And then finally, my dad, he says, no, I-- there's one place water spraying around higher than any place else. So he's coming. So that's the way they knew I was heading in all right.

STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: This is Voices of Minnesota on Minnesota Public Radio. We're talking with Walter Sve, a commercial fisherman on Lake Superior's North Shore. Walt Sve sells herring to several restaurants and stores. And he sells the eggs or roe, to a company that ships them to Sweden, where they're sold as caviar. He weighs the roe on an antique scale.

WALTER SVE: Yeah, I've got exactly 13 pounds.

STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: So that's a good catch of roe, huh?

WALTER SVE: Not too bad. Not too bad out of 270 pounds of herring.

STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: Aren't you worried that you're getting in the way of those fish reproducing themselves?

WALTER SVE: No. There's lots of herring in the lake now. So they're doing all right. And then we can't fish in spawning season. Years ago, back in the '20s, and '30s, and '40s, we fished year round. And there was lots of herring. There's no end to it. So if it makes a difference now, I don't know. But they seem to think so.

STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: Are there more fishermen now or fewer?

WALTER SVE: Well, they ain't very many. We're only, on the whole North Shore from Duluth to the Canadian border, I think there's 28 I think it is now. It was 20-- Is it 30 now?

SPEAKER: I think it's 30.

WALTER SVE: 30, yeah. And back in the '30s, there was 400. There was, in the Depression years, well, anything to try and make a buck. So there was a lot of people that tried their hand at fishing. And so-- and there was tons and tons of herring hauled off the shore. Truck would come and-- just these ton and a half trucks at the dealers in Duluth. Heard there was seven dealers in Duluth. And they all had their own trucks on the shore. And--

STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: Do you think it'll ever be like that again?

WALTER SVE: Oh, I think so. I think it will. It's been picking up all the time. So things are looking good.

STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: Fishing crashed on Lake Superior in the 1950s. One reason was the sea lamprey. They came into the Great Lakes through the Saint Lawrence seaway. And they practically wiped out the lake trout. Another reason was the heavy commercial fishing of the '30s and '40s.

Then Reserve Mining Company started dumping its waste rock into the lake at Silver Bay. The dirt in the water forced the herring to go elsewhere to spawn. Walt Sve says he can remember the day the current carried Reserve's muddy water into his family's fishing grounds.

WALTER SVE: 27th of August in 1956, that's when the dirty water reached our place. I'll never forget that. And the clarity dropped right down to one foot that you could see down in it. And it went-- it was East current, so it carried it towards Duluth. And then from there on, it just got worse and worse.

But it wasn't going out in the lake so far. So we still were getting some herring for a few years. We just had to keep moving out just a little bit. But then it got so bad that I had to go way out.

And then by '66, it was no use anymore. It was all the way across the lake. This whole end of the lake was that-- and herring are very fussy. Trout will go in this dirty water. But herring, their gill structure is so full that least little dirt in the water irritates it. And up in Canada, they were starting to get more herring than they ever seen in their life up there, because the herring went that direction instead for their spawning beds. Otherwise, the big spawning beds here on this end of the lake was between the Knife River and Duluth.

STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: And in the fall of '56, you could see this coming. It must have been a big shock. How did it-- what did you think?

WALTER SVE: It was just like a cloud coming through the water. And we knew it was going to come anyhow, because when the Reserve first asked for their permit to dump in the lake, my dad and four other commercial fishermen went to Duluth. And these fishermen, they told them, it's going to wind up right in the drinking water and harbors Duluth. And they laughed at him and told him they didn't know what they were talking about.

Well, it wasn't too many years that they start finding it in the drinking water. Where they really notice is the toilet tanks. They seen the sediment in the toilet tanks they never had before. And people were drinking this water. And I don't know. And yet when they wanted to increase their capacity, our legislators give them a permit to double their capacity.

STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: For 25 years, there were no herring to be caught along the North Shore. Walt Sve's parents lived on the income from their guest cabins. And Walt spent 30 years as a carpenter.

He and his wife raised four children. Two of them still live on the shore. And a third wants to move back to help with the cabins and the fishing. Walt Sve went back to commercial fishing when he was 64. What is it about fishing?

WALTER SVE: I don't know. I think it's just because you're Norwegian, it gets in your blood that you got to be out there on the lake.

STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: How did you get back into it?

WALTER SVE: Well, that's as soon as the fishing start coming back after Reserve had to quit dumping their tailings on the lake. Then they had to quit in '84. And then the water started clearing up in the couple of three years. And then I start [? testing, ?] [? adding. ?] And so then it's start picking up. So by about 1992, then it started getting pretty fair with herring again. So you could make a dollar or two on it.

STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: Did you quit the carpentry then?

WALTER SVE: No, I quit the carpentry when I got to be 65. I quit working out for him. So--

STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: How old are you now?

WALTER SVE: 75.

STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: And you still go out every day to fish?

WALTER SVE: Oh, yes, yes, yes. You got to keep busy. If you're going to stay young, you got to keep working. You don't want to sit down and do nothing, because then the body will shut down and you'll die. That's what I figured. I don't know. I can't take that chance. I'm going to keep working. [LAUGHS]

STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: Walt Sve's wife, Carol, died a couple of years ago. He's been keeping company with Helen Wilkie. She's one of those 15 kids who used to slide down the Sve's hill and then warm up on cocoa and cookies.

Walt Sve is also building a boat with an inboard motor to make the fishing easier. This is Voices of Minnesota on Minnesota Public Radio. Near Silver Bay, this is Stephanie Hemphill.

CHRIS JULIN: And I'm Chris Julin in Grand Marais. When you talk about commercial fishing on the North Shore of Lake Superior, the name Sivertson is sure to come up. Three generations of Sivertson fished on Lake Superior. Howard Sivertson grew up spending his summers on a small island next to Isle Royale. Isle Royale is the largest island in Lake Superior. It's about 20 miles off the shore from the town of Grand Portage.

When Howard Sivertson was a boy, a couple dozen families moved to Isle Royale every fishing season. He says they lived a pioneer life.

Now, Howard Sivertson is a painter. He sells his work in galleries. And he's illustrated and written four books about days gone by in Northern Minnesota. His first book was called Once Upon an Isle. It uses paintings and text to tell the story of commercial fishing on Isle Royale.

HOWARD SIVERTSON: My grandparents came over here from Norway. They were commercial fishermen in Norway in 1892. And they established themselves in Isle Royale then as seasonal fishermen from, let's say, 1st of April to the 1st of December at Isle Royale.

And they commercial fished. And all my relatives on my father's side were commercial fishermen. And so it was the thing you're supposed to have done in those days was to be a commercial fisherman.

CHRIS JULIN: How come you didn't end up as a commercial fisherman?

HOWARD SIVERTSON: I threw up a lot. When I was a kid, I worked with my dad from the time I was about five, six years old on the lake. But I was kind of a dreamy kid, not particularly interested in commercial fishing or fishing.

And I did get seasick a lot. And it turned me off from commercial fishing. And by the time I would get old enough, my seasickness was cured by the time I was about 15 or 16. And by the time I got old enough to fish, the fish had disappeared from the lake.

The lake trout disappeared from the lake due to the influx of smelt. Remember that voracious little fish that eats the fry and the baby trout? And between that and the lamprey eel, it sucked the blood out of the trout. And that killed trout fishing.

So there wasn't a future in commercial fishing after about 1950. So that left me, even if I wanted to be a commercial fisherman, which I didn't, it left me out of the game there.

I was born in Duluth. And [INAUDIBLE] about a week after I was born, my mother and I joined dad and my sister at Isle Royale. And we went over on the Winona. That was the first time I threw up.

CHRIS JULIN: You were a week old?

HOWARD SIVERTSON: Yes, I got seasick. But anyway, so it started in 1930s. And we made those annual trips until I was about 20. That was the routine, pretty much, until about 1950s.

CHRIS JULIN: So you definitely were old enough to get several years of a taste of commercial fishing.

HOWARD SIVERTSON: Oh, yes, I got a real good taste of it. And if I would have been a little bit bigger, if I was to do it now, if somebody introduced me to, not at 73, which I am now, but if they would induce me later on in life to commercial fishing, I would have loved it. It's like having a trap line. It's like hunting or fishing, you know.

Every day, you're excited about what you're going to catch, and what's on your hook lines, or what's in your nets. And there's also the fear of maybe nothing is in there. The insecurity of it is something else.

But also when you got some fish enough to make a living, there is also that feeling of well-being. And you're your own boss. And you're out on the lake. And you're out in the open. And no traffic, none of those none of those stressful factors that you might find in the city.

CHRIS JULIN: You're also a subject to the elements and to the whims of the big lake.

HOWARD SIVERTSON: Absolutely. But you dress for it. And the boats were tough. And they were rugged and well shaped to handle the lake. And we always had foul weather gear. Wherever we went, you carried it with you. So you very seldom went in the house except for meals or to sleep. So we were out in the rain and the weather all the time. And you think nothing of that.

CHRIS JULIN: When I look at your pictures, at the paintings, it seems like those are fond depictions of that life.

HOWARD SIVERTSON: I didn't think if I painted myself throwing up, anybody would buy it. But I painted-- some of the pictures show some of the harshness of the fishing industry. But there was also a lot of nice things about it. They were working in probably the most beautiful area of the world, a lot of horizon, a lot of gentle landscape, a lot of beauty that these fellows worked very hard and worked amongst, a lot of beautiful islands, and water, and different scenes like that, animals, wild things.

And so those are the things that I was impressed with. As far as pulling on that anchor line until my fingers bled, that didn't interest me too much. But painting the scenes, the environment in which they worked, that was fantastic.

CHRIS JULIN: Yeah. I don't mean to imply that your paintings and your book, Once Upon an Isle, don't get at that. I mean, I guess there are both sides of it. But I guess what I come away with, what I remember is you know, these beautiful horizons, as you say.

HOWARD SIVERTSON: Well, that's fantastic. My work is complete. And that's what I wanted to, a conscious desire and a subconscious desire to create that atmosphere, because that's what I knew. That was what the world looked like to me. And I painted that world. And it was a great place to live up-- live and grow up on. It was a-- I call it a Huck Finn paradise.

There was always something to do outside. We invented our own games. We chased squirrels and animals. And we went fishing, a lot of what they call sport fishing now. But we did a lot of fishing like that. And we just-- every day was full when we were children.

And it was a small island with only a few people on it. So everybody knew everybody. It was like one big happy family, as far as us children felt, you know. We didn't get involved in the problems the adults had too much. But at least it seemed like one big happy family to us children.

CHRIS JULIN: How many people were on the island over the summer?

HOWARD SIVERTSON: Well, there's many. There's about 200 islands around Isle Royale itself. But we were on one island. And there were probably 10 families on one island. And maybe three of those families had children. And there was a few bachelors that fished on that island. But in the whole of Larchmont Harbor where I grew up, which is on the southwest end of Isle Royale, it involved about four or five islands that families lived on. And in the whole area there, there's maybe 12, 14 families, I guess.

CHRIS JULIN: And you actually transported your life to the island?

HOWARD SIVERTSON: We left the modern life on the North Shore of hot and cold running water, and electric lights, and automobiles. And once we got towards the lighthouse on our way to Isle Royale, about midway, we entered into another world. It was like the pioneer-type world, where everything was very simple living, kerosene lamps, wood stoves, a totally different lifestyle.

It was kind of unique to be able to experience the modern type of living with all the hectic, the pressure, and the pace of modern living, and be at Isle Royale, where the pace, although we moved fast when they were fishing, the pace of living was slower. The concerns, I don't know, you could handle the problems because there weren't any-- there weren't any law enforcement people over there. There wasn't any churches, there weren't any bars, or restaurants, or anything like that, no movie houses. So we pretty much entertained each other. And we depended on each other. And it was kind of like a unique little culture over there.

CHRIS JULIN: And you still fish today, angle, or sport, fish, whatever? What would you call it?

HOWARD SIVERTSON: I guess it's called-- I'll call it angling. Because sport fishing, I have a problem with sport fishing. I still don't think that a 200-pound man catching a 3-pound fish is much of a sport. It's fun, but I don't consider it a sport. And so I'll call it angling. And I still do that. And I catch fish to eat.

We have a cabin up in Canada right on Lake Superior. And I take my rowboat out there. And I'll row for a couple of miles a day and catch enough fish to eat. All I need is about two fish a week.

And that's plenty of fish. I love the going out and angling and catching the fish. I love that. I don't call it sport, but I love doing it. And I love eating them too. I love the whole process. But to go out and catch as many fish as I can doesn't make much sense.

CHRIS JULIN: This is Voices of Minnesota. We're talking with Howard Sivertson. He comes from a commercial fishing family on the North Shore of Lake Superior. He paints pictures of that old life. When he was a young man, Howard Sivertson went to art school. Then he spent 25 years doing commercial art for ad agencies. Then he quit.

HOWARD SIVERTSON: I built a little cabin up North of Two Harbors in the woods. And I sold my property on Lake Superior, which was about-- I had 1,000 feet in a beautiful home on lake, the five-bedroom home on Lake Superior. I sold that and moved up into the woods, and lived in the shack for three years while I learned to paint again, or tried to learn to paint. And that was in '76 I moved up there.

And in 1980, I felt strong enough that I was able to maybe sell some paintings. So I moved to Grand Marais, opened a gallery with my daughter, Jan Sivertson, here in Grand Marais, who continues the gallery business. I'm not in it now. But so I've been painting just about every day. I try to paint almost every day since that time. And my routine is to paint during the day.

During the mornings, I'll usually paint. Some go to the easel. And if the weather's right, I'll get out to my favorite spots. And it could be Isle Royale or Susie islands, the North shore, or the boundary waters, depending on the day, depending on the season. I'll go out there and paint and do my research in the afternoons.

I paint emotionally. But I also know that I have to use art principles in order for me to evoke those emotions out of my audience. In other words, when I start the painting, I ask myself, how do I-- this is the way I felt about this scene. How do I want the audience to feel about this scene? What abstract shapes, what directions, what colors will help me to see that to those people?

You can go out and just express yourself, you know, just wildly, mishmash, while expressing yourself without any, without any skills or without any plan. But it's like handing a violin to a six-year-old. Nobody else wants to listen to it.

CHRIS JULIN: Can you describe what you're trying to capture?

HOWARD SIVERTSON: If I could, I'd be a writer. [LAUGHS] And this is the whole thing. The feelings were strong enough. But I found it was easier to paint the picture than it was for me to write it. I can get along with words to a point. I've got four books out. But my stories are strong enough. And they're all highly illustrated to cover any of my faults in the English language. At least I hope they're covered.

CHRIS JULIN: You're not the only artist in the family.

HOWARD SIVERTSON: My wife is an artist. My oldest daughter is an artist. She owns the Sivertson gallery in town. But she's a wonderful Batik artist. And my other daughter, Liz, is also a painter in town here. And she's living up in the woods, and sells her paintings in the gallery down here.

And my son Jeff, who is a-- he's an artist in his own right, although he's able to draw very well. But he uses wood as his medium. He likes to build wooden boats, and repair old boats, and bring them back to life. And that is an art. And that is an art you can use when you get done. You can go fishing, you know, once the boat is built again.

So, I mean, it's kind of a creative family, I guess. We don't think a whole lot about it up here, because we're kind of all by ourselves. And every once in a while, somebody will say, man, you've got a bunch of artists in your family, don't you? By golly, I guess we do.

CHRIS JULIN: This is Voices of Minnesota on Minnesota Public Radio. We're talking with Howard Sivertson. He paints Northern Minnesota historical scenes. He spends every morning in the studio in his house in Grand Marais. He shares the studio with his wife, Elaine.

HOWARD SIVERTSON: This is her studio here. And there's an invisible yellow line only she and I can see right there. And that will-- I don't cross that unless I'm invited. And she doesn't come over there, unless she's invited. And so we stay out of each other's hair, because the tendency is to come over and start to criticize each other's paintings.

And she paints a little differently than I do. And I paint differently than she does. And so it's best we-- if somebody asks for advice, we'll give each other advice. But other than that, we respect each other's privacy, I guess.

These are the two paintings that you're looking at now, are the paintings in progress. I usually have two or more paintings going at one time, because I like to get them to a certain point, then I turn them to the wall and keep them that way for about three, four weeks and look at them with a fresh eye later on. And then their mistakes, kind of, glare out at you.

And this particular painting you're looking at now is a painting of a young man sitting in the back of his grandfather's boat, pulled up on land. It's dilapidated. And it's disintegrating. And it's at Isle Royale. And the title is going to be Heritage Lost, because this is probably-- I was thinking of my cousin, Alfred Johnson, when I did this. And he's the fellow that would love to have kept fishing, but couldn't.

And this was his grandfather's boat too. And so he had to change all his lifestyle and whatever he wanted to do, because of the fishing was done at Isle Royale. And National Park Service will not let it continue. The DNR will not let commercial fishing continue yet. And so that whole culture is gone. And he would have been the last-- one of the last ones of the culture.

So that's kind of an emotional one for me. As you can see, it's kind of gloomy, and kind of a-- but still a nice setting. I have some pictures here. Here's a painting of the Schoolcraft Expedition in the 1832 when he left Sault Ste. Marie, went to find the source of the Mississippi River. And then he came back. This is at the mouth of the Brule River where they finally got through with a long, arduous trip, half-starved, canoes bent and broken.

And they took one day off to wash up and get ready to go back to the Sioux. And the Indian village up there is feeding them lake trout and things of that sort. And it just shows them finally taking a day of rest and getting ready for the return trip down to the Sault Ste. Marie.

CHRIS JULIN: All of your canvas is historical? Is there anything that is a current-day painting?

HOWARD SIVERTSON: Well, no, not all of them, but a great deal of them are historical. But I find I'll paint just a scene once in a while. It has no historical value, except in an environmental way. And it's just a piece of nature. But most of the time I seem to like to put some semblance of human beings in my picture, because I think it's important for I don't know why.

But I just like-- like if I paint a scene of the Boundary Waters or close to it, maybe an old trapper shack that it was there at one time. And I'll rebuild it in my painting just to put it there again, because I like the idea of that guy being up there trapping, and making his living off the land. And so I'll do that quite often.

CHRIS JULIN: I ask that question because I was just spinning over in my head the paintings I've seen and your books. And I was thinking of people being in all of them. And all of them having this historical feel. It seems like you're capturing an era.

HOWARD SIVERTSON: Well, it started out with the commercial fishermen, Once Upon an Isle. I wanted to document those before some intellect got a hold of it and started, you know what I mean? And started documenting and covering of their research. And I wanted to tell the story right, you know, my way. But anyway, so I did that.

And in the process, I got involved in the voyageurs. And I often wondered in my cruises up in the boundary waters, my paddling and-- my paddling through the Boundary Waters, and a lot of times out in the Susie Islands and those Canadian islands in my other boats. I often wondered what they would have looked like paddling through there. And what was their mission? How did they feel?

So I started doing the research. And I started putting the voyageurs in those scenes. Rather than just having the vacant scene, I would put the voyageurs in it. It's pretty much like this painting over here.

This is a beautiful scene up in the Susie Islands. And painted just by itself was all right to me. But I thought how much more interesting it would be to have Burt Fesler, one of the first people to take the census along the North shore. And he's up here in 1890. And the Census Bureau instructed him to take a rowboat from Duluth, travel all the way up to Thunder Bay, across the Isle Royale, around Isle Royale and back again in that rowboat, taking the census, counting the fishermen.

So he had to row of that boat, all that distance or sail it. It was an 18-foot rowboat with a-- he said a schooner rig. But I think he only had one sail on it. But it may have been rigged for a schooner. So I think that's the way it looked. And he had oars in it. And two other fellows traveled with him.

CHRIS JULIN: So we see him here passing between a couple of islands?

HOWARD SIVERTSON: Yes, he's passing on North shore between a couple of islands. And you can see the little-- this is-- it would be the commercial fisherman's homestead way out there in the distance. But you get some feeling of, I hope, how lonely that would be there, and how lonely his trip must be, how maybe dangerous would be, but how serene it might be at times. And so I-- that's just-- I think a square inches-- there's about three square inches of people in about a, you know, 200-square-inch canvas.

CHRIS JULIN: Yet it sounds like it was really important to you to put them in there.

HOWARD SIVERTSON: Yes, I think so. I like seeing people out there. Yeah, but not many. I just like-- I just like a few, you know, somebody I can stop in and have coffee with, if I want.

CHRIS JULIN: Well, it is the nature of the country, too, that, you know, there aren't-- there have never been very many people in these scenes. There aren't today, really, very many.

HOWARD SIVERTSON: All right. In fact, there's less people now than it used to be. In 1890 when this fellow was up here doing his survey, there was a little over 100 fishermen along the North shore and Isle Royale. By 1930, there was about 400 fishermen along. On the North Shore now, you might see a lot of homes being built along the shore. But they're not commercial fishing. And they don't get out on the lake much. But if you get in the Susie Islands, or the Canadian islands, or Isle Royale, it's very sparsely populated and still about as wilderness as we got.

CHRIS JULIN: Do you still go to Isle Royale a lot?

HOWARD SIVERTSON: Yes, yes, I go quite, quite often. But the National Park Service was given the mandate by the US Congress in 1931 to create a wilderness at Isle Royale. Well, what they succeeded in doing was moving about 100 people off the island, the commercial fishermen and summer folks that lived there, and transplanted themselves. They transplant themselves with 100 people. So it takes 100 people to run the island.

They're given a tough job. They're told to make a wilderness of the island and also a place that people could enjoy, something that would attract people to it. You get people in a wilderness, it's no longer a wilderness, you know, pretty much so.

And so their job over there is to maintain a wilderness. And it's also their job to attract 20,000 people a year to come over there and enjoy it. And they're caught on the horns of a dilemma, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. And so they don't know quite which way to go.

But if you want to make a wilderness, you leave it alone. Just get off it. If somebody wants to use it, go ahead and use it, but use it at your own risk.

My Aunt Clara has the last commercial fishing license on Isle Royale. And she's staying there. There are some other summer residents who still have leases that will be up shortly. And when they're up, then it'll just be, the National Park Service will be over there. And nobody's over there year round anymore. That's just a kind of a summer place now.

CHRIS JULIN: I thought nobody was over there year round, ever.

HOWARD SIVERTSON: Oh, there was a few families in the '30s during the Great Depression that lived over there, because it was cheaper, and they could live more simply. They could shoot moose, catch fish, and cut a lot of wood. They burned a lot of wood. But they stayed there year round.

There's a family in Grand Marais, the [? Schattberg ?] family, Gene [? Schattberg, ?] who lives here in Grand right now, spent the first five of his years on Isle Royale without coming to the mainland. He didn't know what an automobile looked like. He didn't know what-- he could probably see airplanes once in a while, but he didn't know what any of that stuff was like. And as a five-year-old, came to school in Grand Marais. And there's a lot of interesting stories about his reaction to civilization.

And the Johnson family, my cousins, lived at Isle Royale. They lived in the light house over there for several winters.

And there was a family-- well, in fact, here's a painting over here. This is a picture about the Johnson family at Chippewa Harbor. And they had hired a school teacher to come over and teach their children during the winter. And this is Dorothy Simonson standing on the hill looking out the bay. But it's a painting I did, just try to tell the Dorothy Simonson story.

When she came to Isle Royale to teach these kids, this is 1932. She came over to teach the kids during the winter. And when she came into the harbor, Isle Royale is majestic, she went through all kinds of wonderful words describing the beauty and the majesty of Isle Royale, and all the romance, and things of that sort.

By the time it freeze up, and she'd gone through a few storms and a few feet of snow each day, Isle Royale went down the tubes, you know. It got worse, and worse, and worse. And she got she got several diseases. She had a shortwave radio, didn't work. She said, I'm tired of eating moose meat. I'm tired of eating moldy bread and all these things. And she's waiting for the Winya to come to pick her up.

The Winya was a steam vessel. And it was due probably about the 1st of April. And the whole family waited desperately for that Winya to show up with fresh supplies, because they had no connection with the outside.

And when it finally did show up, she said it looked like a luxury liner. And she compared the Winya to that. And the Winya is a rust bucket. You know, it was just an old, dilapidated boat that came over. But it had the supplies. And it was her escape off the island.

CHRIS JULIN: And is this her in the spring? Is that what this painting is?

HOWARD SIVERTSON: Yes, that's her in the spring welcoming the first trip of the Winya from [INAUDIBLE]. They used to go up on top of this hill to watch out for the ships to come in where they can get a good view.

CHRIS JULIN: You know, as you talk, I get the impression you're being almost as much a historian as a painter.

HOWARD SIVERTSON: Well, I suppose it's starting to get to be that way. I'm probably-- my problem is I'm a historian with a very poor memory. So I have to-- I have to jot these things down and paint them, and things like that to get them off my brain.

CHRIS JULIN: You captured on canvas. Then you've got it.

HOWARD SIVERTSON: There you go. And like I tell people, I said, this may not be the way that ship actually looked. I may have some things wrong with it. But from now on, that's the way that ship looks. And I'm making some errors, errors that I can't help, errors that I cannot research. I know that some of the things are not exactly as I'm portraying them. But I'm coming close. I'm pretty well.

And I'm not a scholar. If I was a scholar, I would have to wait until I was absolutely positive before I made my statement. Now I can send these things out as pretty darn educated guesses as to what it would look like, and what it did look like. And so far, nobody's tripped me up. They haven't found any mistakes in the paintings yet.

CHRIS JULIN: You're listening to Voices of Minnesota. We're talking with Howard Sivertson. His paintings have been collected in four books about history along the North shore of Lake Superior.

HOWARD SIVERTSON: And one of my favorites is baiting hook lines. This was one of the first ones. It's a painting of two fishermen in a 24-foot [? Mac ?] in an open boat out on the lake, fishing hook lines, showing a squall coming in, and showing them at work. The man at the tiller, who's standing up in the boat with a tiller between his legs, and he's pulling what's called the mainland line, which is about seven miles long.

And then off that main line, run all these little snails that go down deep in the water with the half a herring hooked onto them. This fella here in the middle of the boat pulls up the snails, unties the old ones, puts on a new one. And they keep going that way till they catch fish. There'll be a fish on maybe every third snail or every third or fourth snail.

CHRIS JULIN: It's a very threatening sky in this painting.

HOWARD SIVERTSON: Yes. And my copy talks about-- I think they are out in all kinds of weather. And the only time they have to come in is when they can't work anymore. When the waves get too high, too bad so they can't stand up anymore and work, then they have to come in. But that's very seldom happens, because they're pretty catty in these boats.

CHRIS JULIN: Now, that to me, that looks cold and uncomfortable, but like, maybe a person could love that.

HOWARD SIVERTSON: Yeah, that's right. Especially right now, it's cold and uncomfortable. In a few minutes, the sun is going to come out. And it's going to warm them. And they'll take off their coats. And it's going to be wonderful, you know, the feeling, the contrast.

We don't feel many contrasts anymore today. At least I don't, because if it's really icky out, I'm not going out. You know, I go out on a nice day. So I don't get soaking wet anymore, or my feet haven't been frozen for years. Here, in contrast, there's another painting of--

CHRIS JULIN: No, no. No, this is, without a doubt, a happy, joyful look at fishing on the lake.

HOWARD SIVERTSON: Yes, this is a nice, calm day, probably middle of July. They're getting ready to pull in the hook lines for the year. And when they stop for lunch, they will sit and have lunch. And if nice and warm, they'll take off their jackets and feed the seagulls, and just-- he'll just lollygag around for about 15, 20 minutes eating lunch before they go back to work again. But I wanted to show that there were those kinds of days, beautiful days, gorgeous days to be out there.

CHRIS JULIN: And this is the kind of scene that you're saying there really isn't a photograph of that anywhere. So you just had to do this from your own recollection?

HOWARD SIVERTSON: Right. Picture I'm looking at now is a story inside of a fish house that would never, ever been seen before. Nobody takes pictures inside of the fish house. They stink. They're not glamorous looking. They're just work places. And so they would say, come outside, let's take your picture. So I wanted to paint a picture of the people inside working, doing their jobs.

The two fishermen are dressing the day's catch. They're weighing in on a scale, icing down the fish. One young fellow is in charge of chopping the ice. And two little boys over here are fishing through the floor for speckled trout, and things like that.

And grandma is down checking over-- she likes to check over all the fish to pick out the ones she wants for supper. She'll go through them all. These fish just came out of the lake. She wants to get the freshest one, and the one with the right meat, the red meat and all this. And so she goes through the whole box looking for them.

CHRIS JULIN: The way you're describing this, it's almost like this is a direct memory. I mean, do you have a picture of this scene in your head?

HOWARD SIVERTSON: --memory. This could be me. Oh, yes. And grandpa, he's retired. He's probably in his 70s here. And he's sitting on an old herring keg.

And he just wants to find out what the day was like out there, where did they get the fish? Were they up on top? Were they on the bottom? How many fathoms? Was it blowing hard? Was anybody-- he wanted to know all the facts. He wants to relive that day through these guys, because he can't be out there anymore.

I didn't ever start to make a book. I just painted so many paintings in one subject. And the book came after. So the voyageurs was never meant to be a book. None of the books were meant to be books. Well, it seemed like every time I did research for one thing, I would find out all these other things in the same path. I'd say, boy, I've got to do that one of these days. That's fantastic. I never knew that happened here.

And so I'm just continuing that way. It doesn't have a point to it as far as I'm going to do another book on this subject. I'm just going to paint these things as I feel them, as I come across them and see what happens. I've got about 2/3 of a book-- 2/3 of the paintings that I could use in another book ready now. So I'll just keep going. Maybe another year, I'll have enough paintings and maybe start writing the stories.

CHRIS JULIN: What's the theme of this one?

HOWARD SIVERTSON: It's pretty much the same, local history, local history, because it's so magnificent. We know so little about the history up here, especially visually. Nobody took the pictures, you know. I always say, when the commercial fishermen is one of the reasons I painted that one is because when people come over to take pictures of the fishermen, photographs of them, they are, OK, everybody stand up, and stand together, and smile. You know what I mean?

They didn't take pictures of them at work. They didn't take pictures of them at play or anything else. It's all a group picture, a mug shot. Nobody saw them at work. And it would have been lost if it wasn't done.

CHRIS JULIN: Howard Sivertson paints scenes of life along the North Shore of Lake Superior from days gone by. He's also written and illustrated four books of Northern Minnesota history. You've been listening to Voices of Minnesota on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Chris Julin.

GARY EICHTEN: And that does it for our Midday program today. I'm Gary Eichten. Thanks so much for tuning in. By the way, reminder that the editor for our Voices of Minnesota series is Mike Edgerly.

Also, one other reminder. If you'd like to see some of the paintings that Howard Sivertson was talking about, they are available on our website, minnesotapublicradio.org, minnesotapublicradio.org So take advantage of the service.

Well, Monday we're going to talk politics and media's impact on children. Chris Gilbert will join us at 11:00. We'll talk presidential politics, get all the latest.

And then, over the noon hour, we're going to hear from James Steyer, who is the author of The Other Parent, talking about the impact that media have on children. That's Monday. I hope you can join us.

Sarah [? Meier ?] is the producer of our program. Christina Shockley is our assistant producer. Rick [? Osinski ?] helped us with some engineering this week. Again, thanks for tuning in.