I live in northern Ontario in mushkeg country … mosquito season is starting right now.
At the height of the season in about June, July in the wilderness on a windless quiet evening, the air literally comes alive with the hum of billions of mosquitos. If you are not protected, they will literally drive you insane from the constant noise, touching, buzzing, biting, stinging … it’s very annoying to get bitten on your arms, legs, back and chest … but it is literal torture when you get bitten so much you are getting stung between your fingers, at your cuticles, your toes, the palms of your hands, soles of your feet, your face and you get bugs trying to wedge themselves into your ears, your eye lashes or try to fly into your mouth or nose.
I’m Indigenous Canadian and I grew up in this environment. The way we coped with it is to keep all your clothes on no matter how warm it gets outside. I remember seeing my grandfather in full wool pants and heavy shirt with another layer of underwear underneath … on warm July days! Traditionally, we never exposed any skin in the summer time.
I’m not as extreme as my grandfather but my friends always look at me weird for keeping a long sleeve shirt on with jeans and socks on warm or hot summer evenings around the campfire. Meanwhile, my friends in shorts and tank tops either slather themselves with bug spray or get so drunk they no longer feel the insects eating them alive … until they wake up the next morning.
Interesting! I’ve always assumed that Indigenous cultures around wear lighter, breathable clothing during the summertime if they lived in the warmer provinces.
That would require being able to grow a somewhat light textile plant such as linen or cotton or jute. If Canadian growing seasons are anything like I imagine they are, that idea is more or less a nonstarter because all those need a warmer zone climate enviroment. So you’re left with the dense heavy textile that comes from shearing farm animal wools for clothing making. In modern times you can theoretically grow textile indica hemp with cold resistance and short growing cycles, then process it into a softer and somewhat light clothing through making yarn but that may not br part of native indigenous Canadian culture.
I don’t know about elsewhere but the local Salish peoples would shear specially bred dogs with very light fur. Something like Samoyed fur, but more fine. They’re probably extinct now.
Yep, and if it’s a nice thin dry fit shirt, you’re getting bit right through your shirt.
Shirt! … if you happen to stretch your jeans too tightly over your butt, they’re biting you through there too.
Yep, for sure. And jeans today are much thinner/stretchier than when I was growing up. If you’re in Jeggings, you’re DONE FOR!
So that NFB short is an accurate description eh?
That was about black flies
Mosquitos have a small sting and half the time their anesthetic works and you don’t notice they’re there until they’re full. And they often only work in the evenings, less at night and a lot less during the day.
Black flies are a flying platform for a jagged needle and jaws to tear open your skin. They don’t bite they tear open a hole to insert their needle. They fly during a hot summer afternoon and in the right temperature they’ll swarm, drive you insane, make you run like a maniac and eat you as you slowly flail on the ground until you stop moving.
Mosquitos will leave a little pin prick wound, black flies will leave a big welt the size of a loonie and just as hard and if you get caught outside surrounded by these demon insects, the welts will actually merge and harden your skin … and they will keep landing to tear open more.
"And the black flies, the little black flies
Always the black fly no matter where you go
I’ll die with the black fly a-pickin’ my bonesIn North Ontar-eye-o-eye-o, In North Ontar-eye-o"
I would rather die from mosquitos than be tortured to death by black flies
EDIT: For anyone interested, here is the National Film Board (NFB) video being talked about
(just the sound of that swarm of buzzing black flies sends shivers down my spine)
That’s a lot worse than I thought it would be. Yikes. That’s a good reason to wear a few extra layers. And maybe some netting. And maybe acquire a flamethrower.
Oh that is deeply unpleasant to look at
That’s nothing. You should find the animated version…
Shell shocked mosquito: There is a land lads, bristling with barbed wire so thick ye see not sun nor moon. Where ye go in to feed but may never return.
i’ll never forget the first time i got bit through a shirt. i swear they get bigger the closer you are to a lake.
