“Two skies, Dave, two skies. That’s what my Dad used to tell me, on days like today.”

Henry Basil, our local guide, rests his paddle on the coaming of our tandem kayak as he scans the ethereal waters of Great Slave Lake in the Northwest Territories. Henry grew up in Lutsel K’e (temporarily known as Snowdrift on Canadian maps) on Great Slave’s East Arm, and he has seen many mornings like this one, where the waters of the lake appear as a mercurial spill on a giant table, sky and lake blending on the horizon.

The wakes of our four boats are the only ripples on the lower sky twin that Henry’s father described so perfectly—the cloudless azure above mirrored perfectly in the still waters of the Arm.

“Yeaah—hway!” exclaims Henry in his local Chipewyan language, his arms raised in thanks to the sky, “Thanks to the creator for this day!”

The rugged and remote East Arm of Deh Cho—Big Lake, as Great Slave is known to local Dene—has drawn visitors from the south for almost 200 years. The lake sits at the northern limit of Canada’s dwindling boreal forest. Not far north, the forest gives way to tundra. The terminus of the East Arm provides the most direct access to the waterways that flow to the Arctic Ocean, and European explorers used these waters as a gateway to overland exploration of our vast Arctic. Names like George Back, John Rae and the infamous Sir John Franklin all based expeditions from Fort Reliance, of which the ruins can still be seen at the tip of the Arm.

The East Arm’s endless peninsulas and countless islands are made of some of the oldest stones on the planet—the tortured plutonic mass known as the Canadian Shield, scarred by repeated glaciations and heaved into their present formations by the incalculable forces of geology and time.

The ancient rock is rife with the treasures that have lured southerners north for a century. The Northwest Territories suffered its first mineral rush, for gold, in the early 1900s. Vast tracts of forest cover were burnt off to ease the difficulties of prospecting in the boreal forest. Hunters decimated populations of muskox, moose and caribou to feed the hungry hordes of prospectors and miners flooding north to seek their fortunes.

Today, with the gold seams played out, a second wave of prospectors and transient mine workers are migrating north to work the “diamond rush.” One mine, called Ekati, produces a staggering six percent of the entire world supply. Major players like Ekati and Diavik try hard, at least on paper, to work with local First Nations and northern interests. However, many northerners are tired of watching resources and riches disappear from their traditional lands. 

I didn’t have to go to the World Freestyle Championships in Austria. I could have assigned the story and photos to another writer and photographer and stayed back in the office to take care of more important things.

There are always more important things.

But I didn’t start Rapid magazine to take care of important things.

Rapid began because I dreamed of travelling around the world, paddling, writing and pretending to be a photographer. I remember being seven years old, wanting to be the bearded guy wearing khakis in National Geographic, riding in the back of a Jeep chasing elephants, two Canons hanging from his neck.

Eleven years later I was sitting across the desk from my high school guidance counsellor. He was studying my marks, and I was telling him about my journal, the elephants, the Jeep, and how I was sure to have trouble keeping the dust off my lenses.

He wasn’t listening.

“Your grades are much better in math and science,” he said finally, pulling an application form from the top drawer of his tidy steel desk, “you’ll be accepted in engineering.”

Guidance counsellors are paid to sell young minds a real job for the tiny price of their dreams. He was right: I was accepted to engineering and I went. But my dreams kept bubbling to the surface. Complex equations reduced my spirit to the lowest common denominator and branded a squiggled not-equal-to sign into my soul. I only lasted a year….

Very few of the 370 competitors at the 2003 Rodeo Worlds in Graz are scraping together what a guidance counsellor would consider a respectable living by doing cartwheels. But they gathered at the River Mur to chase dreams. Dreams of gold medals, or dreams of paddling the crystal blue waters of the nearby Soca River in the Slovenian Alps. Dreams too strong to be squashed by stuffy men in cardi- gans sitting at desks full of forms.

Take the 17-year-old Norwegian paddler I met in the Graz airport on our way home. He told me he’d flushed early in his first ride and didn’t make it past the first round. His mom was proud of him and she’d be picking him up at the airport. He’d trained for a year and travelled a thousand miles across Europe chasing his dream. Tomorrow he’d be back in school to catch up on more important things.

“Isn’t it a long way to travel to paddle for 60 seconds?” I asked him.

“Yes, but I did it,” he said proudly. “Besides, you came way further and didn’t even paddle!”

The kid was right. I didn’t paddle on this trip. There was no dusty Jeep or charging elephants, but I too was travelling the world, chasing my dreams, two Canons hanging from my neck. 

This article first appeared in the Fall 2003 issue of Rapid Magazine.

Some paddling bars are the light at the end of tunnel after a long day on the river when you’re tired and hungry. Like Calumet Pizza on the Rouge, The Mad Trapper on the Kicking Horse or the Backeddy Pub at the water taxi dock for Skook. Ever stopped to wonder why these bars are located in such thirst-quenching locations? Because some thirsty and enterprising paddler came along before you and he too dreamed of a cold beer at the takeout. 

Then there are the paddling landmarks, the destination bars like the Madawaska Valley’s Wilno Tavern, the Ottawa’s River Club, The Drake in Canmore and the Rockcliffe Tavern at Minden’s Gull River. After dinner you sucker a driver and pile into the largest vehicle in the campground and crank the only cassette in the van—a live bootleg of Bob Marley. 

Lucas Foerster is not what we’re looking for at all. Wiry and tanned from a summer spent outside as a researcher in Point Pelee National Park, he starts off by making it perfectly clear that just because he likes looking at birds doesn’t mean he isn’t a normal, active 27-year-old guy. Lucas knows he doesn’t fit the nerdy profile of the usual birding suspect: retired, hefty disposable income, khaki safari pants and questionable social skills. He tells me right away that he’s also into surfing. He even drives a vintage 1970s VW camper van. His mountain bike is parked just outside.