For being so small, the cabin is amazingly full of tangible history. The mantelpiece is a rather sizeable tree trunk with the group’s mantra, “Let the fires of friendship burn forever,” emblazoned onto its face. Above that hangs a Les Voyageurs flag that was taken to the South Pole by the first American expedition. There are walrus tusks on the bookshelf, a 100-year-old mandolin upstairs and handwritten cookbooks used for the Sunday dinners held in the early 1900’s.

Even the trees in front of the house are relics of history. Planted right after the 1927 construction of the cabin, the Les Voyageurs still tell the story of how the three Douglas firs were actually pilfered from a Forestry School plot. Perhaps in a furtive nod of approval, they were caught in the act by a well-known Forestry professor who declared, “Well, if you’re gonna plant ‘em, plant ‘em straight!”

Current Les Voyageurs don’t just preserve their rustic past — they are actively engaged in embracing and continuing it. One member is building an old-fashioned clay oven on the side of a house. At any given time, another might be carving a canoe paddle using the same Depression-era tools as the society’s founders or tapping the trees for maple syrup.

Compared to crumbling student houses and microwave dinners on campus, the cabin on the shores of the Huron really does seem like a completely different world.