In 1808, LaBarge traveled from Quebec to St. Louis, Missouri in a birch-bark canoe; to make the complex journey, he sailed up the Ottawa River, over its various tributaries in Ontario, crossed Georgian Bay, Lake Huron, into Lake Michigan, up the Fox River thence overland to the Wisconsin River and down that river to the Mississippi River, which he descended to St. Louis, with only 8 miles of portaging along the way.