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Brenna Kelly is an accomplished paddler. She was a semi-pro creek boater and freestyle competitor and qualified for the Canadian National Freestyle Team. While she doesn’t compete anymore, as a hobby, she teaches all paddlesports and swiftwater rescue. She’s dropped waterfalls, paddled remote rivers and swam in rapids more times than she can count. But the idea of taking her two kids, ages seven and five, on an overnight canoe trip was intimidating to her.
The plan was to canoe from the mountain town of Revelstoke, where they live, down the Columbia River and camp overnight at a local campground. The next day, they’d continue down the river where it widens into a lake, and take out at the ferry landing, covering 55 kilometers over two days.
You can see the trip they took in the film, The Next Adventure, touring in this year’s Paddling Film Festival.
This trip had been on Brenna’s mind for a long time, and although it wasn’t Piper and Hudson’s first time paddling or camping, it would be their first time putting the two together and spending potentially long days on the water. And it would be Brenna’s first time taking the kids on her own.
“There are so many things safety-wise that you need to consider,” she explains, expanding on why she was intimidated by the idea. “And then on top of the safety aspects, my secondary concern was making sure the kids were actually having fun. Because if they didn’t, it could have easily been the moment they decided to hate paddlesports forever.”
No pressure.
But Brenna didn’t want her reservations about the trip to hold her back from doing it. So she started making contingency plans for everything that might go wrong, covering her bases to ensure the trip was both safe and fun for the kids.
“I had considered, what if we tipped our canoe? That was a big concern.” Brenna explains that to counter this, she invited her friend Tyler along to film. She procured a sit-on-top, pedal-drive fishing kayak for him to paddle, so his hands would be free and he’d have a stable platform he could pull the kids onto if their canoe tipped.
Her second concern was whether the kids would tolerate sitting in a canoe all day. To combat boredom, she brought a harmonica, an ocarina, and copious amounts of candy and snacks.
“I made sure to make stops every couple of hours at least, just to stretch our legs, run around and play, do little hikes, check out cool things,” she says. “Because it’s all about the journey, it’s not just about getting from point A to point B.”
The first day, they were only on the water for about four hours. They stopped at a campground where Brenna had already arranged for her trailer to be dropped off and where Tyler’s car was parked. All their camping gear was waiting for them, and they had an out if the weather turned on day two and they didn’t want to continue on.
“I planned it all like a diamond heist,” laughs Brenna.
Day two brought more good weather and the kids were keen to complete the trip, so they headed back out on the water. Despite the second day being similar in distance to the first, it took a lot longer than anticipated to reach their destination—around seven hours. They were paddling a stretch that was more lakelike and had no current.
Thankfully, she had another contingency plan in her back pocket: a motor.
Brenna says she has been familiar with Bixpy Motors for a long time, but thought they were initially created for fishing.
“But they weren’t,” she continues. “They were created first and foremost for people to feel confident going out on the water. So that if someone was like, ‘Oh my gosh, there’s a little bit of wind, never mind I won’t go.’ You want them to be like, ‘You know what, there’s a little bit of wind, but I’ll just put my motor in the fin box of my paddleboard and if I need to use it then I can and I’ll be able to get back to where I started.’ And same with canoes.”
The ability to drop a motor whenever she felt like she needed the extra power was the last piece of the puzzle to make her feel like this was a trip she could accomplish with the kids.
Brenna says they definitely used the motor more on the second day of the trip to help them get through the flatwater section.
She notes that there might be a bit of a stigma around using a motor to go on a canoe trip and that some hardcore paddlers might scoff at the idea.
“I don’t feel bad about using these tools at all,” she says. “If they’re the difference between me going and not going, then I’m going to use them.”
At the end of the day, she says, they accomplished their goals.
“The point is the kids got to go on a trip, I got to go on a trip, and we got to paddle the overnight section I’d always wanted to do. We had fun, we stayed safe, we made it to the end.”
And the kids are already asking to go again. Next time, they’re planning to bring more friends along and Piper and Hudson have requested that instead of staying at the campground, they find a place to backcountry camp along the river.
“Now that it’s summery here in Revelstoke, they’ve already asked three or four times if we’re going to do another canoe trip this summer,” says Brenna. “I think it’s safe to say, I’ve got them hooked.”
You can watch The Next Adventure in person at a Paddling Film Festival World Tour event or watch at home with a subscription to Paddling Magazine TV.
Already dreaming of the next adventure. | Feature photo: Tyler Correll
