Things were looking promising for bear stories. As the highway took us past Kitwanga and approached the coast, as the mountains closed in and the Skeena river grew wide and flat for its home stretch, no fewer than five black bears, one after another, appeared grazing along the ditch.

Dave and I thought our paddle from Prince Rupert to Victoria would yield plenty of bear tales. It’s the great Bear rainforest after all. We came equipped with bear bangers, pen flares, and enough food-hanging ropes and hardware to climb a mountain.

Then the reality set in. Stroking past Princess Royal Island, home of that poster animal of the Central Coast, the Kermode or Spirit Bear—we saw nothing. The few times we set foot on mainland with our reflexes primed for an encounter with the griz—nothing. A gargantuan track here, a fresh mound of berry seeds there, some fearsome tooth marks in an institutional- sized mazola jug found eerily far inland from the shoreline junk pile—that was it.

I did once try to hang our food, the whole hundred-odd deadweight pounds of it, while Dave heartily mocked my efforts. And though our punching bag of produce hung laughably close to the ground, pooh stood us up on the piñata party. Probably the number two question we faced coming home after 80 days out besides Didn’t you get sick of each other? was Did you see a lot of bears?

Fact is, it’s in the margins of human civilization, where wildlife is crammed into the slender geography of wildlife corridors woven between golf courses, back alleys and garbage dumps— where wild omnivores are trapped between the privations of shrinking habitat and the temptations of human refuse—that is where you’re more likely to see bears.

There are 46,000 square kilometres comprising B.C.’s Central Coast, all largely uninhabited, and the wild bears there have better things to do than entertain the few humans who arrive with mace in their pockets and bells on their packs. We learned that more than 99 times out of 100, leaving your food packed away neatly in your kayak hatch is the sensible and practical thing to do while you sleep soundly inside your nylon mesh panic room. And we learned that when you do see a bear in the wild, it’s something truly special.

We did, finally. It was late one drizzly day along a lonely Vancouver Island beach about six weeks in. she was a bumbling black hole in the fabric of the west Coast, flipping over rocks and cruising for something to eat. She never saw us. Or maybe she did. And that was all that happened.

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

Why is the legendary Stihl brand of chainsaws and trimmers not sold in the Home Depot or Canadian Tire stores?

The large bold print on the cover of Stihl’s summer newspaper flyer hooked me. Okay, I thought, I’ll bite. Why not?

The why not is because across Canada there are more than 900 independent dealers, dealers who sell and service all Stihl products.

I own a Stihl saw and grass trimmer, and they are true to their company promise. They walked me through the entire owners manual from mixing the gas to routine maintenance, with an earnest concern for my personal safety—which no doubt was ramped up by my flip flops and Hawaiian shirt.

Chainsaws and kayaks have more in common than you might think. C&J Lemke in Eganville, Ontario, is my local Stihl dealer. It’s a small shop quite similar to my local paddling shop. Both shops offer incredible pre- and post-sale service for their products, both owners are passionate about what they are selling and, lately, both are feeling the pinch of big box stores. When I buy a chainsaw or a kayak I don’t want some pasty-skinned sales associate to greet me at the door with a shopping cart. I want to buy from someone with sawdust on his hat or sporting a lifejacket suntan.
When I wander into a kayak shop I want to chew the fat with someone who shares my excitement and passion for paddling and can shoot me straight about boats and gear. You’re not likely to cut your leg off sea kayaking, but we do require safety equipment and we do need to paddle safely or we’ll get hurt. These are things that Lorna from the garden centre or Billy in sporting goods at the big box store have no idea about.

Just for fun I called three box stores from my cell phone while in their sporting goods departments. I watched as two of the store staff tried to find someone to answer my questions, before telling me that they were sold out of the kayaks—the kayaks I was standing right beside.

The third store told me that “Blue” was the most popular model of kayak.

Big box stores will never really care about paddling. Why? Because kayaks are just another SKU number, one that will be deleted as soon as the market is flooded with poorly designed, potentially unsafe boats at a sales profit margin that cannot sustain all the things kayak shops do best—like on-water demos, events and instruction.

People buy these boats because they don’t know any better. Who is there to tell them? Few are ever exposed to real kayaks or the paddling culture so they get bored and quit. Been there, done that.

In the photos found in our annual photo feature lies the soul of kayak touring—adventure, travel, and exploration and a feeling of friendship and trust among paddlers. Not one boat in these photos was run through the cash register at a box store. Not one.

You can’t buy the soul of paddling in a box, but box stores are selling it. Box stores are selling sea kayaking’s soul right out from underneath us, and tossing in a case of antifreeze, just in case hell freezes over.

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