By Joshua Grove
The Munising Beacon
Grand Marais is in mourning following the apparent drowning of local artist Len Novak. His canoe was found adrift on Lake Superior on the morning of Aug. 20, triggering a search involving the U.S. Coast Guard, National Park Service and Alger County Sheriff’s Office. Efforts were suspended the following day. Novak was later discovered by beachcombers on the night of Thursday, Sept. 4.
Fishermen discovered the canoe adrift about 1 mile offshore.
“They towed it to Grand Marais and then reported that there was a cell phone in the canoe as well as a couple of other items,” Lt. Joseph Snyder of Coast Guard Sector Northern Great Lakes said. “So an Alger County deputy responded to the scene shoreside and recovered the cell phone.”
Phone records quickly identified the canoe as Novak’s.
A 45-foot response boat from Coast Guard Station Marquette and an MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter from Traverse City were dispatched to lead the search, Snyder said. They were supported on the water by the Park Service vessel Arrowhead and on shore by the Alger County Sheriff’s Office.
“Unfortunately, we did not recover [Novak] or any other items from the water,” Snyder said.
Two weeks later, on the evening of Thursday, Sept. 4, a group of beachcombers located Novak near the Burt Township School Forest several miles east of Grand Marais.
Novak is remembered as a one-of-a-kind man, artist and irreplaceable piece of the Grand Marais community.
His art incorporated gathered materials such as driftwood, antlers and rawhide that wove together the spirit of Lake Superior with a keen eye for the contours of his media. For the past three decades, Novak produced sculptures, dreamcatchers, rattles, fans and “Lake Essence Percussion” pieces that captured the sound of waves crashing on the shore. And his signature handmade drums traveled far and wide to workshops, festivals and sound healing clinics across the upper Great Lakes.
According to Jamey Gheller, a fellow artist and close friend of Novak’s, “He would just see a little piece of something and turn it into more. That’s a drum. That’s going to be a rattle, you know? And so it would take him a few weeks, even a year, to find each piece to his perfect instrument. But it would be just randomly out in nature and just calling, like the instrument spoke to him as he’s walking through the woods or in the water and picking up random feathers. If we’d see a bird, we’d always have to stop and get feathers.”
Novak’s legacy reaches well beyond his art. Carol Rose, his friend of 25 years and partner for much of that time, remembers him as “kind, loving and passionate about life. I loved exploring and paddling with him. He went out paddling his canoe 12 months a year if there was open water.”
At a late August gathering celebrating Novak, people from Grand Marais and beyond recounted fond memories of his driftwood-clad Jeep roving about town, late nights trading stories over ice cream and his uncanny ability to strike up a friendship with almost anyone.
According to Rose, Novak’s hearty laugh sticks in many people’s memories.
“Sometimes conversations would become heated,” she said. “And then, often right in the midst of an intense discussion with me or someone else, he’d come out with the most heartwarming loud belly laugh, and any tensions were just gone.”
His son Barry recalled just how prolific Novak was.
“I was looking through a lot of his contact info, and a lot of it’s just scrawled on paper or the back of a business card,” he said. “Always first name and last name. … And I thought, well, why? But he had to remember it by first and last name because he knew so many people.”
Novak was “one of a kind,” said Toni Whaley, owner of the Grand Marais Fisheries Farm & Mercantile. “He was a Grand Marais icon, and I know that he’s somewhere dancing and drumming in the moonlight.”
