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. 

There are few things I enjoy more than a cookout over an open fire or barbecue. It’s a great way to relax and have a good time, but if it isn’t done right it can lead to serious illness. Food poisoning is one of the most common and widespread ailments in human history, not to mention a surefire way to ruin a camping weekend or picnic.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, food-related illnesses increase 150 per cent during the summer months.

Many people are unaware of the symptoms of food poisoning and never consider their storage or preparation of foods or drinks to be the cause of an illness.

The symptoms of food poisoning can vary depending on the type of bacteria causing the illness and the amount of food eaten. They include severe diarrhea, nausea, chills, fever, gas pains and vomiting—pretty similar to the flu or heat stroke. The incubation period of food poisoning can range from hours to weeks.

Most food-related illnesses can be easily prevented. Foods should be kept in a cooler in sealed containers—plastic tubs with snap-on lids work fine— and not wrapped in plastic wrap or aluminum foil. As the temperature in your cooler goes up, frozen foods will start to thaw and possibly leak. You don’t want your sticky buns sponging up the blood from your steak. When packing your food learn to live by the motto: Separate, don’t contaminate.

KEEPING THINGS CLEAN

Another big concern is keeping everything clean. Wash your hands, utensils and any food preparation surfaces before cooking and after handling any raw foods. Have a pot of warm, soapy water on hand for quick washes during meal prep. Good hygiene while cooking can greatly reduce the risk of food poisoning.

I couldn’t stop laughing when Ashley first appeared in a Speedo earlier in the trip. He defended it, telling me that an Australian company came up with the infamous banana-hammock a century ago to minimize drag on a swimmer by mimicking a naked body. I told him that was why it was funny. But now I wasn’t laughing, I was caught naked and struggling waist-deep on slippery rocks with a broken foot and no help available but a hairy, middle-aged, wannabe Olympic swimmer.

Perkin’s 1996 book Talking to Angels is comprised of three autobiographical stories. the middle one is about his summer of self-imposed Arctic exile on the Northwest Territories’ Baillie River. He lived in a converted meat locker with a weather radio, roaming wildlife and breathlessly spacious beauty as his only distractions. His lyrical writing penetrates the sublime violence of a northern spring break-up and the life and death truths apparent in the carcass of a scavenged musk ox.

This middle section is most popular with canoeists, but the first third of the book prefaces his time in the Arctic. It documents his decline into mental illness as a young man. Written against a backdrop of the wider insanity of 1968—an escalating Vietnam war and the assassinations of Martin luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy—Perkins writes of living in an Alice in Wonderland world where nothing makes sense but the feeling that he has “lost his keys,” and can’t find them no matter how hard he looks. He portrays himself as the only sane observer in a maximum security ward and writes, in dripping metaphors, that he’s floating adrift, swimming in darkness, sinking, drowning… his escape attempt ends with him knocking on the hospital’s back door, too tired and drugged to get away.