Last summer, I happened across a magazine article, lyrically penned and lavishly illustrated, extolling a perfect day of living large in the great outdoors. To my delight, the piece centered on a weekend canoe trip in a region of northwoodsy lakes and rivers I knew well. Digging deeper into the story, it soon became apparent that this was definitely unlike any paddling getaway that I’ve ever been on.

In the accompanying dreamy photographs, the GQ-ready paddler, complete with Brad Pitt’s dashing good looks and a perfect two days worth of stubble, was seated ramrod straight, sans PFD, in the stern of a classic wood-stripper canoe. The boat, with its classic lines and warm-hued natural wood finish, was stunning. Nearly as stunning as the statuesque bow paddler, an übersexy blonde attired in a sports bra and knockout tights, again, no PFD, who I swear I’ve seen gracing the pages of a Victoria’s Secret catalogue. 

In between the lavish images of the two beautiful models who just happened to be sitting in a canoe, the article waxed poetically about the glorious morning sun casting itself over the sky-blue waters and the sweet-smelling wilderness air. It rambled on about the sensual, hypnotic motion of the sleek canoe gliding over the mirror-calm surface, the enchanting yodeling of a pair of courting loons and the picture-perfect campsite under tall white pines awaiting day’s end.

Well, jolly good for Brad and Gisele, I say. For the rest of us Average Joe and Jane Bagadonuts who canoe in the real world instead of Never Never Land, all this pabulum was a bit much. 

In 35 years of dinking around in canoes, I’ve had my share of memorable days on the water. Though I have to admit, not one of them was ever shared with a supermodel and not a single person has ever mistaken me or any of my paddling buddies for Brad Pitt.

Some of my most vivid remembrances from canoe trips past have not been of days when life was blissful, beautiful and perfect, but rather those imperfect days. Days when canoeing was more about fearsome storms, chilling capsizes and portages from hell. 

Sadly to say, my canoeing-related misadventures are not isolated events, but I’m glad of them all. Even now, years later, these wayward recollections still make me grin in a puckered-brow, I-can’t-believe-this-happened-to-me kind of way.

By now I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’ll never have an angel as a paddling partner, other than my wife, and I’ve been told I look a lot more like Larry David than any GQ coverboy.

Truth be told, canoeing as often as I do, I’m bound to have more of those indelible imperfect days. After all, shit happens, which only makes me appreciate it even more when everything does go right. Besides, for the paddlers I know, mishaps make better stories.

Larry Rice’s most recent imperfect day involved a sand-blasting, tent-flattening, all-night windstorm in the Lower Canyons of the Rio Grande in Big Bend, Texas.

This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2013 issue of Canoeroots Magazine.

This editorial originally appeared in Canoeroots and Family Camping magazine.

A fabulous new book called The Canadian Canoe Company and the Early Peterborough Canoe Factories (Cover to Cover Press, 2011) has got me thinking about reincarnation.

According to author Ken Brown, canoe building in Peterborough, Ontario, effectively died in the early 1960s with the Canadian Canoe Company ceasing operations in October 1961 and the Peterborough Canoe Company declaring bankruptcy soon after. But the presence of this book and a quick cruise on the World Wide Web indicates that the products of these venerable canoe companies are still very much on people’s minds.

The demise of industrial canoe building in Peterborough was real enough. Companies that had skillfully grown from an emerging 19th century cottage and craft activity into seven or eight canoe-building factories with robust domestic and international markets, struggled after WWII. Aluminum and fiberglass building techniques—innovations honed in wartime aircraft manufacturing— lent themselves naturally to canoe building. But tooling up for new materials and new building techniques was expensive. And training or retraining a skilled woodworking labor force to make canoes out of plastic or metal was also costly. It was only a matter of time before the wooden canoe companies floundered.

Yet Peterborough thrived through nearly a hundred years of uncommon industrial success. Ken Brown tells us that in a country bordering three oceans, in 1930 a quarter of the 778 Canadians involved in the building of small boats were employed in the land- locked center of the continent by Peterborough area firms, generating a third of the annual $2 million sales in this area of the economy.

After WWII, this tapered back and, after the closure of the Peterborough companies, passed to the skilled hands of later generations of small builders and hobbyists who continue to keep the tradition vibrant.

Today, you can buy Peterborough canoes at auction. Reprints of old catalogues are available for sale in hard and soft cover. The iconic company logos are available as decals for the growing corps of builders and rebuilders from Pacific to Atlantic and Arctic to Caribbean who still love Peterborough shapes in their shops.

And then there are the T-shirts and calendars, and the advertisers who for the past 50 years have freely employed canoe imagery. Selling charcoal, beer, milk or maxipads with canoe imagery cashes in on the fact that from explorers, surveyors, itinerant clergy, police and fur traders to modern day hunters, anglers and recreational paddlers, Peterborough canoes have been involved in just about every aspect of life beyond the fringe in North America. They are part of Canada’s heritage and, as Ken Brown reminds us, part of the history of the U.S., U.K. and countries even farther afield. Advertisers know that consumers are drawn to canoe imagery because this vessel—the Peterborough canoe in particular—is part of who we are.

James Raffan is thinking of coming back as an explorer, writer and executive director of The Canadian Canoe Museum.

This article appeared in Canoeroots & Family Camping, Spring 2012.