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.

Kate, 15, just nailed her first roll. Dougie, 16, is working as a safety boater on the Ottawa River and an assistant guide for Black Feather Wilderness Adventure Company. | Photo: Scott MacGregor

How To Get Your Kids Hooked On Paddling

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

Whitewater Canoeing: Trying Plan D

Stories

Photo: Rick Matthews — Whitewater Canoeing: Trying Plan D

I used to scout rapids with one goal in mind: finding the safest way down. My game plans were limited to three options—Plan A: Shoot for the V; Plan B: When in doubt, straighten ‘er out and paddle like hell; and Plan C: Walk it.

I applied this three-pronged approach through my first 15 years of tripping, years when the sight of a smooth horizon line on the river would fill me with excitement, but also a sense of dread. Visions of wrapped canoes and loose gear bobbing in downstream eddies drove me to the shore to pick out the least consequential route through what- ever mess of waves and rocks I came to. I could pick out the safest line of a rapid from 10 metres deep in the forest under a crescent moon with one eye closed.

I paddled rapids because they were just part of canoeing rivers. I was a traveller, not a tourist, and I was not on the river to play. I was happy; my bow paddlers were happy—mostly because they stayed dry. Only once in a while did I get the feeling I was missing something. I stumbled upon that some- thing one day in the middle of a technical class III.

The rapid bent to the right, with a welcoming eddy on the inside and a choppy wave train down the middle leading to a pourover I didn’t want any part of. On the outside of the bend were several large rocks with big pillows of water pushing against them leaving swirling little eddies behind, but I didn’t pay much attention to them.

Our plan A involved skirting the waves and eddying in along the right bank, as soon as we could. In order to keep to the right of the waves before turn- ing and digging hard for the eddy, we initiated our tried-and-true back ferry and I pointed the canoe, and my trusting girlfriend Tanis in the bow, toward the middle of the river. But we had to drift further downstream than I wanted to avoid a pillow. By the time we started pushing, our flexing paddles couldn’t buy us the purchase we needed to stay on the inside of the bend. We were now in the thick of things and heading for someplace thicker.

In a perfect moment of clarity that you’d need to spend 10 years in a Buddhist monastery to manufacture, I realized it was time to add to our bag of tricks. Plans A, B and C were lost to us now. We were left with plan D which meant placing significant confidence in the abilities I hoped we had acquired during years of taking the easiest way down. We would need to will our canoe over to one of the outside eddies.

Tanis was not in touch with this plan D. In fact, she was still back paddling in a touching display of confidence in our back ferrying abilities. But this was no time for sentimentality. I had caught a glimpse of whitewater enlightenment and it was illuminating a new path across the river.

I managed to convey that we needed to take control of the situation and our paddles started swinging. We crossed the current just high enough to drop through a slot between two rocks. After punching the hole and taking advantage of the slower water behind it we angled hard left and powered across some crashing standing waves and into one of the miniature eddies that once seemed so distant.

When we screeched into the eddy behind a barely visible rock my head was half full of relief, my heart half full of panic, and the canoe half full of water. We wobbled our gunwales into the river on both sides and Tanis spun and glared at me. I could tell, even through the tears welling in her eyes, that she was mad. Time stood still. Her hair looked extra messy. Maybe I should get her a helmet, I thought.

Fortunately, this moment we were about to share was interrupted by hoots and hollers from across the river. Our friends didn’t realize we had flubbed our back ferry. They thought we meant to pick our way across the river.

I put my head down and bailed while I thought of a way to convince our friends that this had been our plan all along and convince Tanis that I was as surprised as she was.

Now any scouting we do begins with a search for creative lines. We look for little currents and waves that might give us some advantage over the river or an opportunity to try something new. Sometimes we find a feature in the middle of a rapid that we would have straight-lined a few years ago and we eddy out and play in it just to enjoy the rapid and the feel the river. Other times, hit- ting mid-stream micro-eddies and doing jet ferries across the river on a wave are useful manoeuvres for getting down complicated rapids we would have portaged years ago.

It doesn’t matter how it happened, going for the other side of the river that day was a revelation.

Patrick Yarnell and Tanis are still paddling together, and he did end up buying her a helmet.

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

Growing Up On The Shore Of Lake Superior

Bruce and Chase jumped from the car and ran for the breaking waves on the beach the minute we checked in at the campground. eight hours in a car with their uncle telling tales of his past canoeing and hiking trips was not their idea of fun. By dinner, however, the car ride was long forgotten, the boys had made friends in the campground and skipped thousands of stones out into the lake. This Agawa place, they said, was looking okay.

family hiking along the Lake Superior Coastal Trail

A Superior Adventure On The Lake Superior Coastal Trail

A Lake Superior family vacation

We were camped at the Agawa Bay campground at the southern end of Lake Superior Provincial Park where Highway 17 skirts the great lake before heading inland and north to Wawa.

It was the boys who first pointed out a colourful conifer-covered headland called Rocky Point, located just a 15-minute hike south from our campsite. The next morning we scrambled up and around the point and watched the powerful waves crash into the red granite cliffs.

“Awesome,” said Bruce. “I like this hike.”

The beach at Agawa Bay on Lake Superior. | Photo: Paul Ewing/Unsplash

That evening we went back out to the point and watched the sunset; one magnificent enough that even Chase was touched. “How can the sun be that big?” he wondered aloud. “Does Lake Superior make that happen, or what?”

I asked the boys if they’d heard of Michi Peshu, the great horned lynx: “He is the power and mystery of these ancient waters. He might have something to do with how beautiful the sunset looks.”

[ Plan your next Great Lakes paddling adventure with the Paddling Trip Guide ]

Their raised eyebrows and smiles suggested they weren’t buying my story about the great horned lynx. I’d been known to exaggerate a story or two, and besides, they were 11 and 13 now—not as easily fooled as they used to be.

So the next day we hiked the Agawa Rock Indian Pictographs Trail to the old painting of Michi Peshu. It was a short hike through a deep and eerie crevice. The pictographs were painted centuries ago by native people on a high cliff overlooking Superior. We examined the mysterious Michi Peshu, and other rock paintings at the Agawa Rock pictograph site and speculated about their meaning. The boys’ fascination with Superior was beginning to show.

“We are camped on Gitchigumi,” I explained to the kids around the campfire that evening. “The ancient Ojibwa meaning is ‘great lake’. Lake Superior really is the world’s largest lake and the most spectacular too.”

roasting marshmallows is one fun after-dark activity for family camping

7 After-Dark Activities For Your Next Family Camping Trip

“Yeah, whatever. We know all that stuff already from school,” said Chase. “Pass the marshmallows, Uncle Doug.”

The Coastal Hiking Trail in Lake Superior Provincial Park is 63 kilometres long and takes five to seven days to hike end to end. The trail traces the Lake Superior coastline along scenic cliffs, across cobblestone beaches and through bush. Those who have hiked it understand the power and beauty of Superior. I wanted the boys to experience this trail but hiking the entire trail was out of the question. We were car camping after all and were not prepared for a week-long backpacking trip.

The Coastal Trail happened to be the theme of the presentation at the park’s amphitheatre that evening. The natural heritage education coordinator, Carol Dersch knows the trail like few others. Her enthusiasm rubbed off on all of us. Best of all, Carol announced that Kathleen, her colleague, would be leading a day hike on the trail starting at Katherine Cove, 15 kilometres north of the campground. All we had to do was show up the next morning with hiking footwear, clothing and a lunch and she would lead the way.

Katherine Cove is an excellent picnic site with a shallow beach for swimming. Hikers can pick up the coastal trail and follow it north for 10 kilometres through a wilderness setting where the trail comes close to the highway again at Coldwater Creek.

Parents and kids sitting around table playing a game

11 Of The Best Games To Play On Your Next Family Camping Trip

We scrambled over rocks, boulders and cobblestone beaches and stopped to gaze into deep, blue, impossibly clear water and watch an otter dart in and out of a tangle of driftwood. Kathleen showed us crushed clam shells in otter scat. She pointed out all sorts of warblers and several nests while a bald eagle kept an eye on the boys from his perch in a cedar tree. She guided us to some amazing pools in the rock formed by powerful storm surge waters. She told the kids that these pools act as nurseries for frogs and salamanders—they were hooked. Kathleen told the parents about the geology—a colourful array of twisted, contorted rock mixing with smooth polished areas, pocket beaches, points and cliffs. There were multi-coloured polished agates mixed with the shoreline pebbles.

We drifted off to sleep that night with the sound of the waves softly lapping the shore and a full moon casting pine shadows on the tents. I was looking forward to the drive home because I knew it would be different. It would be eight hours of the kids telling me stories of their adventures on the shore of Gitchigumi.

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

Feature photo: Hans Isaacson/Unsplash

Camp Cooking: What They Don’t Know, They Might Like

Photo: Canoeroots Staff — Camp Cooking: What They Don’t Know, They Might Like

By the third day into a camping trip with my kids, I’m tired of eating wieners, hamburgers and marshmallows. Camping is a great excuse to eat these high-fat, salty, sugar-laden processed foods, but eventually I crave real food, food with texture, colour, variety and redeeming qualities like vitamins, minerals and fibre. And the mother in me worries about the long-term effects of extended hot dog and s’mores diets. It comes as no surprise that researchers have learned that frequent consumption of hotdogs is associated with a significant increase in diabetes, obesity and heart disease.

When camping, the physical activity my kids get surely counters these health risks but incorporating nutritional foods into their everyday diets even while camping establishes healthy eating patterns. you don’t have to bring out the salad spinner or low-carb cookbook or scare kids away from the picnic table with spinach strudel. you can add colour, texture, variety and nutrition to your camping menu with fun, easy to transport and prepare foods. And like slipping a pill in a wiener for your pet, you can even disguise these good-for-them foods as treats.

Try these ideas to get your creative, as well as your digestive, juices flowing for the days after the wieners are gone.

Rice Re-Invented

Boil rice in orange juice, instead of water. Add dried cranberries, almonds, and parsley when cooked.
Stir salsa, a can of drained corn and cilantro into cooked rice.
Boil rice in chicken, beef or vegetable broth then add vegetables of your choice, pine nuts and thyme.
Invent a creation of your own— think raisins, pecans, walnuts, dried apricots, lemon juice, basil, tomato, peas and sunflower seeds. Be creative.

Breakfast Boredom Busters

Custom-make your own porridge by adding nuts, dried fruits such as prunes, cranberries or strawberry-flavoured cranberries, apricots or raisins. Scoop on some applesauce or fresh fruit.
Spread crunchy peanut butter on a tortilla. Sprinkle with chocolate chips. Lay a banana along one edge and roll up.
Spread cream cheese on toast. Layer on thinly sliced pear. Top with maple syrup and walnuts. This would work on a pancake too. How about apple and cinnamon with syrup, pecans or raisins?
Spread toast with peanut butter. Sprinkle with Grape Nuts cereal and sliced banana.

Forget the Sandwiches

Spread pasta sauce in a pita shell or on a wrap. Stuff it or roll it with ham or bacon, drained pineapple tidbits and mozzarella cheese. Heat in skillet until the cheese melts.
Dip tortilla or nacho chips in tuna salad.
Spread crackers with flavoured cream cheese. Top with fresh fruit like kiwi, grapes, apples, pears and strawberries.

S’more Great Ideas

Spread graham cracker or a cookie with jam or cream cheese. Top with fresh fruit, coconut or whatever your imagination concocts.
Spread low-fat cream cheese on a plate. Top with a layer of caramel sauce. Sprinkle with a crushed Skor bar or other chocolate. Scoop up with crisp apple wedges.

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

Editorial: Rite of Passage

Stories

On March 2nd the Supreme Court of Canada overturned a Montreal school board’s decision and ruled that Gurbaj Singh Multani should be allowed to go to class wearing his kirpan.

Five years ago, when Gurbaj was 12, his ceremonial knife accidentally fell onto the grass in the playground. If he’d been quicker to get it back in its sheath, the bell would have rung and he would have gone to class. Instead a teacher spotted Gurbaj’s dagger.

The school board said wearing a kirpan violated the school’s safety code, which prohibited the carrying of weapons. Also on school boards’ lists of prohibited weapons is the Swiss army knife.

Gurbaj and his family, all Orthodox Sikhs, won their case because the kirpan is a religious symbol. Even with the red and white cross and the millions of people who swear by them, no court would consider Swiss army knives a religious symbol. To young boys, however, (and some girls too) receiving one is a rite of passage. To a 10-year-old, a Swiss army knife is the world. It is a pocket full of adventure.

A kid with a Swiss army knife is a kid who can pick his teeth, cut his nails, open a can of beans or a bottle of pop. he can saw a tree or whittle a marshmal- low stick; remove a sliver or cut some rope. There are so many good uses for a pocketknife, especially when camping, and so many good lessons we can teach our kids about respecting knives and using them properly.

Using a jackknife safely around camp, or any other place for that matter, you could follow the Boy Scout tips for knife safety. Scouts learn how to open, close, clean and hand their pocketknives to someone else. They always cut away from themselves and cut slowly so the knife won’t slip. and they always maintain their circle of safely, working at least an arm’s distance from anyone else. Kids who learn to respect a pock- etknife understand that it is a sharp cut- ting tool, not a toy and certainly not a weapon.

Children receive their first knife, like I did, from their dad, grandfather or uncle, often on a special birthday. With it comes a trusting look and a pat on the back that says, I know you’re old enough to be careful and look after this.

My first pocketknife was a Swiss army camper. It was red of course with a spread of 13 useful tools. For a year I was never without it. But like Gurbaj I had my knife taken away in school; it probably still lives in the top drawer of Mr. Loker’s wooden desk. Even in the late ’70s at a rural public school it was unacceptable for a kid who didn’t have a pair of scissors to pull out his jackknife and cut a piece of string.

By the time Loker waddled over to my desk to make the bust I’d cut the string, folded the knife and had it back in my pocket. Loker told me to hand it over; it was policy; there was something he called the greater good; and what if everyone carried a knife in their pocket?

I thought for a minute before answering, and then told him that if everyone carried a knife in their pocket nobody would ever need scissors, or screwdrivers, or bottle openers, or tooth picks, or nail files, or…

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

Betcha Didn’t Know About Dew

Stories

Photo: flickr.com/infomastern — Betcha Didn't Know About Dew

Dew forms when moisture from warm air condenses on a surface that has cooled after the sun has set.
Dew forms more heavily on vegeta- tion because plants cool quickly due to their large surface area. The same goes for your tent.
The Grateful Dead’s 17-minute version of “Morning Dew” from May 22, 1977, is generally considered to be their best ever.
Dew is slower to form on rocks because they retain the sun’s heat longer.
You could fill a one-litre bottle with the moisture accumulated on 1,450 maple leaves after a heavy night’s dew.
A dew rag is a coloured bandana that identifies which ‘hood you represent in the city or which camp you attend in Temagami.
As the saying, “When the dew is on the grass, rain will never come to pass,” suggests, heavy dews are an indication of warm and clear weather.
Dew doesn’t occur in overcast con- ditions because cloud cover keeps the day’s warmth from escaping into the atmosphere.

In a good year, Canada exports more than 350 million dew worms to the United States, enough to fill 29 million Styrofoam containers.
In a bad year, Canoeroots editors find an average of 19 discarded dew worm containers on the shores of eastern Canadian waterways.
Mountain dew is Tennessee slang for bootlegged whiskey.
Frost is dew that forms when surface temperatures are below freezing.
Mountain Dew bottles of the 1960s displayed a gun-toting hillbilly taking aim at a government man.

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

Lightening Know How: Electrical Enlightenment

Stories

Lightening Know How: Electrical Enlightenment | Photo: flickr.com/danpalmer

The Ancient Greeks believed lightning was the work of the gods. We’re not saying they were wrong, but we are saying it wasn’t a good idea to build their worship temples on sites where lightning had struck. God-guided or not, lightning bolts are creatures of habit and often strike the same place twice. Understanding why lightning strikes where it does and taking some precautions can keep you from getting in the way of any of the 2.7 million flashes that occur across Canada every year.

Keep an eye on the weather:

Electrical storms most often occur onhot, humid afternoons when anvilshaped thunderhead clouds form. Currents of ascending warm air and descending cold air rub against each other and produce an electric charge within the cloud. Fork lightning occurs when a bolt of electricity closes the circuit between the negatively charged bottom of the cloud and the positively charged earth.

Take shelter before the storm hits:

You can calculate your distance in metres from a lightning strike by counting the seconds from ash to crash and multiplying by 300. But before assuming you are out of range remember that storms can be many kilometres in diameter and that lightning can travel laterally to strike the earth at a point not directly underneath the storm.

Don’t be the path of least resistance:

Decrease your chances of becoming a human lightning rod by not lingering on prominent ridges or canoeing across lakes before a storm. Set up camp away from tall trees and exposed places where you would become the highest point. Instead, take shelter in an area of small trees.

Know the lightning position:

Crouch on the balls of your feet to minimize your contact with the ground and insulate yourself with a sleeping mattress if possible. If you are in a group, spread out in a straight line at least five metres apart to reduce the likelihood of a strike jumping from one person to another.

If someone is struck:

Lighting strikes usually affect the body’s electrical system. The heart may stop, but it will often resume spontaneously. Look for vital signs and initiate CPR if necessary. And don’t worry, victims do not carry an electrical charge.

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

If I Had a Million Dollars

Stories

A few weeks ago my friend Rick and I were on our way home to put this year’s canoe buyer’s guide to bed after finishing a circuit of paddling shows. To kill a few hours of arrow-straight U.S. interstate we started playing the If-I-had-a-million-dollars-which-canoe-would-I-buy game.

Which canoe would I buy? With 155 canoes in seven different categories in our buyer’s guide I didn’t know where to start. So we stopped.

I can see the Madawaska River from my office window. Every morning I dream about going for a paddle at lunchtime. I’d portage down the road to the pubic launch, climb in and hammer for 30 minutes. For this I’d want something light and fast, like a Jensen 18. If I was going to sweat I’d want a canoe that would reward my efforts. In three years I’ve never paddled at lunchtime.

My neighbour Bobby is the local handyman. He’s a hell of guy with a shop full of tools and a well-stocked beer fridge. For two years of winter evenings I’ve sat in his shop in a tattered barber chair by the wood furnace. While I watched him work we’d make summer plans to load a canoe on his Yamaha Rhino ATV and go fish for pickerel in the lakes back in the hills. We think a wide and stable square-stern, something we could put a small trolling motor on, would be the ticket for our off- road angling adventures. Once summer comes we’re both too busy to go fishing.

I’ve also thought about buying a small tripping canoe that I could take this summer on my first father-and-son river trip. It’d be a tandem that I’d paddle solo. It would be big enough for our camping gear and stable enough so my son could climb around and play with his toys, eat his snack and curl up for naps.

I remember the day—the only day—I paddled with my own dad. I paddled us to the end of Long Lake while he fished for bass. He offered to paddle but I told him to keep fishing. It was peaceful. I paddled. He fished. And we talked.

I remember how happy I was that we were canoeing together and how proud I was to be able to paddle him around. I think of that time we spent together quite often, but I don’t remember anything about the canoe, not even the colour. It wasn’t the canoe that mattered.

I think this summer I’m going to buy myself some time. Time to paddle at lunch, fish with Bobby, go for a weekend father-and-son trip, and take another paddle with my dad. Only then will I get back to playing the game, open up the buyer’s guide and wonder what canoes I should buy.

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