Getting To Know James Bay, The Schoolyard Bully

My fear of this bay is leaving me. I’m standing in my shorts, waist-deep in the Arctic Ocean. Silt-laden, caramel water stretches out endlessly in all directions except south, where the lowlands appear as a sliver on the horizon. The late August sun is high and hot, backed by a bluebird sky. Our canoe bobs beside me as I fix the camera to the bow in order to get some tandem paddling shots of my partner Alex and me. He is relieving himself, whistling happily as he takes in the vastness of it all.

Unrelated to Alex’s urinary tract, the water of James Bay is surprisingly warm and sweet. Dozens of giant rivers in Ontario and Quebec pour countless tonnes of freshwater into it every day, raising the temperature and diluting it to the point that its salinity is undetectable. At this moment, lingering in its embrace, James Bay seems more lake than ocean—and is far friendlier than I could ever have imagined.

[ Paddling Trip Guide: View all canoe trips in Ontario ]

It’s our first day paddling the 70-km stretch from the mouth of the Harricana River to Moosonee, Ontario. We began our journey 23 days and 1,000 km ago on Algonquin Park’s Opeongo Lake, but everything leading up to James Bay was merely a preamble. I’ve read accounts of wicked storms, brutal mosquitoes and being trapped out on the tidal flats. Camping is supposed to be marginal at best as the surrounding landscape is made up primarily of wetlands; great for birds and bugs but not so great for canoe trippers. Most groups that paddle the Harricana arrange a plane or motorboat shuttle back to Moosonee in order to avoid the crossing. To me, James Bay was like the schoolyard bully with a bad reputation who no one talked to but everyone feared.

Our magic carpet has been pulled out from underneath us to reveal a damp clay floor that is now our home for the night.

Tidal flats on James Bay sometimes extend 10 km from land. This makes it easy to hop out in the shallows to do your business, but it also means an outgoing tide is capable of leaving you stranded kilometers deep in the no-man’s land between water and shore. That is the only thing on our minds. We are ready to camp one night on the bay, but we know one thing above all else: we do not want to get stranded on the tidal flats.

Using our tide tables, we had planned to hit James Bay on the flood, paddle hard for 30 km to Little Netishi Point to camp on dry land, and then finish the trip off the next day.

Everything is going as planned after starting on time, but we soon find ourselves pulling up a river-like channel as the rising tide rushes in to shore.

The channel is a slog but it lets us avoid the long peninsula-like tidal flat that juts out to the north from the mouth. Once through the channel, we stay well offshore in order to paddle without striking bottom with every stroke.

The end of the day nears and our GPS has us homing in on Little Netishi Point. It’s around this time that we pause for Alex’s pit stop and for me to feel complacent. We are on schedule to make it in plenty of time but, inexplicably, we paddle past and keep going. The next point is just 5 km further, the water is calm, and we can make it easily—or so we think.

A couple of clicks beyond Little Netishi our paddles begin to repeatedly bump the ground. The tide is ebbing. We try to head to shore, but to no avail. When the tide goes out on James Bay, it goes like a drag racer. Within minutes we can no longer see water. We are stranded. Our magic carpet has been pulled out from underneath us to reveal a damp clay floor that is now our home for the night.

[ Also read: 7 Steps To Plan Your Dream Canoe Trip ]

Suddenly confronted by another aspect of this bully, he again seems to be a pretty decent guy. The tidal flats are firm and level—exactly what you look for in a good campsite. We deal with the excessively damp surface by lining the bottom of our tent with a tarp. The unencumbered breeze keeps the notorious James Bay mosquitoes under control as well. They’re still present in impressive numbers, but are limited to tucking behind us in the wind-eddy created by our bodies. We merely have to step aside and they are blown into oblivion.

An additional bonus is that, since Nunavut lays claim to all of James Bay and its intertidal zone, we can add a territory to the two provinces we’ve already camped in during our journey.

Before tucking in for the night, we consult our tables and set our alarms for 3 a.m. so we won’t be washed awake by the incoming tide. Stirring at this pre-dawn hour, we’re treated to the full cycle of sunrise over the unencumbered curve of the Earth. With us packed and ready to go, James Bay returns on cue and buoys us to paddle on.

Our final day is hard work. We battle steep chop, a headwind, and the current of the Moose River before making Moosonee by mid-afternoon. Landfall is euphoric. I’ve completed another journey and, more importantly, made friends with the schoolyard bully.

This article originally appeared in Canoeroots & Family Camping‘s Spring 2009 issue. Subscribe to Paddling Magazine’s print and digital editions here, or browse the archives here.

Frank Wolf is a Vancouver-based writer. He last wrote about paddling the boreal forest in the Summer 2008 issue of Canoeroots.

Safe Solo

Skills

Three weeks of battling the cold, rain and snow were starting to pay off as I worked my way west and north of Temagami. I was on a five-month solo canoe trip and it had been an unusually cold and wet spring. After multiple slips and falls and one runaway canoe, I was beginning to feel good. The days were getting longer, my muscles stronger and my confidence greater.

My topo map told me I had one more portage before the next campsite. I rolled my canoe onto my shoulders and hit the trail. That’s when everything changed. I tripped on a root and fell. When I tried to stand I knew my trip was over. Three anguished hours later I grabbed my satellite phone and made the call. After all I’d been through, an innocent stumble had left me with a badly torn groin muscle and no way to go on.

Considering where I was and that I was alone, I was lucky. If I hadn’t been carrying a satellite phone you might not be reading this. Solo trippers don’t have partners to lean on when things go wrong. To trip alone you need to be prepared and attentive to every detail, because the consequences of mistakes or accidents are totally different from group tripping. Here are some tips on staying safe when alone in the bush.

Ditch kit

A ditch kit is a fanny pack of essential safety gear that you should wear at all times. It contains everything you need to survive for a few days should you become separated from the rest of your gear. Include items like matches, emergency blanket, candles, compass, bug repellent, fishing hooks and line, pen flare, bear bangers, knife and a personal locator beacon. Pack it, and wear it.

Tether your canoe

Why do you need to wear your ditch kit all the time? In case you forget to tether your canoe to shore anytime you step out of it (even if it is up on shore and overturned). If your loaded canoe takes an end run on a river with steady current or blows away from an island campsite when the water is cold you can quickly become a modern day Robinson Crusoe.

Bear spray and bangers

The chances of encountering a problem bear in the backcountry are minimal, but without a group to help intimi- date the bear, you’ll be glad for some backup.

Leave a float plan

Before setting out, fill out and distribute a detailed float plan or itinerary. It should include your route, when you expect to be back and the colour of your canoe and tent. If you don’t return on time, authorities will have a good idea of who they’re looking for and where to find you. Leave copies with family members, local authorities (police, park office), air base operators and in your car.

Know when to walk

With nobody coming to rescue you or your gear if you dump you should evaluate rapids conservatively. It shouldn’t be too hard to check your ego and hit the trail. After all, no one’s watching.

Satellite phone or personal locator beacon

You might find these devices intrusive, but they could be your only ticket home if you become immobile when alone.

Don’t forget to eat

As simple as it sounds, it’s important to stay well-nourished to stay strong and in a good frame of mind. If you are packing for your first solo trip you may not appreciate the extra fuel your body will require. Group trippers share the workload, but when you’re alone you’re battling headwinds yourself, carrying all the gear, doing all the cooking, all the cleaning and all the packing. Plan on eating 25 per cent more food than usual, more if travelling early or late in the year.

Heebie jeebies be gone

Waking up with your heart pounding each time a mouse slowly circles your tent is no way to stay well rested. Steel yourself for the amplifying effects of solitude by paying attention to nocturnal sounds when camping with the security of a tent-mate. Be mindful of how many noises there are at night, so you won’t be too surprised by your heightened perception when you are, you hope, the only human for miles.

This article on solo tripping was published in the Spring 2009 issue of Canoeroots magazine.

This article first appeared in the Spring 2009 issue of Canoeroots Magazine.

Salvage Rights

Stories

On a river in the boreal forest of northern Ontario, I couldn’t stop thinking about the American Southwest. In the late 1950s, legendary writer Edward Abbey took a final raft trip down the wild Glen Canyon, just before a dam closed the Colorado River in 1963 and formed placid, sterile Lake Powell. Abbey immortalized the paradisiacal Canyonlands in his essays and helped usher in the radical environmental movement with his novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, in which protagonist George Washington Hayduke plots to blow up the Glen Canyon dam.

Lake Superior’s White River is suffering a similar fate to Abbey’s Colorado—albeit at a smaller scale. I first paddled the White a decade ago, when the threat of hydroelectric development along its course was mere hearsay. I remember a series of runnable rapids, cascading falls and calm meanders interspersed with a healthy number of portages and granite and sand campsites. The highlight of the trip was Umbata Falls, where my friend Chris and I white-knuckled our way into an eddy at the lip, deafened by the roar of the 30-metre drop. We then shouldered our gear and followed an ancient, faintly marked, ankle-twisting portage, enjoying slack- jaw views from the rim of the billowing canyon.

I vowed to never paddle the White River again when I learned in 2003 that a local Pic River Ojibway band had partnered with a developer to build a dam and hydroelectric generating station at Umbata. The project was approved in spite of the White’s 1999 designation as a provincial waterway park; the government said it had to keep a 1993 promise to reserve Umbata and two other falls on the river for hydropower.

Hydropower catchwords like “green”and “renewable” don’t soften the loss of some of Canada’s finest wilderness rivers

Curiosity eventually led me to the developer’s website, which showed aerial photos with schematic overlays of rubber weirs, impoundment areas and an underground penstock that would burrow beneath the old portage trail and channel the river’s flow into twin turbines. I heard that an all-terrain vehicle shuttle had replaced the portage around the Umbata construction site. I wrote a lengthy, passionate letter to my MPP, and received a stock reply in return.

Countless smaller, “run of the river” projects like Umbata, and larger, Hydro Quebec-style mega-developments could become even more common on Canada’s rivers in the years to come, especially if Transport Canada gets away with gutting the Navigable Waters Protection Act. In a 2005 report, Ontario’s electricity planning agency highlighted 190 potential waterpower sites across the province.

It’s true that in the age of climate change, harnessing the low-emissions energy of falling water sounds like a logical way to meet electricity needs. But the trouble is, argue environmentalists like Janet Sumner, the executive director of CPAWS Wildlands League, feeding the grid with more hydroelectricity does nothing to curb our swelling appetite for power. Hydropower catchwords like “green”and “renewable” don’t soften the loss of some of Canada’s finest wilderness rivers.

In the spirit of “salvage tourism”—like Abbey on the Colorado or the growing list of adventurers racing to be the last to see land- scapes imperiled by climate change, mineral development and urban sprawl—I convinced myself to make a final run on the White River. I’d get off the river two days before its flow was shunted and Umbata’s powerhouse turbines spun for the first time.

The first few days of the 85-kilometre-long trip were much the way I remembered. I crashed through chutes of whitewater and snuck by a moose with platter-sized antlers in a backwater lagoon. I spent my nights in copses of spruce and cedar. With the excep- tion of a few obnoxious ribbons of orange flagging tape marking two other potential hydro sites that the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources has issued to another First Nation, I saw nothing calling for Hayduke-like ecotage.

We reached Umbata at lunch on day three. The traditional portage at the precipice of the falls had been rerouted to follow 2.5 kilometres of logging roads, far beyond the sights and sounds of the falls and canyon.

I carried my canoe past clearcuts, transmission corridors and mounds of pulverized bedrock. But descending the final grade to the river, the relief I normally feel at the end of a portage was absent. A thin veil of poplar barely hid a box store-sized generating structure. In behind, the dark, ominous maw of the canyon was diminished.

I wanted to erupt—to attack the monstrous powerhouse with obscenities and rocks.

My thoughts swung to Hayduke: “Freedom, not safety, is the highest good.” But it was too late to fight for the White’s freedom, and I couldn’t stand to stick around. I don’t care if Outside magazine has called it the “new” thing. There’s no satisfaction in salvage tourism; no sense of accomplishment in being the final person to paddle the White River before turbines spin, power lines hum and Umbata runs dry. I’d rather wait as long as it takes to be the first to paddle it again when energy conservation has rendered the dam unnecessary. Faraway, in the American Southwest, Abbey’s beloved Canyonlands could one day reappear, as Lake Powell levels continue to drop to feed thirsty desert metropolises, leaving the Glen Canyon dam higher and drier every year. Perhaps a similar but more noble salvation awaits the White.

I loaded my canoe and ran the next set of rapids blind, backpaddling, drawing and cleanly missing pillow rocks and grabby holes. Downstream, the last wild stretch of the White River beckoned. Digging deep, I wondered if our demand for power could ever truly be more powerful than a river. But I don’t have an answer yet.

This article on the White River was published in the Spring 2009 issue of Canoeroots magazine.

This article first appeared in the Spring 2009 issue of Canoeroots Magazine.

Fun For Everyone: Top 6 Canoe Games To Play This Summer

Kids wearing lifejackets, floating in water beside overturned canoe — Practice your skills without even realizing it. | Photo by: Virginia Marshall

I remember my first experience learning how to canoe. The sky was dark, the lake grey. I dipped a few strokes timidly into the uninviting water and wondered when I could go back to shore. Then someone suggested a game.

We crashed, capsized, laughed—and probably learned. Sleek torpedo or leaking bathtub, the canoe itself was all but forgotten. While clambering atop the shiny wet hull or spinning on a dime to evade an incoming projectile, that day I learned the most important lesson in learning to canoe: we do it because it’s fun.

The following canoe games are great for all ages and will help get paddlers comfortable in a canoe, practicing their strokes, and overcoming their inhibitions, without even realizing it.

1. Race to a dozen

Players: Four players, one taskmaster
You will need: Two canoes, one whistle, two floating balls

How to play

Players form teams of two per canoe, both teams get one ball
The moderator calls out a task or challenge, then blows the whistle
At the sound of the whistle, each team rushes to perform the task
Teams get one point for being the first to complete the task
The first team to get 12 points wins

Task ideas

Switch positions with teammate
Pivot canoe 360 degrees
Jump into water, swim under canoe, and climb back in
Throw ball into other team’s canoe
Have each team throw their ball as far as possible before going to retrieve the other team’s ball. When retrieving balls, teams must paddle with butt ends or paddle backward

[ Also read: 5 Fun Children’s Camping Games ]

2. Gunwale bobbing

Players: Two
You will need: One canoe

How to play

Two players stand facing each other, balanced on the gunwales; one at the bow, the other at the stern
Players bob and wiggle to set the canoe bobbing
Object of game is to make your opponent lose balance, sending him or her for a swim first
To increase the challenge, try moving further toward the ends of the canoe

3. Sticky situation

Players: At least three solo paddlers or six tandem paddlers
You will need: At least three canoes, a roll of duct tape

How to play

Set boundaries for the area of play. For example between the shore, docks, buoys, etc.
Cut two foot-long pieces of duct tape for each canoe. Fold the duct tape partially over onto itself so only four inches of adhesive is exposed
Stick a piece of duct tape to the bow and stern of each canoe
The moderator instructs the canoes to spread out and begins play with a whistle
Object of game is to grab as many pieces of tape as you can from the other canoes
Moderator ends game with a whistle
The team with the most tape wins

4. Ultimate canoe frisbee

Players: Minimum eight
You will need: Minimum four canoes, one floating Frisbee or soft football, one whistle

How to play

Using existing boundaries or buoys, approximate a football field, with end zones about 30 metres apart
Divide players into two teams
Object of game is to score points by completing a pass in the other team’s end zone
Play begins with teams racing from their own end zone to pick up the Frisbee floating at mid-field
Players can take only five strokes when their boat has the Frisbee before they must pass to a teammate
When the Frisbee is passed, the receiving players must catch it inside their canoe
If the receiving players miss the pass, the Frisbee goes to the other team to continue play
When a goal is scored, the other team gains possession and begins play from mid-field
If the water is warm and the group is enthusiastic, you can play full contact (read: capsize) ultimate, but only against canoes in possession of the Frisbee
First team to reach 10 points wins

5. Clowns

Players: As many as you can!
You will need: One canoe

How to play

Object of game is to pile as many people as possible into a floating canoe
Players must enter the canoe from the water by climbing in while the others balance the canoe
Try having competitions: boys versus girls or kids versus adults, or just see how many you can fit while someone takes a picture

[ Find the perfect family canoe trip in our Paddling Trip Guide ]

6. The paddle game

Players: The more the merrier
You will need: One paddle for each player

How to play

Players form a circle, standing shoulder-width apart and facing inward
Players rest the blades of their paddles on the ground in front of them, holding the butt ends of their paddles at arm’s length in front of their chests
A moderator calls commands—one to the right, two to the left, etc.
Players must let go of their paddle and move in the prescribed direction to grab their neighbour’s paddle before it falls
If a paddle falls to the ground, the player who was holding it and the player who didn’t catch it leave the circle.
To increase the challenge, have the players step back so they are farther apart
If all but two are eliminated, these last players try to catch their own paddle after letting go and spinning around; first once, then twice and so on until there is a winner

Featured photo: Virginia Marshall

Learning on the Fly

Skills

Teaching myself to fly fish was like taking myself canoeing before I could tell a Grumman from a cattle trough. I found myself at sea with the paddle upside down.

Before my canoe trip to B.C.’s Bowron Lakes I had borrowed a six-weight travel fly rod and parted with enough money and dignity in a fancy fly shop to walk away with all the other gear I needed to go fishing.

At our first campsite I crouched with my plastic shopping bag of fly shop goodies and my nine-piece rod and cross-referenced all the user manuals and package instructions with a book called What Fly Do I Use. This is how I figured out how to put the rod together, attach the reel to the rod right-side up, clinch-knot the fly to the tippet, measure the tippet and loop-tie tippet to leader, leader to sink tip, and sink tip to fly line.

Untangling a 4x tipper from an alder bush is one way to pass the time while your trip mates cook dinner

Hours later, I had a canoe-length of mostly invisible leader dangling with a hook on the end like a purpose-built weapon for snagging eyeballs. I carefully carried it to a clearing by the water that had recently been evacuated by bystanders, and ventured a cast. I can tell you this. Untangling a 4x tippet from an alder bush is one way to pass time while your trip mates cook dinner. So went day one.

I paddled by day and practiced by night until I cut my set-up time from two hours to 10 minutes. Which left the cast. Nobody on my trip knew how to fly fish, yet half of them thought they knew enough to instruct. One had seen her father fly fish once long ago.

“But doesn’t it go something like this?” she insisted, arm flailing. A park ranger buzzed up in a motorboat to say, “Pretend your elbow is strapped to your body.” She didn’t know how to fly fish either, but had once seen someone teach it.

Annoyed, I walked down the beach to where I could be alone to practice under the guidance of my own soul. Gradually I recalled the cadence that I’d learned during a half-day course last spring, the back-wait-forward-release that would shoot the line a little ways out into the lake—plop.

Halfway around the Bowron Lakes the route descends the Isaac River. An ice-clear mountain stream with deep green pools, the Isaac’s the kind of place where you picture yourself fly fishing even

If you don’t. I raced through the portage and set up my rod. By this time I’d perfected a passable double haul that could zing the fly across 100 feet of river and land it in an eddy with a modicum of grace. When it worked it felt damn good.

I’d like to be able to tell you about the monster trout I caught. On the drive from Vancouver I’d cracked a fortune cookie at the Hong Sheng Restaurant in Williams Lake that read, “The rainbow’s treasures will soon belong to you.” Meaning rainbow trout, I’d thought. Destiny. But so far all it had brought was rain.

The problem was I’d forgotten the names of all the flies I’d bought, the caddises and duns and stone flies and Hendricksons. I’d forgotten which flies were supposed to be sinking flies or floating flies, and which were for rivers or lakes. I chose flies like a rat building a nest, going for colour and bling. But it didn’t matter because arcing my line out onto the Isaac River gave me as much pleasure as any fish. You hungry bystanders and your “Catch us a fish, catch us a fish,” I thought. What do you know? Can’t you see this is my Brad Pitt moment?

On the final night of the trip I started trolling. Fly fishermen call it “streaming.” I’d settled on the only fly whose name I could remember: the woolly bugger. The woolly bugger was a fly I could understand. A fly, the book said, meant to represent nothing and be good for everything. A very non fly-fishermanly fly, that woolly bugger.

I got in the canoe and streamed my soggy, last-ditch woolly bugger around in the dark. Then I felt a flurry of tugs and the tip of my rod danced. My hands shook as I reached for the net and almost dumped the canoe. Everyone on Swan Lake knew I’d caught a fish from the clatter of my paddle and the burst of camera flash like a meteoroid in the night.

After the photo, I carefully slid the wriggling creature back into the water. Be free, you eater of woolly buggers. You not-a-rainbow-trout.

It was not a fortune-cookie’s promise come true. But arriving at its rightful place on my learning curve, the tiny fish gasped a promise of its own. Your success can only improve.

This article on fly fishing was published in the Spring 2009 issue of Canoeroots magazine.

This article first appeared in the Spring 2009 issue of Canoeroots Magazine.

Supermodel Canoes

The storied poetry of master builders laying cedar strips on an antique form to build a canoe is still present in the manufacture of today’s ultra-light canoes. Although modern kevlar canoes are made in factories using the same space-age materials used to make bulletproof vests and airplanes, their creation still involves equal parts industry, innovation and human skill.

A tour of one such facility feels more like a visit to a grandfather’s workshop than it does a trip to one of Henry Ford’s production lines.

The Wenonah Canoe factory sits at the foot of 600-foot bluffs that overlook the Mississippi River in Winona, Minnesota. Inside, workers create the kind of ultra-light canoes that make long trips easier and short trips faster.

Twenty-five of the 29 Wenonah models are available using the bread-and-butter kevlar ultra-light hull material Wenonah has been developing for more then three decades. The minimal thickness of these hulls means the heaviest touring class canoes weigh in at just 55 pounds. The shortest solo canoes weigh a mere 24 pounds.

Speed and precision in this stage of the process are critical

Proponents of high-end composite hulls will tell you they are stiff, quiet and literally bulletproof.

With work divided among nimble hands and specialized equipment, it takes just a few hours for a hull to take shape. Each style begins in a custom wooden mould.

A trigger man first sprays the inside of the mould with resin. Next comes the kevlar. So there are no seams, a single piece of kevlar three feet wide and up to 25 feet long is laid and pressed by hand into the mould. After the sheet conforms to the interior of the mould, smaller strips are applied to reinforce the ends before another layer of resin and kevlar is applied. With the resin having an easy working time of only about five minutes, speed and precision in this stage of the process are critical.

Smock-clad workers then put the mould, with the burgeoning canoe still inside, on a gurney and wheel it out of the spray booth to harden, like a patient leaving surgery for the recovery room. But the operation is far from over.

Next comes the plastic surgery. After they trim any excess kevlar off, workers lay down a diamond-shaped PVC foam sheet and some 3/8- inch ribs.

The foam sheet and ribs serve three purposes. They stiffen the hull, they provide buoyancy to a hull that is so dense it would barely float if over-turned and they provide a place to attach components to a hull that is otherwise so thin there would be no way to outfit the canoe with things like footrests or side-mounted seats.

A third layer of kevlar is applied to the interior to seal in the foam.

The next step is crucial to reducing the weight of the canoe. Workers lay a plastic bag fitted with four vacuum hoses over the canoe’s interior. Overnight, light suction will remove up to eight pounds of material, slowly extracting any still-hardening resin that hasn’t impregnated the kevlar.

After the excess resin is removed, the PVC foam end tanks are fitted and installed for extra buoyancy and fibreglassed in. With that, the structural aspect of the canoe is complete. Excluding the time spent vacuum bagging, the hands-on labour has so far taken about an hour.

After the canoe has cured, workers free it from the mould using specialized pliers. A ceiling-mounted lift hoists the canoe from the mould and it is taken to another area where the edges are finished off, minor imperfections are made perfect and the hull is buffed.

The canoe then undergoes 45 minutes’ worth of finishing touches such as gunwales, thwarts, deck plates, a yoke and seats. Finally a last buff and, of course, the logo placement means the canoe is ready to push off in all its lightweight glory.

When fresh from the factory, these ultra- light—and bulletproof—canoes are not as aromatic as a cedar canoe, but only the most stubborn traditionalist would deny the worth of a building technique that lets a paddler ease into a favorite lake in the stillness of morning as quietly and effortlessly as possible.

This article on ultra-light canoes was published in the Spring 2009 issue of Canoeroots magazine.

This article first appeared in the Spring 2009 issue of Canoeroots Magazine.

Dear Diary

Stories

I had no interest in canoeing when my father gave me a copy of Don Starkell’s Paddle to the Amazon on my 13th birthday. Two weeks later, I had finished Starkell’s diary of his father-and-sons canoe trip across the Americas, purged the public library of all its canoe titles and convinced my father to take me on my first overnighter. As we drove to the river, a stout rented fibreglass canoe tied to the roof of my dad’s Jetta, Starkell’s journal dominated my imagination. I was psyched for pirates, mutiny and towering waves—maybe even starvation and long, stringy hair.

The best trip journals are part personal reflection, part record of information

None of that came to pass. I know this because I kept a journal myself. The penmanship is sloppy, and some trains of thought never pull into the station, but all I have to do is re-read it to trip again for the first time.

It’s because of that journal that I remember that first canoe trip better than my last. Memories of the nine summers I’ve spent as a wilderness guide are more fleeting. My logbook from those years is mundane and impersonal. I recorded campsites, weather, menu and morale.

The only things that seemed to warrant more documentation were scraped knees and bee stings. Strings of campsites and thunderstorms replaced feelings about what really happened.

That’s not to say that a matter-of-fact trip log doesn’t have its place. It depends why you want to put pen to paper. A trip journal can be one of two things—a personal reflection, or a record of information. But the best are a combination of both—like Starkell’s day-to-day deliberations of paddling nearly 20,000 kilometres from Winnipeg to the Amazon. According to editor Charles Wilkins, Paddle to the Amazon began as a million-word, foot-high stack of trip notes. Pared down, it became the stuff of legends, a story of high adventure, hardship and love.

The feel-good reason for taking time to write in a journal is that the very activity forces you to slow down and appreciate where you are. It also helps you understand why you’ve chosen to escape society for a time. The practical part is that a journal reinforces your memory and makes things easier if you decide to go back for a second trip, or share your notes with friends.

I still have the yellow Hilroy notebook that was my first journal: Saturday, June 4. … I broke my paddle on the third rapid and I had to use the blade part like a ping-pong racket for the rest of the day. Dad said we should’ve brought along one of my broken goalie sticks as a spare.

Perhaps not a bestseller on par with Starkell’s, but well worth recording.

You need not aspire to win a Pulitzer Prize to keep a journal:

• Discipline is paramount. Don’t miss a day, or you’ll miss the next one too.

• Keep your notebook accessible in a Zip-loc bag so you can grab it throughout the day before your thoughts leave you.

• Voice recorders work, but only if you trust yourself to transcribe later.

• Engage the group and elicit material by conducting daily polls or surveys relating to the trip.

• Awarding a “quote of the day” is a good way to engage your partners and mark each day’s most worthy moments.

• Don’t leave the journal entry until night when you are tired and need to hang the food. Take regular breaks on the water to write as your canoe spins in the wind.

• Dirty paper and pens don’t mix; use a trusty pencil.

• A group journal in which each trip member is responsible for specific days adds variety to the manuscript and lets you learn from other people’s writing style.

• Hold yourself to a higher standard than just recording the weather and menu for the day. Years later, you’ll be more interested in the sounds and feelings of paddling a class III rapid, rather than the line you took through it.

This article on journaling was published in the Spring 2009 issue of Canoeroots magazine.

This article first appeared in the Spring 2009 issue of Canoeroots Magazine.

The People in Your Neighbourhood

Stories

Photo: flickr.com/hebdromadaires — The People in Your Neighbourhood

I was excited about my new five-pound refillable propane tank. I had two buttered cheese sandwiches in the frying pan and two hungry campers begging for food. It was our first father-toddlers camping trip and I just then remembered the safe place in my basement where I’d left the adapter hose that connects my new tank to my Coleman stove.

What happened next is a bit shaky, like the real life video footage from an episode of COPS. Driven to crime by hungry, whining children, I stole the green canister from my neighbour’s abandoned picnic table.

Upon their return I thought it best to confess. I’m glad I did. The two large middle-aged men were, I’m certain, linked to the Russian mafia—or let’s just say one was in importing and the other was a simple truck driver who just purchased a new BMW 760.

I know all this because they invited us back for souvlaki skewers cooked over their fire. After the kids were tucked into their sleeping bags, I returned to share a $200 bottle of Johnny Walker Blue toasting the new automobile.

My first 20 years of camping I did in remote places—mountains, lakes and rivers— where seeing another group was grounds to keep moving to a different spot. Since starting a family, one of the many changes I’ve had to accept is trading these solitary sojourns for a more convivial camping atmosphere.

A few weeks after the propane incident, I spent the August long weekend at the busiest campground in the Highway 60 corridor of Algonquin Park. Packed into the knot of campsites were nearly 300 people—more than the population of the two towns in which I live and work.

Ziggy was the first person I asked to borrow a corkscrew. The twenty-something hippy girl across the campsite road rummaged through embroidered pouches and secret compartments in her chartreuse Westfalia. Nothing.

The campers to the left were Baptist and said they didn’t drink, although the teenage son suggested we just sink the cork. I said thanks and moved on before the questioning began.

On the other side, a young couple cuddled close to the fire, wine glasses in hand. Perfect. Except they’d forgotten a corkscrew too and grabbed a screw-off bottle on their way to the campground.

Finally, I met Harry Sarin, a radiologist at a big hospital in the city, and his wife, a nurse on leave raising their three children.

It was their first time camping with kids, but by the looks of their sun-faded pup tents and micro stoves (and yes, a corkscrew) I guessed that they’d backpacked Europe.

The following morning, Harry wandered over asking if we had sugar for their coffee. We handed him a bottle of maple syrup. It was the best we could do. Over breakfast the kids became fast friends and we planned an all-day hike and cycle together.

Campgrounds like these aren’t about wilderness. To me they are about being surrounded by like-minded outdoor families— people you get to know more in a weekend than you do your neighbours at home.

Campground neighbours give what you don’t have, loan you what you’ve forgotten. They pick things up in town and leave you their worms and leftover wood. They boost dead batteries and return stray Frisbees. These neighbours make family camping more fun than it would be without them.

And, campground neighbours forgive you for stealing propane canisters and don’t ask truck drivers how they afford $200,000 European luxury sedans.

This article on campground experience was published in the Spring 2009 issue of Canoeroots magazine.

This article first appeared in the Spring 2009 issue of Canoeroots Magazine.

Betcha Didn’t Know About… Moose

Stories

Photo: Steve Page — Betcha Didn't Know About... Moose

The word moose is derived from the Algonquian name moz, meaning he trims, shaves. Must be that unfashionable mullet, goatee, and patchy spring coat.
Moose are known as elk in Europe. North American elk were named by early European explorers who thought this large deer species resembled the European elk (i.e. moose). Presumably they had yet to see an actual moose…
In 1910, 10 moose introduced in Fiordland, New Zealand, disappeared into the impenetrable bush. occasional sightings were as credible as reports of Bigfoot until moose hair was found in 2002.
Male moose lose their antlers in the fall and re-grow them every spring. Antlers take three to five months to develop, making them the fastest growing male organ in nature.
Native American myths about moose with devil’s antlers are based on the misshapen appendages worn for life by castrated bull moose.
The largest moose ever recorded was discovered in Alaska. It stood 2.34 metres at the shoulder, weighed 816 kilograms, and had a rack spanning two metres.
The flap of skin that hangs beneath the throat is called a bell.
In 2000, the Moose in the City project flooded Toronto, ontario, with 326 life-size moose statues. Sold at a charity auction, these moose quickly became a source of corporate pride and prize targets for high school car rallies.
Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, is named from the Cree word moosegaw, which means warm breezes. Nevertheless, the city’s mascot is a 10-metre, 9,000-kilogram concrete moose named Mac.
Chocolate moose, a dish made famous by the Muppet Show in 1978, is a culinary staple of northern tourist towns.

This article first appeared in the Spring 2009 issue of Canoeroots Magazine.

Butt End: Bushcraft

Stories

Photo: Kevin Callan — Butt End: Bushcraft

I think I have the humble pen thing figured out. It seems to come naturally when writing about misadventures. In any case, it works for me.

Humility will also take you far when canoe tripping. Lacking humility in the wilderness is the surest way to get into trouble. I’m frequently awed and humbled when I’m out there. In fact, that’s why I go out. Frequent humblings are good for the soul.

Humiliation? That’s another matter. But it’s just what I stumbled into last year on a trip with my friend Scott.

We had been given the job of preparing a base-camp for a BBC crew while they filmed a television special with Ray Mears. Mears is a bushcraft expert from the U.K. The kind of guy that can carve a paddle out of a tree in minutes or get a fire going without a match without breaking a sweat. The man’s bushcraft films are admired by thousands of fans worldwide, and here I was, charged with setting up his camp.

We were to stay a day ahead of them on the river, making sure everything was set for when they arrived.

“You want to be a writer, don’t know how or when? Find a quiet place, use a humble pen.” — Paul Simon

It sounded like an easy job. And it would have been. If we had cooking pots. If I hadn’t forgotten them back at the put-in.

After taking an increasingly panicked inventory of the campsite I stared at the river and considered paddling back upstream, but we were too far and the current was too fast. We were trapped.

The first evening Scott and I ate peanut butter sandwiches rather than cook up our macaroni dinner. It was a hardship but we got through it. But not being able to boil water for coffee the next morning was unacceptable. What’s more we had to figure out a way to cook for the eight-person crew about to arrive that day.

First we tried placing hot rocks into a barrel pack full of river water, which gave us luke-warm, murky water filled with dirt, ash and probably parasites.

Next we spent an hour carving a log into a bowl to heat over the fire. It looked good, until it ignited, leaked and spilled its contents, dousing the flames. The third attempt was a little more successful. We found an old whisky bottle (bushcraft indeed) back in the bush, filled it half-full with water and hung it about a foot above the fire. A long while later, we had bubbly water to steep our coffee grounds in.

At noon the film crew arrived and I put on my humble hat and told them what had happened. Then, with little hope I suggested that maybe the bushcraft expert could show us, and the camera, what he was made of.

Mears looked thoughtful and for a moment I thought I might be about to learn something. Turns out I already knew his lesson.

“Well Kevin,” he said, reaching into his canoe, “we could use these pots left behind by some poor fool back at the launch.”

Later, with a full belly, I had to agree he was good at what he did.

This article on bushcraft was published in the Spring 2009 issue of Canoeroots magazin

This article first appeared in the Spring 2009 issue of Canoeroots Magazine.