Celebrating The Gull River’s Strong Undercurrents In Canadian Whitewater

Stories

As paddlers we are proud of our stories—epic highwater runs, bold moves, long swims. Many of our best stories persist and are retold until they are legends.

Other paddling stories are just the opposite: they are so mundane they do not warrant repeating—at least not at the time—and so the stories and people seem to be forgotten.

Looking closely, however, one can see that the story is not forgotten, but in fact is so deeply ingrained in the fabric of a paddling scene that it goes almost unnoticed. These aren’t climactic legends, but fundamental building blocks, people and places like Roger Parsons, Heinz Poenn and the Minden Wildwater Preserve.

semi-submerged photo of the kayak training course at Minden Whitewater Preserve

Rivers Of Change: Roger Parsons And The Minden Wildwater Preserve

Celebrating the Gull River’s strong undercurrents in Canadian whitewater

A young mountain climber named Heinz Poenn arrived in Canada from Germany in 1956 in search of adventure. After finding no mountains to climb in Ontario, he happened upon a Klepper folding kayak, taught himself to paddle, and found another paddling pioneer named Roger Parsons. The two of them organized a kayak race. The year was 1958, and the Credit River played host to Canada’s second-ever kayak event (the Fraser River in B.C. beat them by one season, a downriver race easily won by a visiting European). The rest is history, albeit an unappreciated and forgotten one.

In 1964 Poenn and Parsons decided they wanted to race slalom at the World Championships—big dreams for self-taught fanatics. At the time, Canada had no standing with the international kayak body so they joined the American team.

Poenn gained himself (and Canada) a seat on the International Competition Committee, opening the door for a Canadian team—which included himself—to paddle at the 1972 Olympics in Germany.

“We were way behind!” Poenn laughs. “We had only started into something that had a long competitive history over there.”

Returning from the Olympics, he and Parsons started talking about a training centre. They already paddled at the then-mild rapids on the Gull River in Minden, Ontario, close to Parsons’ cottage, and they saw potential for something greater.

“Being on the technical committee, I had detailed plans from the Augsberg slalom course [built for the Olympics and still in use on the World Cup circuit],” says Poenn. “We asked Ontario’s Ministry of Lands and Forests to change the river. They agreed, so we hired a backhoe and bulldozer and started moving rocks.”

From obscure river to whitewater destination

Originally, only the lower section of the river was paddled, below the falls, because the upper section below the dam was wide and shallow. Poenn and Parsons coordinated pinching the river, deepening the channel, solidifying the eddies and making a world-class slalom river.

“I was the only one to run the falls,” remembers Poenn. “They were considered too steep and shallow to be safe, so we got some locals who knew how to use dynamite, drilled some holes, and blew the edge off it.”

“Eventually land was acquired on the left riverbank for the now-famous campground. “The whole idea was for Minden to be a place for the paddling community to meet,” says Poenn who continued on to coach national teams, teaching a generation of top paddlers which included Gary Barton, David Ford, Claudia Van Wijk and Poenn’s son, Dieter.

“There was no fixed place for paddlers at the time,” Dieter Poenn recalls of his days as a junior racer. “But this developed into a perfect training site. We could build confidence on the lower section and work our way up. The river is still comparable to anything I raced on in Europe.” Dieter Poenn went on to race with Canada’s National Slalom Team, he eventually took on the role of high performance director.

Overhead shot of river cutting through the forest, rapids visible

Stefi Van Wijk: Carving Her Own Course On The Madawaska

Claudia Van Wijk, a former world cup paddler who now owns Madawaska Kanu Centre, recalls: “I used to live there for weeks on end. It’s one of the few places where you can drop in at anytime and find people to paddle with. It’s dam-controlled so it always has water, it’s close to Toronto and it’s still as technically challenging as any slalom course in Europe. Really, Ontario’s three destination rivers are Minden, the Ottawa and Palmer Rapids.”

[ Plan your next Ontario whitewater adventure with the Paddling Trip Guide ]

The Minden Wildwater Preserve is a story without an end. The river has undergone continuous improvements. People still arrive from all over, make friends and paddle. Beginners tip over in the run out at the bottom, and the top offers snappy moves that approach class IV. Running the dam is enough to scare anyone. The river is so deeply ingrained in the thoughts of the paddling community it has helped sustain that it sometimes goes unnoticed. To many paddlers, Minden is the Ontario paddling scene.

All this, from simple 1960s dreams of having a place to paddle.

Jeff Jackson is a professor of the outdoor program at Algonquin College in Pembroke, Ont.

Cover of Early Summer 2005 issue of Rapid Magazine This article was first published in the Early Summer 2005 issue of Rapid Magazine. Subscribe to Paddling Magazine’s print and digital editions, or browse the archives.

The Gull River is so deeply ingrained in the thoughts of the paddling community it has helped sustain that it sometimes goes unnoticed. | Feature photo: Toni Harting

Women Paddlers Need a Venus

Stories

Illustration: Lorenzo Del Bianco — Women Paddlers Need a Venus

In the 1990s women sucked at freestyle kayaking. Why? One theory was that men are taller and stronger. For years men were happy with this state of affairs. We chivalrously loaded our girlfriends’ boats onto our cars and helped portage them past rapids. If our girlfriends were hungry we’d wander off into the bush, snare a rabbit or slay a deer with a river knife to provide for her. It was a primitive existence, and it made men feel good about themselves.

From the woods surrounding the rivers came butchy women with rusty razors. They were carrying placards and whining something about equal rights. They more or less admitted they sucked but they said it was because they didn’t have boats and equipment that fit them properly. This talk spread like Dermatone through the eddies and shuttle roads where women paddlers congregated. Before long, even the splashing of guys launching helixes and landing Roladexes couldn’t drown out the protests:

My boobs are scrunched.
This shaft is too long and thick (yes, I actually heard this).
The hole is too sticky.
There’s too much volume in my stern (who owns this problem?).

Nothing was ever just right for the disenfranchised Goldie Locks.

In an attempt to forestall legislative action, manufacturers complied. Women now have boats like the Siren that are designed for them. Seven 2 makes the Daisy paddle just for women. PFD companies make models for women that “wrap rather than crush for a perfect fit that ONLY WOMEN can understand.” Shred Ready makes the Vixen helmet. Hell, for some reason Immersion Research makes spray skirts for women—the ‘J Lo’ no less.

Have the pro women caught up to the men? Uh… No. Women haven’t even caught up to where men were in the ’90s. At the last World Freestyle Championships in Australia the men’s scores tripled the women’s.

What women really need is a Venus! Relax folks, this is a family show. I said Venus, as in Venus Williams the tennis superstar. The arrival of Venus and Serena Williams silenced the critics of women’s tennis.

Men used to watch tennis for Kournikova and Hingis—the play was slow but the skirts were short. Women tennis players were considered material for Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue pin-ups. People said the women’s game would never match the men’s play of high-powered serves and fast volleys.

Then on to the court stepped Venus and Serena. No longer was women’s tennis boring. It was high-powered fast action. The game lunged from the swimsuit calendars and smashed back onto the court. Today, the Williams are the biggest names in tennis, easily stealing the hype from the men’s game. I’m not suggesting that women’s boating is too sexy for its own good. If that were the case I’d just keep my mouth shut. I’m just saying that the Williams sisters didn’t excuse themselves with complaints about thick shafts and fuzzy balls: they just kicked ass.

If whitewater had a Venus, men would be a little less, shall we say… cocky.

Ben Aylsworth just released his latest video H2Ho, which is not a family show.

This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2005 issue of Rapid Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Rapid’s print and digital editions here.

Hass Hole: Editors Reveal Their Secret Playspot

Stories

Photo: Scott MacGregor — Hass Hole: Editors Reveal Their Secret Playspot

For seven years we’ve been exposing other people’s secret whitewater stashes to the world. We’ve been providing detailed directions to park and play hotspots to the dismay of locals everywhere. Under the protective cloak of servicing the greater good for all paddlers, we’d ferret out a mole and buy their soul for 20 cents a word, sometimes less. Here is mine on a platter.

Hass Hole is our local playspot, one that has, until now, mysteriously escaped editorial coverage. Getting to Hass Hole (sounds like ass hole, not hoss hole) is like trying to find Smurf Village. Take the first left past the pancake house. At the fork in the road, go left. Drive past the dark and evil cedar swamp and over the one-lane wooden bridge crossing Snake Creek. At the mailbox marked Hass turn left down the dusty lane to the farm. Signs on fence posts read, “This is our land. Government BACK OFF.” If your car quits, just leave it.

This has been Hass land since the beginning of time. Dogs are chained to old cars. When the dogs bark at you Clifford or Freida Hass will emerge from the tiny farmhouse surrounded by lawn ornaments and geranium pot planters. A long chat about the weather and $2.50 per paddler later you’re 4x4ing

down the unmarked lane through an automotive graveyard of burned-out pickups and rusty trailers. More than one group of paddlers has made it this far, never to reach the river and Hass Hole.

Hass Hole is part of Island Rapids, the first set on the Lower Madawaska River run, a section of river that is without question the most popular whitewater canoe day trip in Canada. The canoe-tripping boy scout’s black hole of death is Hass Hole proper, a six-foot wide cartwheel and loop spot of a pourover. The more-often paddled wave behind Hass Hole is a small breaking wave that anyone can surf. Beginners take bigger and bigger surfs out to the middle where the five-foot-high vertical wave tubes and crashes.

Don’t listen to anyone who says the water is too high to paddle at Hass Hole. Locals know that at high water the lovely Ms. April makes an appearance above Hass Hole. Put even more water in the Madawaska and turn the page to the middle of the river to a feature known as Centrefold. One peek at the walls inside the hunter’s cabin and you’ll know where Ms. April and Centrefold get their names—not to mention that one forms in April and the other is a breaking wave that folds perfectly on itself in the centre of the river—centrefold. Cheeky but clever, wouldn’t you agree?

Details, details…

WHO SHOULD PADDLE THERE?
Everyone. It is a class III rapid with first-class play. The pool below is an easy swim to shore.

PAY TO PLAY
Stop and pay at the farmhouse. $2.50 is cheap for the convenience. Not to mention that Cheryl Gallant was the only Alliance Party M.P. elected in Ontario, some say on opposition to the gun registry alone.

WHEN TO GO:
From ice-out in March until the middle of June (usually). Come again in wet autumns. Check with Ontario Power Generation www.opg.com for Kaminiskeg Lake (Palmer Rapids) Dam output levels. Anything above 65 cms is enough.

WHEN NOT TO GO
During deer hunting season. It’s their only holiday and they’re using the cabin.

HOW TO GET THERE
The Madawaska River is located three hours northeast of Toronto and two hours west of Ottawa. Buy a map. Nolet’s Pancake House is on Highway 28, east of Hardwood Lake. Turn north onto Bruceton Road just east of Nolet’s. Left at the fork. Cross the bridge. Left at the first driveway on left. Stop at farm. Keep on the main laneway about two kilometres to the river. Good luck.

STUPIDEST QUESTION EVER ASKED TO CLIFFORD HASS.
“Think my car will make it back up the lane?” It didn’t.

This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2005 issue of Rapid Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Rapid’s print and digital editions here.

Editorial: Gonzo Paddling

Stories

Photo: flickr.com/rcsj — Editorial: Gonzo Paddling

Hunter S. Thompson died this month at age 67. He shot himself with a handgun in the kitchen of his Colorado home. It was no secret he had a thing for guns.

Until the follow-up radio talk shows I didn’t know much about him. I’d heard his name and recognized the titles of his Fear and Loathing books, but that’s about all. I would have been more in touch if I’d been looking for free love and questioning the establishment in the early 1970s, but at the time I was still chewing on my fists, not shaking them in the air.

Journalists and hippies considered Hunter S. Thompson to be a brilliant political and social writer. The rest of the world considered him to be a complete whack job. He followed Nixon on the campaign trail, rode with the Hells Angels and once wrote, “I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone… but they’ve always worked for me.”

Another thing that worked for him was his unique writing style, something called “gonzo journalism”—a new way of reporting the story with a strong author’s voice and a focus on the mood of the event, even if that meant taking some liberties with facts and objectivity.

Almost every talk show host wrapped up by suggesting Thompson was one of the most important American writers of the 20th century.

Sad, I thought, that I’m a writer and journalist who lived in the 20th century and here’s this larger-than-life outlaw cult figure that I know nothing about.

A friend stopped by while I was reading up on Hunter S. He thought I’d want to know that Heinz Poenn had suffered a heart attack.

“That’s too bad, is he all right?” I asked before admitting that I didn’t know who we were talking about.

Heinz Poenn taught himself to paddle in a Klepper folding kayak and started slalom racing in 1958. In 1972, the same year Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas raced to cult status, Poenn raced for Canada at the Olympics in Munich, Germany. Later he became a driving force behind the building of the Minden Whitewater Preserve so he and others would have a place to train. Poenn went on to coach both the provincial and national slalom teams.

Sad, I thought that I’m a writer and paddler who lived in the 20th century and here’s this pioneer of the whitewater community that I know nothing about.

At a new adventure sports complex and whitewater course in Maryland they’ve proposed creating a Whitewater Hall of Fame and Adventure Sports Museum to “honor those individuals who have made significant accomplishments in and contributions to whitewater paddling sports.”

I like the idea of a Hall of Fame to clarify and remember significant accomplishments. But, I worry that a hall of fame would be too stuffy. I think that our whitewater history is better written with a shot of the late Hunter S. Thompson’s gonzo style—because like politics, whitewater’s deepest truths are found on the eddylines between fact and fiction.

This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2005 issue of Rapid Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Rapid’s print and digital editions here.

Traditional Canoe Building: Afloat Again

The dugout slices neatly through the still grey water. Sleek and streamlined, it is 34 feet long and shaped from a single red cedar log. I am paddling with the Martin family, returning from a potlatch hosted by a neighbouring tribe to the north. Our paddles keep time to the beating of the drum as a woman’s voice rises above us, chanting the long falling notes of an ancient paddling song.

“We must be nearly back in town now,” I think, but the thick fog has us paddling blind. I wonder if there are people on the docks, hearing this paddling song that had been nearly silenced for a century.

Ancestral Craft: The Building Of A Dugout Canoe

Traditional canoe building: Afloat again

Joe Martin carved this canoe. He is in the stern, a wide-bladed steering paddle of stiff yew wood in his hands. He takes a deep breath and joins in the song, his powerful voice seeming to push back the fog as a dark shape looms ahead. Tall posts supporting grey docks appear and I see the outlines of people above, looking out at us.

Joe’s voice is deep and rich. “I come from a long line of canoe carvers,” he tells me. “I learned the art of canoe building from my late father and my grandfathers, and from other elders who are now gone. I have a responsibility to pass on this knowledge.”

His black eyes are shaded by heavy brows, but they light up when he talks. “When I was just a young boy and my father was carving canoes he took us with him. I was not allowed to just stay home. I’d watch him work. That was my classroom I guess, although I didn’t realize it at the time.”

Joe is Tla-o-qui-aht, one of 17 tribes that make up the Nuuchah-nulth nation, the people who live “all along the mountains” in northernmost Washington State and along Vancouver Island’s wild outer coast. As a seafaring people, they were long famed for making some of the most seaworthy canoes on the coast. The canoe was their source of transportation: for travelling to visit neighbouring tribes, for seasonal migration, for making war, and for offshore whaling expeditions.

Cultural traditions under attack

The first Europeans who arrived on the West Coast in 1774 were greeted by a fleet of canoes. Within decades of that first contact, the West Coast native population was decimated by introduced diseases. A century later, the Canadian government passed the Indian Act, making native people legal wards of the state and relegating them to reserve lands. Children were removed to Christian missions and residential schools. Between depopulation and the loss of contact between children and their elders, the thread of traditional knowledge became frayed within scant generations. In many tribes the losses were too great; knowledge of things such as how to build canoes disappeared.

[ Paddling Buyer’s Guide: View all wooden canoes ]

Joe has seen evidence of these losses first-hand. “I worked in logging camps when I was younger. As we were logging, we came across old canoes that were just shaped and left there. It wasn’t until some time later that I realized they were not just abandoned there. Those fellas were carving them and they probably died from the disease epidemics that affected the communities. That’s why they were left there.”

“If you can carve your own canoe, you don’t have to rely on anybody for anything.”

Realizing that few among their generation retained the canoe-building knowledge of the elders, Joe and his brothers knew that they had to keep carving canoes, both for the sake of their ancestors, from whom the knowledge came, and for their future. “The dugout canoe is one of the most important symbols we have of freedom, freedom of our people in our lands. One of the things that my late father said was, ‘If you can carve your own canoe, you don’t have to rely on anybody for anything.’ It makes you totally independent, which our people were before the Indian Act.”

Passing canoe building on to the future

Where the knowledge from their elders was incomplete, the Martin brothers researched, visiting museums and looking through historical documents. They ventured into the forests looking for giant trees, and learned both by their successes and by their mistakes—how to keep the wood from splitting, how to use power tools to speed the process, how to widen the canoe by steaming it.

Chuck Commanada's birchbark canoes are crafted by hand, using traditional methods he learned from his grandparents. | Photo: Bob Tymczyszyn

How Chuck Commanda’s Handcrafted Birchbark Canoes Are Bringing People Together

The Martin brothers, along with their late father, have carved over 40 canoes. They’ve sold some of these canoes to neighbouring tribes and given away canoes at potlatches, helping to spread the knowledge that their family has maintained.

While this is a great satisfaction to Joe, he is even happier listening to the voice that cuts through the fog as we approach the dock. It is his daughter Gisele. Joe has passed the knowledge of his ancestors on to her. He now sees Gisele carrying the old teachings into the modern world. Three years ago she started a business taking tourists on cultural tours in her father’s hand-made canoes, paddling herself and her community out of the fog and toward a brighter future.

Jacqueline Windh is the author of The Wild Edge, a book of photos and words about the outer coast of Vancouver Island.

Cover of the Summer 2005 issue of Canoeroots Magazine This article was first published in the Summer 2005 issue of Canoeroots Magazine. Subscribe to Paddling Magazine’s print and digital editions, or browse the archives.

Joe Martin and his brothers keep the Nuuchah-nulth nation’s traditional canoe building methods alive. | Feature photo: Jacqueline Windh

A Canoe Trip of Their Own

Stories

Photo: flickr.com/randomskk — A Canoe Trip of Their Own

My sister Carly, then 10 years old and notoriously homesick, wrote a letter home from summer camp after her first lakewater trip in Algonquin Park. She wrote:

Trip was amazing! We went all the way to Pine Torch (way north) where none had gone for 3 YEARS! It was soooo hard! We got up at 6:15 am, left the camp at 8:15 am, and got to our campsite at 9ish that night! We did three portages that were longer than 3 km, and anything under a km was “just a shit.”

One day was freezing cold, (a record low) and we were paddling up Abacon—the biggest lake. It was cloudy, rainy and the waves were 1m high (no joke). We had to stop after the morning ‘cause it was so cold. Both our guides had no rain pants. We were all so cold but Dave was on the verge of hypothermia and he was so des- perate to be close to the fire he singed off all his leg hair! Another day we did 10 portages! None over 1.7 km though!

I’ll tell some more when I come home. Wonderful news! I have yet to be homesick!

My parents sent my sister and I to camp. Neither of them had ever left the pavement, so I didn’t think they would ever understand what they were missing. They just couldn’t get it. I thought describing a trip to them would take the shine off my experience.

At age 16, I did a 42-day trip in Temagami. When I got home, I holed up in my room for a week, scrolling obses- sively through trip photos, not talking to anyone. Canoe trips meant everything to me. I still have my unwashed trip T-shirt in a Ziploc bag in the closet. I defined myself by my accomplishments: I could carry a canoe for seven kilometres. I could light a fire in the rain.

My mom and dad sent us and we reaped the rewards. They paid the bills and we had the times of our lives.

Two years ago, my sister and I decided we wanted to thank our folks for enabling our freedom all those years. We made my dad a journal with photos of us on trips, complete with a poem:

Canoe trip epitomizes youth
Carefree summer days
Time kept only by the presence
Or absence
Of bugs
A smile worthy of the Cheshire Cat
That originates
Deep within the warm core
Of a body forever young at heart.

We proposed a trip filling the rest of the pages with a trip we’d do together, the four of us as a family. We wanted to show them. It was time for us to give them the opportunity they never had.

I made all the arrangements. They had no idea what they were getting into. We rented them a tent and gave them an elaborate list of gear. My mom bought herself neoprene paddling gloves and water shoes. My dad used his stained lawn mowing shoes and skier’s long underwear. Carly and I planned the menu—portobello mushroom burgers, marinated vegetable kebobs, orange juice and wine rationed at a half-litre per person, per day.

On the first night of our trip we were caught in the pelting rain with their gear strewn about the campsite. In the excite- ment of the storm they chucked all their gear higgledy-piggledy into their narrow, two-person tent, which then led to a miserable hour-long organizational effort in the cramped, sweaty dark. From outside their tent it looked like two people mud wrestling in a Twinkie. Their flashlights were deep in distant dry bags. They hadn’t even unrolled their sleeping pads.

The rest of the trip the mosquitoes tormented them over portages like a pack of wolves that had smelt fear. We misjudged the size of the packs we needed and almost everything was too heavy for his sciatica and her bulging disc. Their tent leaked. My mom forgot the toothbrushes.

It builds character we told them.

We ran out of wine.

But they learned. After the wet tent fiasco their tentmanship was immaculate. They bought their own paddles and a used 17-foot Chippewa canoe with ash gunwales. They plan to paddle down the Beaver River next spring. I never again had to explain why we love to go.

The alchemy of a canoe trip worked the dirt under their fingernails and wood smoke into their hair. The journal we gave my father is filled with new quotes, stories and photos. On one page my mom is standing down at the water in a pair of my old rain pants that at the beginning of the trip were deemed too stinky to put in her bag with her other camp clothes. They hang on her like a yellow rubber potato sack. She is wiping her dirty hands on her pants and smiling naughtily.

Tory Bowman moved on from summer camp to a job treeplanting, but never took her parents along with her.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2005 issue of Canoeroots Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Canoeroots’ print and digital editions here.

Whitewater: Getting it While We Can

Stories

Photo: Brian Shields — Whitewater: Getting it While We Can

We journey down to James Bay again, pulling our three canoes, one paddle stroke at a time, for the 300 kilometres to Moosonee. We travel the seldom-used North French River, catching the last of a wet summer’s high water and then watching the river ebb, day by day, as its life drains away under us. So few whitewater canoeists travel this river because the North French is what the local outfitters call “water critical”. Sandwiched tightly between the Little Abitibi and the Wakwayowkastic rivers, the narrowness of its watershed normally allows canoe travel only just after the snow melts.

There are no signs of anyone having come this way for years, nothing recognizable as a campsite, never a blaze or an axe-cut branch, all the portages are hidden, unused, behind a wall of trees. In a region laced with so many canoeing classics, why explore such a questionable river? Our group of aging paddlers decided long ago never to paddle a river twice and the North French was the only blue line draining into James Bay from the south we hadn’t travelled.

Cold and incessant early summer rains have filled the riverbed completely and we fall into it, early in July, on the very first sunny day in weeks. Even in the first few kilometres, we can see the water dropping. It is possible to see a faint high-water mark etched on the shore grass, now that there are no rains to wash it away. As the days pass, this ever-rising line on the grass urges us on as the earth raises its bony fingers through the surface of the river.

In spite of the nagging reality of the water draining from under our canoes, the North French is not a river to be rushed. In July, the banks are lined with roses, lilies and even orchids, and the black spruce grow to giants, half again as tall as anywhere else so that the upper river winds its way through a deep and shaded spruce canyon.

WHAT IS COMING, AND WHAT IS NOT

Every day moose greet us with long stares that come with their first sighting of humans. We begin to think of this river as an unspoiled garden, our Eden, where everything we see vibrates with health and life. It is a river of great beauty, truly the hidden jewel of all the southern James Bay rivers.

The early spring water levels have left debris high in the trees and stacked bleached driftwood piles to totter over river rock islands. We imagine early season travel at such awesome levels, helped by our trip notes from some long-ago, high-water May descent of the North French’s many falls and ledges.

The notes are more of a planning tool than a guide to the reality of our fading river, but there is a kind of comfort in knowing what is coming around the next blind corner, or more often, what is not. At the more dangerous rapids, described in the trip notes using exclamation marks and heavily underlined cautions, we end up picking precise and delicate lines to thread our way through the rocky puzzle. With so little water, we paddle to the very brink of waterfalls and then portage down the centre of the But the receding spring water path, leaving the sucking, biting bugs back on the unseen portages.

On the ebbing North French, the eddies turn nasty. Normally eddies are somewhere to rest, catch your breath, and look over your shoulder at what’s ahead. But the receding water leaves just-subhorrors from merged blades of granite—boat-rippin horrors from canoeists’ nightmares. Our whole river-running technique is reluctantly turned on its head; instead of finding comfort in eddies, boat safety is now found in the deep water crashing through the waves.

Eventually, low water-swept islands begin to emerge, rocky but blissfully flat, offering somewhere to pitch a tent without the laborious cutting of trees to clear tent sites in the solid wall of jungle on shore. The river opens into the lowlands, flat expanses of shallows with only the vaguest of channels. We walk in the water beside our boats for hours, jumping in and out, pulling and pushing, searching for just enough water to float our weight. Here, the North French is no different than any of the other rivers draining into James Bay. These daylong flatwater stretches, like the bugs, are the price we pay for the days of flowers and rapids behind us.

The North French spills into the Moose River. On the Moose the sky gets bigger, opening into an enormous flatness, and we imagine we can see the ocean as a thin watery horizon line to the north. Behind us lies just what we asked for: another river to add to our lifetime jewel box, a precious adventure in a fleeting window, and another opportunity to travel across this magnificent granite land.

Brian Shields lives and eats well.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2005 issue of Canoeroots Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Canoeroots’ print and digital editions here.

Solo, Then So High

Stories

Photo: Laurel Archer — Solo, Then So High

On paper, northern Saskatchewan looks like an easy place to be alone. Maps show few roads, few settlements—almost nothing to interrupt the serenity of a solo trip.

I had been looking forward to getting back here to paddle some rivers I hadn’t yet explored, but 18 days into the 40-day trip the wind that is battering my tent is having the same effect on my mind. I’m lying in my tent, trying to ignore the voices that keep reminding me of all the disasters that could befall me here, so far from any help. It’s logical to be vigilant, alert, but will this cacophony ever stop? I don’t have the experi- ence to know and no one to talk to, except the voices. They aren’t very helpful.

Paradoxically, my body is fit, and I’ve never travelled so efficiently, so gracefully. Inside my sleeping bag, I wrap my tanned arms around my torso and feel solid muscle and bone. Being alone, my observa- tion skills and my intuitive knowledge have reached levels I never would have thought possible. I perceive the patterns of this land, large and small. I know where it will rise and fall, where it will permit passage between watersheds or around an unrunnable rapid. My maps don’t so much guide me, as just confirm what I see. It’s a state of being that doesn’t happen when you are with other people, when interacting with them takes the place of interacting with the land.

But I’m too aware of my fears. My imagination, such a friend at my writing desk, makes leaves falling outside my tent sound like charging moose and turns riffles in the distance into boat-devouring cataracts. Minor missteps nag at me: I broke my stove cleaning it; I left my sharpening stone at the last campsite; the wind came up on me as I crossed some open water. My anxiety is drowning the confidence that normally allows me to guide others down such rivers. Can I really rely soley on myself?

I hadn’t expected to have to answer this question, and it’s getting the best of me. With thunder booming and rain pelting the fly, I don’t want to face another day on the river with both the wind and whispers of self-doubt filling my ears.

Ducking my head into the sleeping bag, I curl into a ball. My breath warms my nose and the insulation dampens the noise of the storm. I concentrate on these comforts to try and stop my thoughts from racing. Finally, in the midst of picturing a forest fire engulfing me, I fall into a restless doze.

At three in the morning, the rain stops. As the incessant pattering tapers off the relief of silence takes its place. A jolt of optimism runs through me and I grab hold of it, vaguely sens- ing a few ways it might be possible to look forward to a day of paddling. The anxiety of being alone out here for another three weeks melts away as I focus only on the next 12 hours; I’ll run a few rapids maybe, endure the vagaries of a day of weather, get along fairly well with the ever-present, but usually shy, wildlife. In the calm after the storm it seems manageable.

In this perfect moment I realize that my greatest fear is not that something will happen to me, it’s that I will give up on this journey for no reason other than being unable to subdue my negative thoughts. With this fear out in the open, it seems ridiculous, or at least surmountable. I turn on my headlamp and spew it all into my journal, feeling like I’ve just lifted the weight of a canoe off my shoulders after a four-kilometre portage.

That afternoon, the river throws its usual surprises at me, but “the unknown” seems less of an adversary. As I approach a ledgy set of rapids, a large bear ambles down to the river. So black and sleek, it looks healthy and at home here. When the current brings me alongside, it scoots up the bank out of sight.

I turn back to the rapids and run them blind, trusting my river sense that tells me this is a manageable drop. Centred in the here and now, I enjoy the rapid for all it’s worth. I even twirl my paddle at the end before digging it in to start my search for a worthy campsite. There’s no telling how far that will be, I’m the one writing the guidebook!

In any case it’s probably six more days to Black Lake, and then I’m off down the Fond du Lac, a much bigger river, and then…. I breathe deeply, smell the jackpine, and release that creeping voice to the wind, along with the one that says I probably should have scouted that set.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2005 issue of Canoeroots Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Canoeroots’ print and digital editions here.

Hurricane Frances: And the Water Ran Dark

Stories

Photo: Dave Morin — Hurricane Frances: And the Water Ran Dark

We hardly noticed the rain during the night. The trees must have done a good job of sheltering us because when I crawled out of my tent in the morning I was disappointed to see the rain persisting. It had let up significantly from the day before, but that wasn’t saying much. Yesterday, the still-potent tail end of hurricane Frances had rumbled overtop of us as we spent our first day on the Bonaventure River.

I thought back to the news reports I had seen on television before boarding the train to come to Quebec’s Gaspé Peninsula. Frances had just ravaged Florida, leaving 34 dead in her wake. The fact that she had lost her hurricane status by the time we encountered her was little consolation. She was still packing the sort of punch that only Mother Nature can deliver.

By mid-afternoon, the river had started to rise noticeably. The Bonaventure’s nor- mally gin-clear waters had taken on a brownish tinge.

While the others snuggled in their damp sleeping bags, I walked toward the bank to look at the river and heard what sounded like a freight train roaring through the valley.

The Bonaventure had been transformed. It’s ranked as one of the 10 most limpid rivers in the world but today it was a foaming mass of violent brown water. It looked like a chocolate milkshake in a blender gone berserk—except this milkshake was rising six feet above the banks and flowing freely throughout the forest.

Every eddy had disappeared. Floating tree trunks and branches raced past at an alarming speed. Though I’ve been pad- dling rivers for 30 years, this normally intermediate river was a terrifying sight. I thought about the rest of the team—most were only novices. We were in pretty deep.

I heard a noise behind me in the bush and turned to see our guide, Gilles Brideau, emerging from a small clearing a little further downstream. Though small and wiry, this enthusiastic French-Canadian pumps out more energy than a Hydro-Québec mega-project. He’s been guiding trips with his outfitting company Cime Aventure for 16 years. With sharp eyes gleaming beneath an ever-present weathered leather hat, Gilles looks every bit the backwoods pioneer.

Gilles was uncharacteristically subdued as we surveyed the rabid river. The canoes he had so wisely fastened to some trees were now floating around on the edge of the forest, tugging at their ropes.

Gilles and I took a walk down the bank to scout the next kilometre or so of river, bushwhacking down the left bank and stopping wherever there was a vantage point. As the river swept around a long left bend, a tiny green island made a feeble attempt to disrupt the current. With emphatic language that brought some colour to the grey morning, Gilles explained how this patch of flooded trees was usually an island big enough for a campsite.

As we continued our reconnaissance my anxiety progressed like the rain trickling under my rainjacket and creeping down the back of my neck.

There were large brown wave trains in the middle of the main stream and, to the sides, massive whirlpools and boils confused the current. Any eddies large enough to gather the group and prepare for the next section of river were nowhere to be seen.

I asked Gilles if we were any- where near a road or escape route. His lips tightened and he shook his head. There was only one real option. About four kilo- metres downstream was a small bridge where he hoped we could still exit from the river on the right shore. We would have to risk it and run the river down to the bridge, praying that nobody capsized.

We turned upstream and hiked back to the campsite.

The group was sitting around the fire tucking into Moroccan omelettes and looking very relaxed—few understood the gravity of the situation. Apart from Gilles, a second guide named Christian and myself, everyone was from Quebec’s tourism agency. They were here to see a part of the province they spent their work days promoting but none had been expecting to grapple with serious whitewater. Gilles ate his breakfast calmly before calling the group together for a briefing, explaining the situation and spelling out the plan.

We would load the canoes by floating them up into the woods and then re-launch them carefully so they stayed close to the river’s edge. All gear would be securely bound inside. Once the whole group was on the water, we would make our way down the left shore in single file, leaving plenty of space between each canoe in case one got caught in a bush or an overhanging branch.

Amidst it all, we tried to maintain a modicum of humour to keep everyone calm. The last thing we needed was to scare everyone out of their wits. After all, this was supposed to be fun.

Gilles led off and one-by-one the rest of the team followed ducky style. We negotiated the tricky left-hand bend, hugging the shoreline to stay in the weakest part of the current yet were careful not to run into any of the abundant strainers. All well and good, except that in order to get off the river, we had to cross over to the right bank before we reached the bridge—a dangerous endeavour.

Gilles carefully entered the main current on a diagonal and the other canoes followed. We crossed the centre of the river, crashing through some substantial waves. Taken one at a time they were manageable, but this wasn’t the place to take anything for granted. Though most of my nervous energy was spent worrying how the other canoes were faring, I was more than a little concerned for myself.

It’s like those trapeze artists on a high wire. No matter how confident you are in your abilities, there’s always an element of risk and it’s nice to have a safety net. Looking down this river nearly devoid of eddies, I didn’t see much safety, let alone a net. Fanciful though it might have been, I imagined myself swim- ming all the way down to the mouth of the river and out into the Baies de Chaleurs.

Bringing my attention back to the task at hand, I leaned into my strokes and, after a few moments of shouting encouragement through clenched teeth, the last canoe slid into the slower current on the other side of the river.

I was relieved to think the crux was over, until I realized that even something simple like stopping would be dicey on this river. I paddled ahead of the group and reached the bridge.

Fortunately, there was a small bay that formed a reasonably sized eddy where salmon fisherman launched their boats. My partner, Sophie, and I set up early and punched into the calm water behind the bridge abutment. We jumped out, secured our canoe and waded out to the edge of the eddy to catch the oncoming boats.

One by one, we wrangled the canoes in by grabbing their painters and swinging them into the eddy. When the last canoe was in, Gilles pushed his hat back a little and I saw that the pattern of weather-worn creases in his face had changed from worried to relieved.

Gilles burrowed into his personal bag of tricks and pulled out a satellite telephone to contact base camp. The happy bus, an old school bus painted in the red, white and blue tricolour of this proudly Acadian region, would pick us up in two hours.

With an emerging sun punctuating our safe arrival, the group began trying to make sense of their first whitewater experience. Down by the water’s edge, I noticed Gilles and Christian in a huddle and strolled down to meet them.

Christian, a confident, easy-going young guide who has worked for Gilles for several seasons wanted to run the rest of the river and was looking for a partner. Before I could stop myself, I pulled on my lifejacket again and grabbed a paddle. Christian gestured toward the bow of the boat and I nodded. Soon we were waving adieu to the group and ferrying our way back into the muddy current.

Christian has been guiding on this river for years but he had never seen it this high, not even in spring flood. He’d point out land- marks and tell me what they normally looked like and I’d marvel at how watersheds can collect and discharge so much water.

I pulled out my GPS and shook my head. The satellites were clocking us at 19 kilometres per hour. We were 40 kilometres upriver of Cime Aventure’s base camp. A distance that would take some groups two days to cover would take us two hours. There were, howev- er, a few things to turn our attention to before pulling out. The rapids in this section were normally class II and III. It was impossible to predict whether they would be completely flooded and washed out, or larger and more difficult. A flooded river is an unpredictable thing.

Christian was sure the highlight (or perhaps lowlight) of the journey would be where the Duval River drained into the Bonaventure. This tributary would be carrying a huge volume of water, wood and debris, which would pile into the main stream of the Bonaventure, creating massive standing waves, swirling boils and river-wide holes.

As we approached the Duval we passed mobile trailers floating in the woods, swamped fishing boats and even a couple of kayaks hauled up into the bush. We ploughed into some bushes just below the kayaks to see if anyone needed assistance, but there was nobody to be found. It looked like a group had abandoned their trip and taken an overland route.

I began to weigh the pros and cons of such a plan, but Christian read my mind, “We have no choice, Jim,” he said. “We’re running it.”

I knew we actually did have a choice, but I also knew neither of us would rather exercise the overland option. I happily resigned myself to the situation, fully aware that I was here for no other reason than the condition from which

I suffer. It’s called foot-in-mouth disease. Every time I have the opportunity to avoid trouble by keeping my mouth shut I usually end up opening it and shoving my foot firmly into it. It has gotten me into trouble before. Why did I suggest sea kayaking through walrus-infested waters in the Arctic last year? Did I have to insist on camping close to fresh bear scat in Temagami? Would this day turn out any better than those?

As the Duval entered on our left, the familiar taste of my feet was replaced by the earthy taste of mud as the Bonaventure crashed over the bow and into my face. I was only aware of moments of lurching tippiness as the canoe heaved over—and through—the waves and holes. Upright but almost swamped, we steered the canoe into what passed for calm water below the confluence. The bottom of our canoe was full of water so brown I couldn’t see my feet below. Busy bailing out the bow, I took Christian at his word when he told me he had leaned hard into a few huge braces, saving us from flipping more than once.

With the added volume of the Duval, we descended all the faster and tore through the last of the kilometres to the base. I was sure we would arrive before the rest of the group, but as we approached the floating dock I saw arms waving us in. I couldn’t help but notice they were only using one arm to wave. The team was two beers ahead of us and it was time to catch up.

They’d decided that with one of the world’s clearest river’s running so muddy, we would drink a special toast. And we did, with La Fin du Monde, one of Quebec’s darkest and strongest beers.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2005 issue of Canoeroots Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Canoeroots’ print and digital editions here.

Skills: 8 Tips For Amazing Canoe Trip Cooking

Photo: flickr.com/oskarlin — A frying pan of steaming stir-fry sits on a camp stove, surrounded by beach rocks.

For your next adventure, you don’t have to cook and eat like a second-year university student while on a backcountry canoe trip. What is it about travelling by canoe that makes otherwise-competent cooks regress into culinary basket cases? You don’t have to eat like a second-year university student out there. With the right preparation, equipment, recipes and, above all, attitude you can come to see trip meals as not just fuel for your body, but food for your soul.

PREP YOUR FOOD AT HOME

Measuring and bagging portions (rice, flour, pasta etc.) on a per-meal basis will save you time on trip. Don’t peel or chop vegetables or fruit beforehand, but cheese, cured meats and smoked salmon can be sliced and vacuum packed beforehand. Any vacuum packer worth its salt is expensive. Instead of buying your own, find a local deli that will vacuum pack things for you, including their drained olives or other deli-bar delicacies. If you buy enough and smile, you might even convince them to vacuum pack the sauce you’ve made for dinner on night four.

BUY A DEHYDRATOR

Once dehydrated, whole foods such as straw- berries, yams, onions, peppers, and puréed bananas become light, nearly spoil-proof and easy to pack. Prepared foods such as tomato sauce, potato-leek soup, or hummus also dehydrate well. Dehydrators cost around $50, come with helpful instructions and are simple to use. To rehydrate, just soak in hot water for 10 minutes.

LET THEM EAT CAKE

A cast-aluminum Dutch Oven costs about $60, a price tag that will seem very reasonable after just your first batch of brownies. Simply place burning embers on the lid and increase the heat by building twig fires on top of or around the oven. Dutch Ovens make the best breads, pizzas, muffins and cakes of any camping ovens. Recycle your reflector oven and save your Outback Oven for hiking trips.

EQUIP YOURSELF

You need the right tools to get any job done. Mucking around with potholders is the quickest way to spill sauces and burn food or yourself. Buy a pair of sturdy pliers and ignore the scratches they make on your stainless steel pot. Use a nonstick pan for sautéing and frying. They come in various sizes with

folding handles. Not only will you eat less carbon, you’ll spend less time scraping pots. Take insulated leather gloves. They perform miracles for your culinary dexterity and let you manipulate coals for the perfect baking and cooking fires.

REAL COOKS PACK A PANTRY

Take your favourite condiments. Why not have real maple syrup on day 28, butter on day six, cream in your coffee on day two, and ketchup in your mac and cheese? Buy egg replacer at the bulk store (powdered and inexpensive) so that you can make your cook- ies fluffy instead of flat. Bring a spice kit that includes salt, pepper, cayenne, hot sauce, gar- lic powder and whatever spices you reach for at home.

LUBRICATE YOUR PALATE

Forget about Gore-Tex and Kevlar, the great-est advance in outdoor outfitting has to be the 16-litre box of wine! When you’ve drained it, you can burn the box and inflate the bag for a pillow.

EAT FRESH DAIRY ON DAY 20

All you need to make yogurt is a good thermos that has been preheated with boiling water, yogurt culture, and milk powder. You can buy the culture packets from health food stores—just follow the instructions. Start it at night and eat it the next morning on por- ridge, granola or pancakes with those berries that you’ve rehydrated.

ROUGH RULES FOR ROUGHAGE

Food spoilage is hard to predict. I’ve eaten onions on day 32, red peppers on day seven and cream cheese on day five. I’ve also buried onions on day eight, burned pitas on day two and jettisoned red peppers before the put-in. To keep your fresh food from becoming compost, treat it like your meal depends on it. Pack perishables at the top of your packs. If you are paddling cold waters, make a ‘fridge barrel’ that contains your most sensitive items. This can be submerged each night and kept shaded all day. Each additional day you can keep it cool is cream in your coffee.

Mike and Beth got it cooking on 60-day Wanapitei trips.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2005 issue of Canoeroots Magazine.