Whether looking for a book to get you through to the next paddling season or to read in your hammock after a long day on the water, this list of the best canoeing books promises to enthrall readers with stories of adventure, friendship, courage, daring and skill. Spanning tales expeditions, self-exploration and trip inspiration, celebrate the timeless allure of adventure by canoe with this list of some of our favorite canoeing reads, as well as the best new releases.
Best canoeing books: New releases
By Brenda Missen
On a warm August evening, Brenda Missen, a 37-year-old single, unattached writer, pitches her tent beside a lake in Canada’s 7,600 square-kilometre [3,000 square-mile] Algonquin Provincial Park. She is on a four-night “reconnaissance mission,” an hour’s paddle from the parking lot, to find out if she has the capability—and nerve—to one day take a real canoe trip in the park interior by herself. Paddling and portaging from her campsite by day and surviving imaginary bear attacks by night, she decides she’s ready. Then a ranger arrives to check her permit, and an inexplicable, powerful intuition tells her this is the person she’s meant to marry. Going solo may not be necessary after all.
But the fairy tale unravels. In the wake of a broken engagement to her One True Paddling Partner, Brenda ventures into the near wilderness on a series of solo canoe trips that blow all her perceptions of romance, relationships, God, and her own self (gently) out of the water. In our high-tech, urban age, when so many people are disconnected from the natural world, Tumblehome—part spiritual memoir, part travel adventure, and great part ode to the Earth—is a timely and important exploration of where our real roots lie.
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By Kevin Callan
A new edition of the best-selling guide, expanded with 10 more routes and over 50 more pages. Ontario is blessed with some of the most scenic and enjoyable lakes and rivers in the world—it truly is a paddler’s paradise. This updated and expanded third edition is destined to become the classic guide to the very best canoeing the province has to offer. Top 70 Canoe Routes of Ontario includes 10 more of Kevin Callan’s favorite canoe excursions. While some of these routes are well known to paddlers province-wide, others are hidden secrets. The trips range from day-long paddles to week-long expeditions and are divided amongst nine regions: Southern Ontario, Cottage Country, Algonquin, Central Ontario, Eastern Ontario, Temagami, Ontario’s Near North, Northern Ontario and Northwestern Ontario.
Kevin offers paddlers all they will need to complete each route, including accurate maps of all access points, portage lengths, important river features and campsites—all embellished with historical notes and Kevin’s trademark humor. He also includes a detailed “Before You Go” section in which he shares the expertise that has earned him the title of Canada’s Happy Camper.
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By Adam Shoalts
From Canada’s most accomplished adventurer and storyteller comes a gripping journey into the vastness of Canada’s landscape and history.
Looking out his porch window one spring morning, Adam Shoalts spotted a majestic peregrine falcon flying across the neighbouring fields near Lake Erie. Each spring, falcons migrate from southernmost Canada to remote arctic mountains. Grabbing his backpack and canoe, Shoalts resolved to follow the falcon’s route north on an astonishing 3,400-kilometre journey to the Arctic.
Along the way, he faces a huge variety of challenges and obstacles, including storms on the Great Lakes, finding campsites in the urban wilderness of Toronto and Montreal, avoiding busy commercial freighter traffic, gale force winds, massive hydroelectric dams, bushwhacking without trails, dealing with hunger, multiple bear encounters, and navigating whitewater rapids on icy northern rivers far from any help.
In his signature style, Shoalts roams as much across space as he does time, winding his way through a stunning diversity of landscapes ranging from lush Carolinian forests to lonely windswept mountains, salty seas to trackless swamps, pristine lakes to glittering mega-cities, as well as the sites of long ago battles, shipwrecks, forgotten forts, and abandoned trading posts. Through his travels, he reveals how interconnected wild places are, from the loneliest depths of the northern wilderness to busy urban parks, and the vital importance of these connections.
Where the Falcon Flies invites readers on an extraordinary armchair adventure that spans five ecoregions and centuries of fascinating history, and is a masterwork by one of Canada’s most successful and audacious authors.
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Best canoeing books to read
By J. MacGregor
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world’s literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
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By Amy Freeman
Since its establishment as a federally protected wilderness in 1964, the Boundary Waters has become one of our nation’s most valuable―and most frequently visited―natural treasures. When Amy and Dave Freeman learned of toxic mining proposed within this area’s watershed, they decided to take action―by spending a year in the wilderness, and sharing their experience through video, photos, and blogs with an audience of hundreds of thousands of concerned citizens. This book tells the deeper story of their adventure in northern Minnesota: of loons whistling under a moonrise, of ice booming as it forms and cracks, of a moose and her calf swimming across a misty lake.
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By Adam Shoalts
When Adam Shoalts ventured into the largest unexplored wilderness on the planet, he hoped to set foot where no one had ever gone before. What he discovered surprised even him.
Shoalts was no stranger to the wilderness. He had hacked his way through jungles and swamp, had stared down polar bears and climbed mountains. But one spot on the map called out to him irresistibly: the Hudson Bay Lowlands, a trackless expanse of muskeg and lonely rivers, caribou and wolf—an Amazon of the north, parts of which to this day remain unexplored.
Cutting through this forbidding landscape is a river no explorer, trapper, or canoeist had left any record of paddling. It was this river that Shoalts was obsessively determined to explore.
It took him several attempts, and years of research. But finally, alone, he found the headwaters of the mysterious river. He believed he had discovered what he had set out to find. But the adventure had just begun. Unexpected dangers awaited him downstream.
Gripping and often poetic, Alone Against the North is a classic adventure story of single-minded obsession, physical hardship, and the restless sense of wonder that every explorer has in common.
But what does exploration mean in an age when satellite imagery of even the remotest corner of the planet is available to anyone with a phone? Is there anything left to explore?
What Shoalts discovered as he paddled downriver was a series of unmapped waterfalls that could easily have killed him. Just as astonishing was the media reaction when he got back to civilization. He was crowned “Canada’s Indiana Jones” and appeared on morning television. He was feted by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and congratulated by the Governor General. People were enthralled by Shoalts’s proof that the world is bigger than we think.
Shoalts’s story makes it clear that the world can become known only by getting out of our cars and armchairs, and setting out into the unknown, where every step is different from the one before, and something you may never have imagined lies around the next curve in the river.
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By James Campbell
Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, home to only a handful of people, is a harsh and lonely place. So when James Campbell’s cousin Heimo Korth asked him to spend a summer building a cabin in the rugged Interior, Campbell hesitated about inviting his fifteen-year-old daughter, Aidan, to join him: Would she be able to withstand clouds of mosquitoes, the threat of grizzlies, bathing in an ice-cold river, and hours of grueling labor peeling and hauling logs?
But once there, Aidan embraced the wild. She even agreed to return a few months later to help the Korths work their traplines and hunt for caribou and moose. Despite windchills of 50 degrees below zero, father and daughter ventured out daily to track, hunt, and trap. Under the supervision of Edna, Heimo’s Yupik Eskimo wife, Aidan grew more confident in the woods.
Campbell knew that in traditional Eskimo cultures, some daughters earned a rite of passage usually reserved for young men. So he decided to take Aidan back to Alaska one final time before she left home. It would be their third and most ambitious trip, backpacking over Alaska’s Brooks Range to the headwaters of the mighty Hulahula River, where they would assemble a folding canoe and paddle to the Arctic Ocean. The journey would test them, and their relationship, in one of the planet’s most remote places: a land of wolves, musk oxen, Dall sheep, golden eagles, and polar bears.
At turns poignant and humorous, Braving It is an ode to America’s disappearing wilderness and a profound meditation on what it means for a child to grow up—and a parent to finally, fully let go.
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By Mark Neuzil
Ancient records of canoes are found from the Pacific Northwest to the coast of Maine, in Minnesota and Mexico, in the Southeast and across the Caribbean. And if a native of those distant times might encounter a canoe of our day—whether birch bark or dugout or a modern marvel made of carbon fiber—its silhouette would be instantly recognizable. This is the story of that singular American artifact, so little changed over time: of canoes, old and new, the people who made them, and the labors and adventures they shared. With features of technology, industry, art, and survival, the canoe carries us deep into the natural and cultural history of North America.
In the foreword by Pulitzer Prize-winner John McPhee, we dip into the experience of canoeing, from the thrilling challenges of childhood camp expeditions to the moving reflections of long-time paddlers. The pages that follow are filled with historical photographs and artwork, authors Neuzil and Sims describe the dugout and birch bark craft from their first known appearance through the exploration of Canada by fur traders, to the recreational movements that promoted all-wood and wood-and-canvas canoes. Modern materials such as aluminum, fiberglass, and plastic expanded participation and connected canoeists with emerging environmental movements.
Finally, Canoes lets us hear the voices of past paddlers like Alexander Mackenzie, the first European to cross North America, using birch bark and dugout canoes a decade before Lewis and Clark went overland, Henry Thoreau, Eric Sevareid, Edwin Tappan Adney, and others. Their stories are a tribute to the First Peoples who, 500 or 1,000 or even 5,000 years ago, built a craft designed to such perfection that it has plied the waters fundamentally unchanged ever since.
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By Richard Combs
Whether you are looking for a quiet float along a rural stretch of flat water or an exciting paddle through Class IV rapids, this book will guide your way. As well as being a comprehensive guide to the many rivers and streams in the state, Canoeing & Kayaking Ohio’s Streams includes chapters on water safety, paddling instructions, how to read and rate white water, and even tips for paddling with children. For each of over 45 rivers in the state, you will find suggested stopover point for natural and human history, information on potential hazards and portages, detailed maps with river miles and car shuttle miles from access points, and listings of game-fish for each waterway.
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By Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau paints the woods and waterways of Maine with the same loving hand that described his Walden home, and entertains with the successes and difficulties of the trip and the quirks of his companion and their guide, Joseph Polis, told with a wit and insight that can only be found in Thoreau.
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By Tod Bolsinger
Explorers Lewis and Clark had to adapt. While they had prepared to find a waterway to the Pacific Ocean, instead they found themselves in the Rocky Mountains. You too may feel that you are leading in a cultural context you were not expecting. You may even feel that your training holds you back more often than it carries you along. Drawing from his extensive experience as a pastor and consultant, Tod Bolsinger brings decades of expertise in guiding churches and organizations through uncharted territory. He offers a combination of illuminating insights and practical tools to help you reimagine what effective leadership looks like in our rapidly changing world. If you’re going to scale the mountains of ministry, you need to leave behind canoes and find new navigational tools. Now expanded with a study guide, this book will set you on the right course to lead with confidence and courage.
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By Cliff Jacobson
The 30th Anniversary Edition of the classic Expedition Canoeing has long been considered the premier guide to canoeing and exploring North America’s waterways. This thirtieth-anniversary edition expertly details everything you need to know about paddling the continent’s wild rivers. Outdoors writer and wilderness canoe guide Cliff Jacobson draws on his thirty-plus years of river running to give you sound advice, fresh new ideas, and advanced techniques for canoeing in the wilderness. Completely updated and revised, inside you’ll find dozens of full-color photos, how-to illustrations, source charts, canoeing and camping tricks, a chapter full of hard-won advice from more than twenty-five of Jacobson’s fellow canoeing experts, and a brand new chapter devoted to paddling desert and swamp rivers.
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By Eric Sevareid
In 1930 two novice paddlers—Eric Sevareid and Walter C. Port—launched a secondhand 18-foot canvas canoe into the Minnesota River at Fort Snelling for an ambitious summer-long journey from Minneapolis to Hudson Bay. Without benefit of radio, motor, or good maps, the teenagers made their way over 2,250 miles of rivers, lakes, and difficult portages. Nearly four months later, after shooting hundreds of sets of rapids and surviving exceedingly bad conditions and even worse advice, the ragged, hungry adventurers arrived in York Factory on Hudson Bay—with winter freeze-up on their heels. First published in 1935, Canoeing with the Cree is Sevareid’s classic account of this youthful odyssey.
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By Andy Lee
Next time you drive across that bridge on your way to work look down at the river below and ask it where did it come from and where is it going. Then ask yourself if you would like to thru-paddle that river from beginning to end and see first it hand for yourself, with all of its mysteries and all of its adventures. If the answer is yes, or even maybe, you will enjoy reading Five Hundred Miles to the Sea.
The author paddled and camped over 500 river miles on the Jackson, Cowpasture and James Rivers from the mountains of western Virginia to the sandy beaches of the Atlantic Ocean and he tells you how you can do it, too. Follow his well-well-practiced advice and you will have an unfair advantage over other trippers.
Whatever paddling adventures you desire, you will find answers to many of your questions and many solid tips and tricks to make your journey easier, safer and more fun in Five Hundred Miles to the Sea.
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By Natalie Warren
The remarkable eighty-five-day journey of the first two women to canoe the 2,000-mile route from Minneapolis to Hudson Bay.
Unrelenting winds, carnivorous polar bears, snake nests, sweltering heat, and constant hunger. Paddling from Minneapolis to Hudson Bay, following the 2,000-mile route made famous by Eric Sevareid in his 1935 classic Canoeing with the Cree [see above], Natalie Warren and Ann Raiho faced unexpected trials, some harrowing, some simply odd. But for the two friends-the first women to make this expedition-there was one timeless challenge: the occasional pitfalls that test character and friendship. Warren’s spellbinding account retraces the women’s journey from inspiration to Arctic waters, giving readers an insider view from the practicalities of planning a three-month canoe expedition to the successful accomplishment of the adventure of a lifetime.
Along the route we meet the people who live and work on the waterways, including denizens of a resort who supply much-needed sustenance; a solitary resident in the wilderness who helps plug a leak; and the people of the Cree First Nation at Norway House, where the canoeists acquire a furry companion. Describing the tensions that erupt between the women (who at one point communicate with each other only by note) and the natural and human-made phenomena they encounter—from islands of trash to waterfalls and a wolf pack—Warren brings us into her experience, and we join these modern women (and their dog) as they recreate this historic trip, including the pleasures and perils, the sexism, the social and environmental implications, and the enduring wonder of the wilderness.
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By the American Canoe Association
Written by the American Canoe Association and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Introduction to Paddling is an easy-to-understand guide to flatwater and river paddling. Based on an earlier work by the Ohio DNR, Flat-water Paddler, this amply illustrated book tells beginning paddlers everything they need to know, from appropriate clothing to the parts of the boat, from correct strokes to proper safety concerns. Good for instructors and those who like to teach themselves, this book is an important resource for those who like to paddle or want to start.
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By Don Starkell
A mind-blowing tale of an epic 12,000-mile paddle trip from Winnipeg to the Amazon in a three-seater canoe. Worth reading for the journey itself, the book also gives stark examples of the impact of ego, group dynamics, preparation and cultural awareness on the success and challenges of an expedition.
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By Holling C. Holling
This classic 1941 children’s book (later turned into a film by Bill Mason) follows the story of a canoe carved by a First Nations boy, which ends up journeying through the Great Lakes to the Atlantic. Part whimsical tale, part geography lesson, this book may have the young ones in your life curiously eyeing local waterways.
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By Jennifer Kingsley
While including the requisite overview on the history, culture, and ecology of the remote Back River, much of Kingsley’s reflections on her 54-day river trip focus on her personal journey, group dynamics and the insights gained from facing the challenges of a wilderness expedition.
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By Audrey Sutherland
With minimal gear, an inflatable kayak and a can-do attitude like no other, Sutherland coolly embarked on epic thousand kilometer journeys along the remote north shore of Molokai and the coast of Alaska. Sutherland’s writing inspires, shatters perceived barriers and may make you question our dependence on GPS, GoPros and Gore-Tex gear.
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By Bill Mason
The return of a classic paddling guide. More than a how-to camping and paddling guide, Song of the Paddle is a philosophical guide to outdoor living. Written by the acclaimed paddler and outdoorsman, Bill Mason, the book leads readers on a journey of exploration and discovery. Mason writes from an intensely subjective viewpoint and the advice is practical and sound. He emphasizes the difference in perception between camping (rough) and outdoor living (comfort). Each page is packed with hard-won tips and tricks for enjoying the great outdoors. No detail is ignored—from keeping campfire smoke out of your eyes to ensuring children are safely occupied around the campsite.
Mason’s personal accounts and details of memorable expeditions are certain to kindle the reader’s sense of adventure. Abundantly illustrated by photographs and sketches, novice campers and seasoned paddlers alike will get more out of their outdoor experience thanks to Song of the Paddle.
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By Hap Wilson
Features the best canoe, kayak and hiking routes in the wild Temagami region of Ontario.
“Compiled by Hap Wilson, an outdoor writer who has more than thirty years of experience as a wilderness guide … personally documented maps … far more information than a volume this size might lead the reader to expect.”
—Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal
Temagami: A Wilderness Paradise is fully updated for the first time in over 10 years. Temagami is one of the northern hemisphere’s most desirable and pristine wilderness areas. Each year thousands visit this 10,000 km2 wilderness area in Central Ontario in search of rugged solitude and authentic backwoods adventure.This comprehensive guidebook details 25 of the best canoeing, kayaking and hiking routes and contains notes on the region’s history, geography, archaeology, flora and fauna, as well as important outfitting, camping and safety tips.
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By Gary and Joanie McGuffin
Atypical honeymoon story. To fulfill their dream of traveling from sea to sea in a canoe, wilderness adventurers Joanie and Gary McGuffin, recently married, set out from the Gulf of St. Lawrence (Atlantic Ocean) and two years and 6,000 miles later reached the Beaufort Sea (Arctic Ocean). Along the way, they faced innumerable hardships and challenged some of Canada’s most dangerous rivers. In the process, they discovered a Canada that few will ever see.
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