Anyone Who Wants to be a Open Boater…Raise Your Hand

Skills

Photo: Rick Matthews — Anyone Who Wants to be a Open Boater...Raise Your Hand

In his book Gestures, author Roger Axtell has catalogued body language from around the world. He found that similar gestures mean different things depend- ing on where you live. For example, raising your hand and extending your thumb and little finger is the sign for “cool” in hawaii, while in Mexico the same gesture will get you a drink, and in Japan it means the number six. Perhaps with increased globalization lifting your hand in this manner will get you six cold beers at bars around the world. In canoeing, the similar gesture of raising your grip hand shows that you respect the river enough to stay ready to react to anything it might throw at you.

When your grip hand is high, your paddle shaft will be vertical, next to the canoe and close to your knee—right where you want it to be.

Correction strokes are a short reach back to your hip and you need only slice the blade forward to the catch position for a power stroke. If you need a quick righting pry, no problem, your paddle is already at your side and ready for action. With your grip hand held high you can instantly twist your paddle shaft and use the blade as a bow rudder for shifts left and right.

Since most strokes originate with a vertical paddle shaft, there is rarely a reason to drop your grip hand to link different strokes.

A high grip hand will also improve your posture and balance by keeping the paddle shaft and your arms close to your body. With your paddle next to the canoe, you are positioned to rotate at the waist to perform paddle strokes without reaching or leaning. Less leaning means fewer braces and more time for power and correction strokes.

The next time you are on the river, look around at other canoeists who are moving smoothly and appear to be paddling with little effort. You’ll probably see that their grip hand rarely drops down toward the gunwale. Paddlers that do drop their hand often appear to be bobbing their bodies while their boats twitch and lurch awkwardly from one eddy to another. Dropping your grip hand leads to poor paddling posture, a lack of stability and rushed strokes that are executed too late to be effective.

So raise your grip hand to the river. Among canoeists, this gesture will be recognized as the key to linking effective strokes, smooth paddling, great posture and, ultimately, a deep respect for the river.

Andrew Westwood is a regular contributor to Rapid. He’s an open canoe instructor at the Madawaska Kanu Centre and member of team Esquif.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2006 issue of Rapid Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Rapid’s print and digital editions here.

The Search Continues: the Theme in Wilderness Tripping Journals

Stories

Photo: Toni Harting — The Search Continues: the Theme in Wilderness Tripping Journals

There was a logbook, covered in dust with the spine worn bare, that for years greeted expedition canoeists when they reached Fort Albany. The register was an end-of-trip ritual for canoeists who had finally made it to James bay. Sign your name, enter the date, and add a comment or two. The entries ranged from expressions of gratitude for being finished, to remorse for a trip that had ended.

But it’s what’s not written down, the story that isn’t told, that speaks louder than the pencil scratch on the page.

Bruce Hodgins—author, historian, retired professor and, with a personal canoe resume that reaches back to the 1950s, one of the architects of Canada’s canoe culture—is a man who knows about what is and isn’t found in canoeing logbooks and trip journals. Hodgins teamed up with fellow historian Gwyneth Hoyle to research the recent history of canoe travel and put it in one place. The result is the remarkable Canoeing North into the Unknown, A Record of River Travel: 1874 to 1974 (Natural Heritage, 1994), a seminal collection of the who, what, when and where of canoe tripping history.

You would not sit down and read hodgins’ and hoyle’s book from cover to cover. It’s a resource, a list of dates and names, with minimal description or qualification. entries receive equal billing and range from the famous:

“1789 Alexander Mackenzie, on his fifth crossing of the Methye Portage, travelled north, all the way down the Mackenzie River to the Arctic ocean.”

To the mundane:
“1974 Camp kandalore: John Fallis and guy Delaire led a boys group down the Missininaibi River to Moose Factory.”

To the epic:
“1930 Eric Sevareid, 17, and Walter Port, 19, canoed from their home in Minneapolis to York Factory—a total of 2,250 miles.”

I spoke with hodgins this spring. He was preparing to run the Irondale River in Ontario’s Kawartha region, even though at 75 years of age and with heart problems, his doctor no longer allows him to portage his own canoe.

I wanted to ask him about something that was missing in Canoeing North into the Unknown. It’s the same thing missing from the Fort Albany register, and that was why. Why did all those people take to the north at a time when access was difficult, trips were expensive and canoeing for pleasure was considered foolhardy? The names and dates share little of what the trip was about; the motivation, the experience as it unfolded, the stories, and the memories. What was it these people were seeking?

As Hodgins points out, in the early days of recreational tripping, canoers didn’t know much about the rivers they were travelling until they got on them. They were heading somewhere, unsure of what they would find. Hodgins thinks this is at once the reason they didn’t explain their motives, and also their motivation for going.

I prompted him with a line from the introduction to his book: “For some, the long northern river voyage is part of a quest pattern, a challenge, an exploration…a journey into the unknown.”

“Absolutely,” said Hodgins. “There is an emotional element to tripping on rivers, a re-experiencing of wonder as you discover something that was un- known to you. gwyneth was right to put “unknown” in the title. It’s the seeking out of something unknown that engages the individual.”

Hodgins’ book is intriguing because in it you don’t actually read about the quest for the unknown, but you know it is there. You can feel it from the lack of information that describes the simple trip details. For each entry there is a profound story left untold.

While the early explorers were charting vast wilderness, today’s paddlers are on their own search for something unknown to them. Pouring over a map, watching the weather, and nervously anticipating what’s around the next bend is part of the discovery on a canoe expedition. It is a personal quest, that can be discerned in trip journals, but only if you know what to look for. A camp’s map coordinates could be meticulously logged, followed by a scrawled, “The most beautiful place on earth.” Notes on an unplanned portage are followed by, “The hardest day of my life.” while short on detail, these simple lines speak volumes about the writer’s motivation; the why. The desire to challenge oneself by confronting the unknown is ultimately personal, and can only be hinted at in a few short sentences in a dusty register.

I asked Hodgins if the theme of a quest to explore the unknown persisted intact over the course of the last century and a half of canoe travel.

“Ah, yes, I still believe that the quest for the unknown is an element of why people do it,” hodgins replied, as he buckled the strap on his canoe pack and placed it by the door. It would be ready for him to pick up in the morn- ing as he went out again to experience something, something he wasn’t quite sure of yet. Those who wrote journals in the past, or will keep one in the future, likely would not admit to this emotional quest—it certainly isn’t written down anywhere in the Fort Albany journal— but it is there, between every line.

Jeff Jackson is a professor of outdoor adventure at Algonquin College in Pembroke, Ontario.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2006 issue of Rapid Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Rapid’s print and digital editions here.

Fake Rivers Ringing Up Real Profits

Stories

Photo: Kent McCracken — Fake Rivers Ringing Up Real Profits

Whitewater paddlers are shedding their reputation for being dirtbags and may soon be better known as moneybags, according to speakers at a recent symposium where promoters of manufactured whitewater dis- cussed the economic benefits of urban paddling parks.

With whitewater parks located in downtown cores, paddlers have no choice but to trade cooking on campstoves and sleeping in vans for fancy restaurant meals and cozy hotel rooms. At the symposium in Colorado, city councillors from Golden, Colorado, said paddlers visiting its whitewater park—which cost $170,000 to build—spent $3 million at local businesses last summer; and in Vail, Colorado, retailers estimated ringing up $1 million in sales during just one week of rafting and whitewater events in 2005.

The first whitewater park in the United States was built in Denver, Colorado, in 1978. Since then, they’ve sprung up in droves—from Reno, Nevada, to Charlotte, North Carolina—according to Scott Shipley, a three-time U.S. Olympic kayaker and now an engineer with a firm that builds the parks.

Shipley estimates that there are currently 40 to 60 parks in the United States, many in downtown cores, but in Canada the closest thing to a whitewater park remains the altered flows and rearranged features of natural waterways like Alberta’s Kananaskis River, Ontario’s Gull River and British Columbia’s Rutherford Creek—none of which are in what you’d call a metropolitan area or within walking distance to a sushi bar.

Now several Canadian cities are consider- ing cashing in on the flow from human-made whitewater. Next year, Calgary will begin construction of a $6-million downtown facility that will divert the Bow River into an after-work pad- dling hotspot. In Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, a proposal to remove an 11-foot weir and create a multi-channel, 300-metre whitewater park on the South Saskatchewan River is working its way through the design stage. There’s early speculation about a project in Nova Scotia that would unearth the long-buried Sawmill River and make Dartmouth an urban whitewater destination. And in trying to salvage some benefit from Toronto’s failed Olympic bid, the Niagara Whitewater Park Association is negotiating with Ontario Power Generation and property owners for water rights and land access to create a park on St. Catharines’ Twelve Mile Creek.

Brock Dickinson, St. Catharines’ director of economic development, says the local business community is behind the proposal. Dickinson believes cash benefits would ex- tend beyond the construction, hotel and restaurant sectors and might open doors for St. Catharines to become a regional or national training centre.

Of course, obstacles remain in many cities. With a price tag of $6 million, Dickinson says the city won’t be able to make the park happen on its own and he doesn’t know where the money will come from. As the proposals are studied further, paddlers who want to paddle right in their home towns will have to wait and hope their politicians realize that it takes money to make money.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2006 issue of Rapid Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Rapid’s print and digital editions here.

Connected People

Stories

Photo: Dan Stanfield — Editorial: Connected People

Almost all the tents had been taken down and paddlers had moved on to different rivers to enjoy the last day of the Victoria Day long weekend. Palmer Fest, Ontario’s largest whitewater paddling festival, was a huge success by all accounts, except one.

As the event organizer I’d been running on only about three hours of sleep, sleep I had caught after the second band finished their second encore and we drained the last keg, sleep I had snuck in before 5 a.m. when I got up to cook pancakes for 400 people, before getting on the water to teach my morning clinic. Looking back on it, I might have been feeling a little sharp and not in the mood for her constructive feedback. However, I did ask if she had a good time at the festival.

She said I should have facilitated a framework for better communication. She told me that she didn’t meet anyone at Palmer Fest and that as the host I was missing a wonderful networking opportunity, that I was really only halfway to really connecting paddlers. I told her it sounded like she wanted me to organize a children’s birthday party.

I couldn’t image a better way of connecting paddlers than hosting Palmer Fest. We hired 30 of the friendliest instructors to teach clinics. We invited an alleyway of paddling schools, boat companies and clubs to share information and skills. We put on a supper, a breakfast and a sat- urday night party. There was even free day-care so parents could get out on the water. We even partnered with a non-profit co-operative paddling school to host the event.

I walked down to the late-night bonfire by the water and saw bongos, guitars and some dude drumming on a blue barrel while others danced crazy dances around the largest white-man fire I’d ever seen. The social scene at paddling fes- tivals is like an extended family reunion—we know we are all related but are too busy having fun to figure out how exactly.

The ease with which paddlers strike up con- versations about rivers and form instant bonds with each other is the reason I’ve built my life around paddling.

Paddlers don’t “connect” in boardrooms and don’t need to play name games to get to know one another; no, we’re more like cowboys. I remember sitting at a roadhouse establishment in Hamilton. It was 1996 and the Edmonton Eskimos were playing the Toronto Argonauts in the 84th Grey Cup CFl football championship. In walked two cowboys, real cowboys, with worn boots, saddle coats and stetsons. There was the usual hush as the locals eyeballed the new guys. The cowboys didn’t sit down alone in the corner waiting for the bartender to ask them to share their names and their favourite flavour of ice cream with everybody in the bar. no sir, they were in town for the game and were surrounded by like- minded football fans. They walked up to the bar: “Howdy, I’m Troy and this here’s my brother Bob. We’re from Alberta, and we’re here for a good time.” They shook hands with everyone, sat down and ordered 50 long necks for their new friends. By halftime they knew everyone in the joint by name. We all had a great time.

With a firm handshake, I promise you can walk up to any group of paddlers at any festival, in any campground, around any campfire, at any put-in and you will have your connection. You could try and put a label on it, call it a positive, mutually- supportive communication between contributing members of a similar community. or you could pull up a log at the fire, introduce yourself and discuss who’s running shuttle in the morning.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2006 issue of Rapid Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Rapid’s print and digital editions here.

Kevin Callan’s Black Bear Bust-Up

It was a relief to reach the takeout after fighting headwinds for the last three days of the trip. The rowhouse campground at the provincial park was crowded, but I was glad for the company and ready to relax. Relaxing was difficult, though, thanks to the black bear that kept dropping by looking for a snack.

Camping gear for bear safety on a yellow background.

Bear Safety Gear for Camping

Kevin Callan’s black bear bust-up

I couldn’t understand why he was picking on me. I had the cleanest site in the campground. Charlie, the bear biologist camped beside me, told me it was because the bear could sense I was scared of him.

But I was more exasperated than scared when the bear ambled into my site the second night after my peaceful dinner of mac and cheese. I grabbed a pair of pots and banged them together. The pots made a racket but it didn’t scare the bear off. It probably made the situation worse when the remnant cheesecaked noodles flew out of the pots and across the campsite.

I threw down the pots, grabbed a rock and tossed it at him. He gave me a stare that said, “That was stupid!” and charged.

The day the teddy bear got his picnic. | Photo: istockphoto.com

How To Survive A Bear Encounter

The bear bore down on me like a freight train, pulling up only five feet from me before rising up on his hind legs, snapping his teeth and growling.

My mouth hung open in fright, but the lessons from a dozen bear safety manuals leapt to mind and I waved my arms up in the air and yelled surprisingly creative things about his mother.

They must have hit home. He turned on his heels and ran to the edge of the site.

He who laughs last

That’s when I should have called it quits. But I was buzzing on fear and adrenalin and, what’s more, I was angry. Long suppressed rage from years of being picked on in grade school playgrounds welled up from somewhere deep inside me and burst out. I wouldn’t be bullied anymore. I had chased the bear out of my campsite and now I would beat him at his own game of intimidation.

The middle of your campsite is not where you want to encounter a black bear. | Photo: iStock

I advanced wild-eyed on him, snapping my teeth and making as fearsome a growling noise as a 150-pound weakling can make. The look he gave me told me he was very unimpressed. He turned and scampered down the shore, but he couldn’t be said to be running scared.

The bear swung close by a row of boats, passing two Grummans and one kayak before digging in his heels as he came to my canoe resting innocently on the beach. He gave it a sniff, and immediately went to work on it, tearing at the bow with his claws and ripping off part of the deck plate.

With a final snort in my direction he skipped off, leaving me in a macaroni-strewn campsite with unpleasant memories of schoolyard bullies once again bouncing around in my head.

Kevin Callan has gone back to banging pots nervously when confronted by bears.

Canoeroots Spring 2006 cover This article originally appeared in the Early Summer 2006 issue of Canoeroots. Subscribe to Paddling Magazine and get 25 years of digital magazine archives including our legacy titles: Rapid, Adventure Kayak and Canoeroots.

What’s cooking? | Feature photo: Marc Olivier Jodoin/Unsplash

Marathon Canoeing: One Stroke Over the Line

Stories

Bob Vincent does not take a DNF beside his name in race results lightly.

The 62-year-old marathon canoeist from Dorchester, Ontario, had twice entered the Texas Water Safari—billed as the world’s toughest boat race—but limped away with a “Did Not Finish” both times. In 2003, Vincent paddled in a six- person crew but left the boat when dehydration threatened. In 2004, he and his partner wrapped their canoe around a rock and abandoned the race.

The Safari is a gruelling 418-kilometre, non-stop race down the San Marcos River to the Gulf of Mexico that has tested paddlers since 1965. Mid- June temperatures often top 38 degrees.

The portages—and there are many—conceal poisonous spiders and snakes. The river is strewn with tree trunks torn from the banks by flood waters and alligators prowl its lower stretches. Paddlers must carry all of their food and gear; a support crew can only offer water, ice and verbal encouragement—for what it’s worth.

When Vincent and I finished reason- ably well at the 25-kilometre 2004 United States Canoe Association (USCA) Nationals, he asked me to race the 2005 Safari with him. I laughed in his face. The look he gave stopped me in mid-chuckle. A week later, I called to tell him I had changed my mind. Vincent packs his 170 pounds onto a potent 5’8” frame. He bench-presses 245 pounds. And he would not stand for another DNF. If anyone could get me across the Safari’s distant finish line it would be Vincent.

Vincent, with his trademark polka-dot cotton welding hat bobbing steadily, had finished the 740-kilometre Yukon River Quest from Whitehorse to Dawson City twice, once as overall winner after out-psyching and out-paddling a pair of strong and younger kayakers in a faster boat.

I was also intrigued by what I would learn from spending more time in the canoe with “Coach Bob,” as he’s known to the readers of the col- umn he writes under that name for the USCA’s Canoe News.

“Bob loves to analyze every aspect of paddling, racing and training,” says editor Gareth Stevens, “He’s fascinating to be around if you share, even slightly, his obsession for paddling.”

For Vincent, it is the variables of racing that have captivated him for the last 40 years.

“It’s so quiet when you’re on the water by yourself,” he says. “And so incredibly intense when you’re bearing down on another canoe.”

And so, on to Texas.

We wanted to finish in less than 50 hours, and so we had suffered through winter aerobic training in the cold rain and snow. Vincent had readied our 18.5-foot-long hull with extra bulkheads to stiffen and strengthen the 30-pound Kevlar eggshell.

I will spare readers the gruesome de- tails of the race. I will skim over the fact that at the first liftover portage a few hundred yards into the race I unwisely ran so fast I dropped our canoe, breaking a gunnel that Vincent would later fix.

I won’t dwell on the new personal re- cords I set for projectile vomiting in the heat of every afternoon. Vincent kept paddling while I rested, drank, ate and recovered.

I will skim over the crash into trees the second night on the river when Vincent patiently coaxed me off the mid-river tree trunk I clung to. We waited until daylight for Vincent to perform his canoe-fixing magic. I will give short shrift to our ordeal of capsizing in a dark San Antonio Bay, when we swam to the shore and spent most of the night dozing on a flooded grassy island waiting for the howling wind to die down. And I will merely summarize the last part of our journey along a ship- ping canal, following a compass bear- ing in the dark while dodging old piers and fighting waves until dawn. We finished after 69 hours, to the relief of 30 onlookers who were worried because we had disappeared forsix hours.

What I will be sure to mention, however, is that at the finish line one of the historic greats of the Safari approached to congratulate me and tell me it had taken him four atempts to get his finishing plaque in the C2 class. I nodded, and thanked him, but I didn’t tell him he should have first tried it with Bob Vincent for a partner.

I spent the next two weeks on powerful antibiotics fighting infections from insect bites incurred while sleeping on that flooded island. Soon I was racing again, amazed at how easy 20-kilometre races had become. But when Vincent called and told me that just bettering his DNF finishes wasn’t enough, that he was going back to the Safari in 2006, all I could do was wish him well.

I did learn a lot from paddling with Coach Bob as an example. I learned my next attempt at the Safari will have to wait until I am older and tougher.

Fifty-year-old Don Stoneman races canoes and instructs marathon paddling in southwestern Ontario.

This article first appeared in the Spring 2006 issue of Canoeroots Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Canoeroots’ print and digital editions here.

Hot Rod Paddling: Canoe Fishing

Skills

Photo: flickr.com/03marine — Hot Rod Paddling: Canoe Fishing

Essential Trip Tackle Box

You don’t need a lot of gear to catch a lot of fish. All the lures necessary to target a wide range of species will fit easily into a 7- by 11-inch plastic case.

Fill it with mid-sized spinners, gold and silver spoons, three-to six-inch diving minnow-shaped crank baits, coloured head jigs and soft plastic grubs. In separate film containers bring split shot sinkers, single hooks, some snap swivels to reduce line twist and a few fine wire leaders if targeting pike.

Round out your kit with a spare 100-metre spool of 8- to 12-pound test line, a fillet knife and needle-nose pliers. If you’re feeling confident, throw in a scale and tape measure. Stuff it all in a small tackle bag or slide it into an easy-to-reach pocket of a canoe pack.

Keep Your Rod Ready

Lash a two-foot length of three-inch PVC pipe under the seat to function as a quick-draw rod and reel holster. Slide the rod through from the middle of the canoe toward the end so the tip is tucked under the bow or stern deck. Secure the reel with a loop of shock cord. This simple system allows for spur-of-the-moment angling and reduces the chances you’ll end up with a broken rod at the end of a portage.

Fish On the Go

Test the waters while still making headway toward your next campsite by trolling as you go.

Spoons or minnow-shaped crank baits are the best lures for trolling. Let them run beside the canoe so you can gauge the correct speed for seductive lure behavior.

Cast behind the canoe, let out about 50 metres of line and brace the rod against the gunwale so you can keep an eye on it while paddling.

The best trolling speed for most lures is slower than you’d normally paddle, so be patient and remind your trip mates that if they are intent on paddling fast they can go ahead to the campsite and collect enough firewood for a fish fry.

Find the Fish

Fish gravitate to prominent features found along the bottom or shore. Cast your lure along the edges of weed beds or over shoals and drop-offs. Cover a wide range of depths while trolling by weaving in close to shore until you can see bottom before veering off again.

In the cold water of early spring all species will be in water less than 15 feet deep. As the waters warm fish move deeper, especially cold-water species like lake, brook and rainbow trout. Warm-water species like bass, walleye, pike and perch may still be found as shallow as five or 10 feet through the summer,
so long as there’s cover like weeds, submerged wood or overhanging trees.

In rivers, fish congregate in areas of transition. Look for the places where strong currents converge with deep water, like at the base of rapids or the deep holes and undercut banks of corner pools. Cast across the river and draw your lure through the current.

It’s a Keeper!

With luck you’ll end the day by preparing a meal of freshly caught fish.

Lay out a two-ply piece of tin foil and spread a layer of butter or margarine over it. Place the fillets on the butter and top each with a slice of lemon, a slice of onion, a spoonful of diced tomatoes, salt and pepper.

Cover with another sheet of foil and fold the sheets together to seal all edges. Place on a grill over a medium-hot fire. When the foil puffs up pierce a few holes in the top and let it steam for 10 minutes. Spoon any excess juice over rice and enjoy the rewards of your angling efforts knowing there are no pots to wash.

James Smedley is a contributing editor to Ontario Out of Doors magazine.

This article first appeared in the Spring 2006 issue of Canoeroots Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Canoeroots’ print and digital editions here.

New Paddlers: Yahtzee and Tailwinds

Stories

Photo: Jim Wiebe — New Paddlers: Yahtzee and Tailwinds

Kim applied her pale pink lip gloss and tucked it into her borrowed drybag. She looked at the fasteners, turned the bag around, and looked some more. After a loose fold of the plastic, she clipped the ends together and carried the bag to her husband Chip who was loading their 16-foot cedar strip canoe.

With a few long strokes my husband Jim and I paddled away from the dock. This trip was our idea. Kim wanted to be introduced to wilderness canoeing and we wanted to show her.

I had a map showing the marker buoys of Nova Scotia’s Kejimkujik Lake spread across my lap. We rafted together so Chip and I could look over our route and Kim took the opportunity to further admire the scenery.

“I can’t believe how beautiful this is,” beamed Kim. Before us a series of small islands was sprinkled across a lake so smooth it mirrored the sun and a cloudless sky.

We began our eight-kilometre traverse of Keji toward the northwest arm. The excited chatter soon tapered, then our speed dropped. A gentle breeze began to redirect the bow of Chip’s boat as Kim rested her paddle over the gunwales and gazed in every direction.

After only two hours of gliding past islands and across small bays we turned our canoes into a small cove, our home for the night.

“Just in time,” Kim announced as we unloaded. “I was getting really tired.”

It started before dawn the next morning—first a mutter, then a mumble, then a moan. By breakfast the wind was a full-fledged scream.

“It’ll die down by mid-morning,” came a less-than-confident claim from Chip in the next tent.

“Lunchtime maybe,” came the update as the wind continued to howl.

By mid-afternoon I was sick of staring at whitecaps and wanted to paddle anyway. Kim and Chip were engrossed in a game of Yahtzee and waved us away.

Our plan for that day had been to paddle north into the Little River, a route that would have taken us straight up- wind across the open arm and into a likely wind tunnel.

“Chip doesn’t think they should paddle today,” Jim said as we unfolded the map to look for a sheltered route we could paddle ourselves as a day trip.

We pushed off from shore and bowed our heads into the wind. Soon we were sitting on our hats to keep them from blowing away and my arms were aching from pushing into a wind that seemed intent on and capable of pushing backwards.

Slowly the trees on the east shore grew in size and in less than an hour we eased into the area of calm beneath them.

The faint current leaving a nearby gap in the reeds told us it must be the mouth of the West River. We slipped through and entered another world. The wind roared overhead, but we were in a land of black glass and emerald grass. We paddled upstream, following the unhur- ried curves of the river and avoiding the pale granite rocks that punctuated the black water.

Billowing clouds scuttled across the sky. “What’ll we do if it’s still like this when we have to leave?” I asked.

“We’ll worry about it then,” Jim answered simply. There was no debate about that, so we turned our canoe and let the river take us gently to the lake where the wind caught us and pressed us back to camp. The Yahtzee match was just winding down.

“Do you hear that?” Chip asked from his tent the next morning? Silence answered. I was already down at the lake and could see as well as hear that the wind had ceased. Small ripples lapped at the beach and a thin layer of mist hovered over gleaming water, promising another day of clear skies.

By the time we were ready to leave, our nemesis the wind had returned, but this time as a friend. We turned our boats east around the point and felt its gentle hand on our backs.

“I’m worried Kim will think all trips are as easy as this,” Jim said as we laid our paddles over our gunwales and watched the shore glide by on our wind-assisted float.

After joining the current of the Mersey River for our final hundred metres. Jim and I swung through an easy eddy turn and pulled our canoe on shore. Behind us we heard raised voices and the grinding of canoe over rock. Jim waded knee-deep, grabbed the bow of Kim and Chip’s canoe and pulled them onto the beach.

Kim climbed out of the boat and threw her arms around us.

As Jim and I unloaded we heard Kim chatter with Chip about when they could come back. Jim and I shared a knowing look and he mumbled under his breath, “Let her enjoy it. She got off easy this time, but she’ll learn the difference between headwinds and tailwinds soon enough.”

Michelle and Jim Wiebe are Albertan paddlers who spent a year exploring the East Coast.

This article first appeared in the Spring 2006 issue of Canoeroots Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Canoeroots’ print and digital editions here.

Mothership Connection: Paddling in the Path of the Voyageurs

Stories

Photo: Gary McGuffin — Mothership Connection: Paddling in the Path of the Voyageurs

Days are as long as the night is short on Lake Superior in June. Still, darkness had already fallen by the time we landed on Old Woman Beach, flipped over our 36-foot canoe and scarfed down a scant dinner. Now, the first of my voyageur crewmates are snoring restlessly and after a last slug of rum, I’ll join them. In a couple of hours—well before dawn—we’ll be back at the paddle.

To settle a debate among some paddling friends about just how tough the voyageurs were compared to modern paddlers, we gathered 13 coureurs du bois wannabes and piled into a replica of a fur trade canoe to paddle part of a historic trade route along the coast of Lake Superior Provincial Park. We would head northwest for 80 kilometres—a typical voyageur day—to the mouth of the Michipicoten River where the remains of a fur trade post that once meant a day or two of rest and rum for the voyageurs can still be found amid shoreline alders.

Our craft is a fibreglass replica of the voyageurs’ birchbark canot du maitre. This 36-foot monster was the ideal way to transport loads on the larger rivers and lakes between Montreal and Fort William at the head of Lake Superior. A high bow and stern made it seaworthy in large rapids and Great Lakes swells, yet its shallow draft let its crews find protection from sudden gales in the shallowest of coves. At 600 pounds, it was light enough to be carried over portages by voyageurs glad to get a break from paddling.

Two hundred years ago dozens of these canoes paddled this shoreline every year, loaded down with four tonnes of such trade goods as rifles, ammunition and cooking pots. At Fort William the Montreal brigades would rendezvous with a fleet of 25-foot canots du nord each packed to the gunwales with furs from the nearly endless waterways of Canada’s interior.

After one hell of a party and a hasty, hungover exchange of cargo, the canoes retraced their routes: the canots du maitre returned to Montreal so the furs could be shipped to Europe, and the canots du nord headed upriver to the scattered trading posts of the interior.

It only takes a few minutes on board to realize that paddling a voyageur canoe is like riding in a school bus. They are about the same length and both encourage sing-alongs and juvenile humour. In the bow, the avant sets the pace in stroke and in song and rows of bench seats segregate gung- ho paddle-pushers in the front from bad-ass lily-dippers in the back. Getting 12 to 14 paddlers in synch is as easy as keeping a bus load of grade-schoolers quiet, but when it happens, the canoe cruises at 10 kilometres per hour.

Among voyageurs, there were no lily-dippers. They paddled 65 strokes per minute for 18 hours a day and were paid a pittance in company credit. Once ashore, respite came with a chunk of pork lard, a slug of rum, some stale tobacco and too little sleep on a cold beach. Most walked with a hunchbacked spine and many died young of a hernia or heart attack on a remote portage.

Midway to Michipicoten, I’m given the responsibility of keeping the canoe on course when we reshuffle our positions and I end up in the stern. Controlling the canoe’s momentum requires prying my two-metre-long ash paddle off the gunwale; sometimes a little too much. Too often I find myself over-correcting and causing the canoe to track a meandering course.

Sunset finds us several kilometres offshore and squinting into the horizon, looking for the cliff-lined entrance of Old Woman Bay. The voyageurs called the unpredictable wind of Lake Superior La Vielle—the Old Woman—so it’s apt that we encounter southeasterly gusts and choppy waves as we approach.

The wind hits the boat at a diagonal and a metre-high chop has us fishtailing even more than usual. It’s all I can do to lever the canoe back on course before we wallow and spin out again.

All singing on this bus has ceased by the time darkness falls. We’re still 25 kilometres from Michipicoten, and Old Woman Bay is our last possible pullout.

We’ve paddled 55 kilometres and we’re lagging, despite all the high-energy designer snacks we’ve eaten. All is quiet until someone offers a carefully formed argument for calling it a night. Despite a few half-hearted objections we decide to head for Old Woman Bay’s beach where we haul the canoe beyond Superior’s reach, flip it over and curl up underneath.

As we find space to sleep with our heads under the overturned canoe I look around and see a group of weary, wet and hungry paddlers looking more like voyageurs than I thought was possible. The only thing missing is the pork lard.

While the crew dozes off one by one, a few of us pass around a bottle of rum. Staring at the lake I think I catch a glimpse of a big canoe still braving the wind and waves. After a quick tip of the bottle it’s lost in the inky darkness.

Conor Mihell interned at Canoeroots last fall.

This article first appeared in the Spring 2006 issue of Canoeroots Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Canoeroots’ print and digital editions here.

Canoe Friendships: Bred In The Bone

Stories

Davey and I were born the same year and lived next door to each other, deep in a warren of middle-class city streets. Through our first decade of discovery we were hemmed in by the same playpen, then the same backyard fences and finally by the limits of how far we could wander or explore by bike and still make it home for dinner.

Canoe friendships: Bred in the bone

Those limits of exploration opened on an unfamiliar realm one summer at a cottage owned by Davey’s uncle. This small shingle-sided building was an endless day’s travel away for a couple of 12-year-olds, over hours of desolate unpaved roads without houses, or even gas stations; an unthinkable isolation compared to our crowded city wading pools.

The cottage came with a canoe, an unloved and leaky contraption of bleached canvas, weathered wooden ribs and flaking varnish, and it fell into the hands of two unsupervised and callow youth who knew nothing about water—except perhaps that you couldn’t breathe when you were under it.

The first time we dragged the canoe down the granite bedrock to the water we had a long discussion about which end of it should point forward. We tried sitting both ways in both of the seats in an unguided process of discovery. There was the trial and error of switching sides with the paddles to make the thing move forward. But when we did get moving, we were amazed at how a few paddle strokes were enough to float us out of sight of the buildings, through the small granite islands with their straight pine trunks reaching into the sky, past the bays and marshes, until they all blended together and everything looked the same. The sun nibbled at our bare backs and the small waves made an anxious slapping sound on the hull. Could there have been a more perfect freedom than this?

We moved along the shore, making more noise than a flock of feeding gulls, paddles thumping gunwales, pointing out the obvious to each other as if we were both deaf.

What lies over the waterfall

Deep in a long bay we came to an almost-dry waterfall with just a trickle of summer flow left, falling steeply into the lake. I climbed out of the canoe and bounced up the waterfall stones. There at the top was a river, half overgrown with alders, quiet and black, stretching back and disappearing around a curve into deep summer shade. Big dragonflies patrolled the air, trolling just above the water, and the enticing world up there vibrated with a busy insect hum.

I flew back to the canoe with a plan. All we had to do was somehow carry the canoe up over the rocks, then put it into the river above and paddle on to explore the unknown around that bend. It was the most exciting idea of my entire life.

Davey would have none of it. His restless eyes told me we had already reached too far beyond the edge of our known world and that it was time to go back. I pleaded. My mind searched for some kind of bribe that would entice him to help me struggle up those boulders, but Davey already had a limitless collection of comic books so there was nothing in the material world I could offer him. I knew that without his help my plan was doomed. A white anger blurred my vision and I threatened that this would be the end of our life-long friendship. He was unmoved.

Wood On Water: A Teenage Summer Spent Canoe Tripping 400 Miles (Video)

We sat there for a long while, two crib mates stalled on the threshold of real freedom in a magical old canoe. Davey remained obdurate in his fear of venturing into the unknown while I stewed in the acid of my own frustration. Not climbing those rocks to paddle up that river made no sense to me at all.

Each one charts his own course

I didn’t know it at the time, but that was to be our last summer together. Our friendship that had only just begun to be tested was doomed that autumn when my family moved to the suburbs.

I still heard about Davey once in a while. Apparently he spent his life working as a guard in the colorless clanging hallways of a federal penitentiary, an enclosed world of his own choosing, one without sunlight and wind. He never missed a paycheck; and he never did own a canoe.

I, on the other hand, missed more paycheques than I can remember. In later years as a bush pilot and fishing guide, I wandered the world scratching countless canoes on the harsh altar of adventure, scrambling up waterfall rocks to paddle around the river’s far corner, ever disappearing into the beckoning shade.

As penance for decades of scratched canoes Brian Shields now operates a canoe outfitting and repair shop out of his home.

Cover of the Early Summer 2006 issue of Canoeroots magazine This article was first published in the Early Summer 2006 issue of Canoeroots Magazine. Subscribe to Paddling Magazine’s print and digital editions, or browse the archives.

Feature photo: Canoeroots staff