TO SITE HOME

John Gardner
Regina, 1992

Vision Quest

From the Pacific Ocean Across British Columbia  

The Athabasca Pass Over The Rockies

The Athabasca River

The Clearwater River and The Methye Portage

The Churchill River To Frog Portage

The Sturgeon-weir and Saskatchewan Rivers

Fort Francis to Pine Falls

The Pas to Pine Falls

Fort Francis to Thunder Bay

Lake Superior

Georgian Bay; The French & Mattawa Rivers

The Ottawa and Saint Lawrence Rivers

The Saint John River to the Atlantic Ocean

VISION QUEST

Our canoe surged on, alternately lifting and plunging in thunder and gray chaos, firm in the grasp of the Athabasca River lusting for the Arctic Ocean. Vertical cliffs rose seventy meters sheer out of the water on either side. An ominous dark line stretched from cliff to cliff across the river below; a four meter limestone ledge over which the river rolled and towards which we hurtled. Cascade Rapid, upstream of Fort McMurray, Alberta, was in full flood following a month of record rainfall, and in no mood to be trifled with. Wave tops skimmed over the gunwales and across the spray cover to dash suddenly over us, splattering our glasses and obscuring our vision.

In such circumstances people react in odd ways. I was declaiming from memory William Francis Butler's comments on rapid running, my fruitiest preaching voice lost in the roar:

It is difficult to find in life any event which so effectually condenses intense nervous sensation into the shortest possible space of time as does the work of shooting, or running, an immense rapid. There is no toil, no heart-breaking labour about it, but as much coolness, dexterity, and skill as man can throw into the work of hand, eye, and head; knowledge of when to strike and how to do it; knowledge of water and rock, and of the one hundred combinations which rock and water can assume - for these two things, rock and water, taken in their abstract, fail as completely to convey any idea of their fierce embracings in the throes of a rapid as the fire burning quietly in the drawingroom fireplace fails to convey the idea of a house wrapped and sheeted in flames.

Great stuff, though maybe better at another time. Yet there was nothing better to be doing. Canoeing is like life, but you get less practice at it. Canoeists who find themselves in big rapids sometimes panic because the situation is unfamiliar, and courage is easier in the familiar. I am a preacher, so I declaim.

We wouldn't panic. We knew exactly what to do, and we were doing it. The normal alternatives are to land on shore and portage (which we could not do because there was no shore), return (which we could not do because the current was too strong), not to get into the predicament in the first place (not our choice), or proceed. Proceeding meant maneuvering to hit the drop at the place where the most water was flowing over the ledge, and where a deep chute should have formed. The guide booklet put that place about one-third from the south cliff, and that did appear to be where the ledge was lowest. We were aimed there. The decision was easy, and having been made, there was no use being anxious about it. It might have been wrong (we would never know) but it was a done deed.

The chute turned out to be less than ideal. The ledge crossed the river from the north side for two-thirds of its length and then stopped, resuming again eight meters downstream. This created an "s" shaped chute, which swung sharply north while dropping four meters, then slammed back into the fall of the main flow. We swung into it, my paddle thumping hard on limestone half way down as I drew with all my strength. Beve was stretched half out of the boat as the bow dropped like an axe, her paddle reaching down for water and a draw-brace. The canoe plunged and lurched right; the main stream dropped over my left shoulder as Beve was buried in the secondary hole's back wave. We submarined for some heart-stopping seconds, then rose up, level and pointed downstream, well past the ledge, to ride out some truly awesome standing waves into the river's normal hurrying pace below.

Wondrous fun, but I'd be a liar to say we experienced any exalted emotion. It all had happened so fast, and anyway we were using no more skill and living no more dangerously than someone on their way to work negotiating a Regina pedestrian crosswalk.

That rapid was one incident in our eight thousand kilometer canoe voyage from Vancouver to Saint John New Brunswick, in which we were trying to triangulate on the journey of our lives by a simpler and more joyous canoe journey. On sabbatical, I was searching for renewal of my vocation as a pastor, by paddling a canoe across Canada in the company of the woman I love.

This is not the story of two muscle-flexing masochists trying to get into the Guinness Book of World Records. We skipped the Fraser canyon (well, so had Simon Fraser), we once hitched a ride on the back of a Jet Boat, and we stayed in motels when there were any. I was fifty when we began, and had long since given up any pretensions at being a macho-canoeist. Beve and I are among the most laid-back of people, unless and until well motivated.

I had been in mid-life crisis, fed up with a fine job as a parish pastor and grossly irritated by problems most people would think trivial. My life's dream had become an ongoing nightmare; I was drinking far too much, getting increasingly depressed, and approaching vocational paralysis. Beve was fed up with way I was acting, and ready to go along with anything that might restore my equanimity.

So we decided to go canoeing. All we knew was that we wanted escape, to experience life like those voyageurs of Canada's fur trade past:

At the end I found something I had thought I had known before, but in reality had not. What works is simplicity, courage, and hope. Difficulties in life are not met by accepted what someone else believes, but by living our own story in simplicity, courage, and hope. Ah, you say, Another religious huckster. Kick him down the stairs, we've had quite enough of his kind! I do not blame you. But maybe we learned something you could use!

In the spring of 1989 I went on a retreat hoping to sort out some of my feelings of alienation as a pastor. The missioner climaxed his penultimate address by crying piteously: What we must do is to burn our boats, and then launch out into the deep! I decided to go canoeing before I became as idiotic as he was.

Why especially canoeing? Canoeing had played a central role in my personal history and in my ministry for over thirty years. I have paddled all my life. Summer camps and Alquonquin Park were part of my growing experience. Much of my time at Carleton University had been spent paddling my canoe up and down the Rideau River, which flowed past the campus. I was fascinated to discover how many well-known Canadians had been wilderness canoeists. Pierre Trudeau was one; though I loathed his policies, I admired his attitude to canoeing:

A canoeing expedition ... involves a starting rather than a parting. Although it assumes the breaking of ties, its purpose is not to destroy the past, but to lay a foundation for the future. From now on, every living act will be built on this step, which will serve as a base long after the return of the expedition ... and until the next one.

At Carleton I began a life-long fascination with the Canadian fur trade. Romantic, exciting, and liberating, that history was hideously bloodied with the slaughter of our fur-bearing animals and by reckless human cut-throat competition. The fur trade prepared Canadians for the future despoiling of the land. The symbol of the fur trade was the canoe; a symbol of mythological purity, it was also one more tool to destroy the land in the name of progress.

I read Eric Morse's Fur Trade Canoe Routes of Canada Then and Now, and with friends set out to retrace what routes we could. During the next fifteen years I led some four hundred teenagers on explorations of fur trade routes, mostly in replicas of twenty-seven foot North Canoes. I became convinced that experiencing natural stress forced a confrontation with life, which we must experience as imperfect, uncertain, and insecure. Facing that natural stress (especially in community) led to increased courage, self-confidence, self-respect, and ultimately to hope and internal peace.

Life transformation became my preoccupation, expressed through my vocation as Anglican pastor and as recreational canoeist. I came to know religion as a force both for great good and great evil. Good religion accepts that in this world there is no certainty, security, or perfection, only stories which nerve us to face our life courageously, leading through emotional and spiritual growth to hope. Bad religion numbs us by promising certainty, security, or perfection now if we will only live in a way which expresses our dependence on a parent-god through practices approved by God's bullies.

Years ago, on a long voyage with about twenty people, mostly teenagers, I was feeling what Beve describes as sucky. I do not remember why, I only remember feeling ill treated and unappreciated, and slipping off alone to sulk on a rock overlooking the lake. After a while one of the young women came hesitantly up to me and said: "Do you want company? I mean, I thought maybe you wanted to be alone, which was cool, but then you went off and sat on a rock right out in plain sight of everyone, and I wasn't sure. Want to talk"? Insights like that (on, of course, a variety of levels), I need even when they can make me writhe for years afterwards. They can come anywhere, but for me they have mostly come on canoe trips.

Pierre Burton says that Canadians may be defined as those who can make love in a canoe; I had come to know and love my wife Beve in the context of recreational canoeing, and that too was part of our story. Beve had her own reasons for wanting to paddle sea-to-sea, which I believe included a flair for the dramatic, a desire to share an adventure, a strong wish to visit her family in Saint John, and an impish delight in the effect the mention of the voyage in her Recreation-Administration Resume would have on a potential employer. So we decided to put a canoe in Pacific salt water and to take it out in Atlantic salt water, crossing our land by shoe and canoe, and using that space to reflect on what a reasonably honest pastor was supposed to be doing (if anything) in the Anglican church of the 1990's.

That entailed a lot of organization. We had to choose the best canoe route across Canada. Today, the few people who try to cross Canada in a canoe go east to west, avoiding British Columbia by descending the Mackenzie River to the Arctic. British Columbia is difficult to cross by water, and the Mackenzie is dull, tedious, and heavily polluted, though it has a romantic image for those who have never paddled it. With the new pulp and paper mills on the Peace and Athabasca Rivers, there is even less reason to descend the Mackenzie. But British Columbia is not canoe touring country. Appalling mountain ranges run north and south blocking east-west travel across the province. The rivers are tumultuous and often impassable. The early traders had to use horses and ocean-going ships around Cape Horn to move their merchandise and furs to and from Europe. We considered the Columbia River, but it has been obstructed in dozens of places by massive dam complexes. We wondered about ascending the Fraser and the North Thompson Rivers to the Yellowhead Pass through the Rockies, but rejected that as too physically demanding and too time consuming. We chose finally to ascend the Fraser River as far as Yale, go by road around the Fraser Canyon to the Thompson River, continue up the South Thompson River through the Shushwap system into the Eagle Pass, ascend the Columbia River to the Big Bend, and hike over the Athabasca Pass to the Athabasca River. All this would involve cutting some corners. Some of the water might prove too fast to ascend, and those sections would have to be paddled in reverse. There would be two portages of about forty kilometers each, one around the Fraser Canyon, and the other from the headwaters of the Eagle River to Revelstoke on the Columbia. We would have to arrange for our canoe and heavy gear to be transported by road around the Athabasca Pass over the Rockies.

From the Alberta side of the mountains we could follow the traditional Hudson Bay Company route to Lake Winnipeg via the North Saskatchewan River, which would be quick, dirty and Boring. We chose instead the older Northwest Company route via the Athabasca and Clearwater Rivers, the Methye Portage, the Churchill River to Frog Portage, and the Sturgeon-weir River to Cumberland House. The Saskatchewan River would carry us on past The Pas into Lake Winnipeg. The second summer our route would be down Lake Winnipeg, along the Winnipeg River to the International Boundary waters, through Quetico Park to Grand Portage, along the north shore of Lake Superior and Georgian Bay, up the French and down the Mattawa and Ottawa Rivers to the St. Lawrence River. At Rivière de Loup we would portage up into the Madawaska River at Cabano, then down it and the St. John River to the Atlantic Ocean. The whole trip would be about eight thousand kilometers, three thousand seven hundred the first summer, and in all would require five million paddle strokes and three hundred kilometers of portaging.

With the route settled we tackled the logistics. We had to choose a canoe and outfit, buy supplies and arrange to have them shipped to us along the way, buy a good camera and learn to use it, get maps and Provincial canoeing guides, resign the parish, and organise the financing.

Canoes are portable boats, and today they come in all sorts of specialised shapes and sizes. Beve and I owned two, neither ideal for this voyage. Our choice was between a fat, stable canoe with a "u" shaped hull in ABS material (an Old Town Tripper) which we had named Miss Piggy, and an Old Town Canadienne named Es'toy Perdido, a marathon racer with a long keel, sharp ends, and a round bottom. Es'toy Perdido had much less capacity and we had never used him in heavy water, but he cruised much faster than Miss Piggy. We ordered a spray cover, and chose the racer. We painted his name in large letters on the bows, and Latin mottoes on each side, hoping that people would inquire what they meant. They were Nulla Vestigia Retrorsum (We go back for nothing), suggested in 1873 by George Munro Grant in his Ocean to Ocean as the perfect canoeist's motto, and Omnia Mea Mecum Porto (All I have I carry with me).

Campers Village in Edmonton helped us select our gear and supplied it to us at cost. Ed and Helen Sushynski, good‚ friends of ours in Edmonton, agreed to ship supplies to us from time to time, and look after our mail and financial affairs while we were paddling. The Diocese of Edmonton and General Synod gave us some sabbatical money. A few days before we left, the parish gave us a farewell party. People were generous; after the party we hid the money which had been given us in the rectory fireplace because we were too busy to take it to the bank.

The whole enterprise had gathered momentum. The whirl of good-byes and parties given for us by well-wishers made us feel like we were caught in a fast-forwarding video. The separation of a priest from a parish is always traumatic; the closest parallel to it is the death or divorce of a parent in a family. In our case the separation had heavy emotional overtones. Many people thought that what we were doing was courageous and admirable, and some admired our attempt to fulfilling our dream. Others thought the voyage stupid; we were abandoning God's work for an egocentric flippancy. The truth was that I was driven to do something, and that voyage was the only thing I either wanted to do or indeed could see to do. But leaving most of the people at Saint Peter's was a terrible emotional wrench.

By the time we came to leave our emotions had gotten quite out of hand. Moving day was the worst nightmare I have ever experienced. We had tried to sell most of our possessions, but what remained was considerable, and we had to put it all into storage ourselves. At the end Beve and I stood in the living room of the Saint Peter's rectory, exhausted and numb, as empty as the house. We turned to leave, then Beve let out a whoop and darted over to the fireplace to rescue the parish's gift of money. We had very nearly gone off without it!

By launch day I was in a grim temper. Our voyage might eventually be the basis for solving my problem, but the beginning was bleak, offering little hope.

To be religious is to contemplate life in terms of beauty and glory and quality, which after meeting the basic needs of food and shelter, should be the fundamental human activity. The pastor's job is to help people do that. My most perceptive parishioners have thought I was there to urge them (in the time they could spare from the acquisition of riches) towards contemplation. Others assumed I was there to be good for them, as some kind of living assurance that all manner of things was well. My fellow clergy assumed that while I was marching my parishioners off in formation to view the sunrise, I would not neglect to take up a collection. My church's leadership was becoming so anxious to be morally and politically correct that it was forgetting what religion was for. Everyone was acting as if it they belonged to a community which existed to decide who was, and who was not guilty, what was, and what was not, sinful. The church was a machine for setting the unquiet conscience at rest by confirming its members in their own self-righteousness, and refusing to contemplate or even notice beauty and glory and quality.

Mohammed the prophet is alleged to have said: Throughout my life, I have loved beautiful women, and exotic perfumes, but the chief solace of my life has been prayer. Turning inward to understand and contemplate God, and turning outward to rejoice in the wonders of what God is giving us; these are fullness of life. Sure, we should fight evil and try to change this world for the good, but that concern must be secondary. Those who live by the sword die by it, and by the nature of our world such efforts will usually fail. I don't much enjoy perfumes, but substitute wine, and Mohammed's aphorism would do me.

I knew all this before we launched, but I had never learned how as a priest to react properly to it. I wanted to be like Von Hugel's songster, but I didn't yet trust my wings:

Bleakly depressed, we came to launch in the Fraser and found that river in a raging temper. We had to change our original plans immediately. Getting upstream (by lining and using back-eddies) from salt water to Yale was possible, but would have taken weeks and been no fun at all, so we paddled that section in reverse. We launched at Yale on Saturday, May 5th, and ended our first day just above Chilliwack. The descent was extremely fast, but clean and easy. The brown flood continually welled up under us, whirling and bouncing us about. Hard upward-driven sand rattled against the hull. Highways and trains followed the river, but we seemed alone out on the water, strangely isolated. Hydroelectric power lines marched carelessly about on the land, up and down the steep slopes from tower to tower.

We paused in Hope, where we were shown around Christ Church by a delightful member of that parish's altar guild. She gave us a scroll of the history of her church. She related to her church on the straightforward assumption that old was good and change was bad. There was a movement in the parish to move the altar forward as part of those worship reforms which had taken place in other parts of the Christian church in the mid-sixties. But to move the altar forward might make all the cloth altar frontals obsolete. That, to her, was obviously quite unacceptable. Her friends had labored long embroidering those beautiful coverings, and God could not possibly wish them cast aside!

We met many short, slight, older women with British accents and eccentric dress, who wanted to please, but who had strongly conservative personal views. Many of them attended Anglican churches. One came to collect our campsite fee in Chilliwack. She obviously believed that anyone who would venture out on the Fraser River in a canoe was mad, but she was much to polite to say so, directly. She was quite delightful in a rather astringent way.

By 2:00 p.m. the winds were blowing hard, and we moved closer to shore. Half an hour later clouds of spray were being torn off the surface of the water and blown into fine clouds. The current was extremely fast, yet at times the canoe was actually stalled by the violence of the wind and the upstream waves it created.

By 3:15 p.m. we decided that enough was enough, and we tucked in to camp on an uninhabited island. It was just as well. The wind continued to rise, trees began to fall about us, and our radio reported steady winds of sixty-five kilometers an hour with gusts of ninety-five kilometers an hour. Two people were drowned in separate boating accidents. Our tent was sheltered in a gully away from falling trees, well pegged and roped, but it was whipped violently about as if it was a kite bent on release.

The night was turbulent and drenching. Early Sunday at launch the temperature was seventeen degrees Celsius, but as the morning wore on it dropped steadily to four degrees Celsius. Wind and rain continued. I was wearing a "t" shirt, wool work shirt, raingear and life jacket. The steady rain slowly worked through the seams and gaps until I was miserable. Beve was even less happy. We could not get at our dry clothing under the spray cover, because then everything else would have gotten soaked, so we endured until we mid-afternoon when we quit at Island 22 Municipal Campground, Chiliwack.

Just before there we had passed two Natives fishing for salmon with nets. One hoisted up a monster, perhaps thirty-five pounds, and shouted proudly: We have two more here just like this! Both wore only jeans and bush shirts and were soaking wet, but seemed oblivious to the cold and wet. Later‚ - too late - it occurred to me that we might have bought that fish.

Monday morning everything was wet, and the temperature was two degrees Celsius. There had been heavy condensation inside the tent because we had buttoned up tight. The trip so far had offered little challenge to our canoeing skills. We had only one difficulty. A few kilometers above Chiliwack a whirlpool six meters across had suddenly opened in front of Es'toy Perdido. The bow dropped and swung violently to the right, but we braced hard and kept upright. The deck was well washed. Otherwise, keeping alert and anticipating was all that was needed in that extremely fast current. There were many gravel shallows over which the water shot. We avoided them all, which was just as well.

We reached Fort Langley by late afternoon, just in time for a tour of the restored fur trade fort before returning to Savona over the Coquihalla Highway, through thick wet spring snow in the pass, for the run down the Thompson to the Fraser. At Savona we checked into the Delcea Campground, run by Della and Cecil Miller, though we only met Della. She was badly crippled by arthritis, and blamed that for giving me two dollars too much change.

We launched from Savona headed downstream early Tuesday. By noon we were in Juniper Beach Provincial Park excited after a wizard ride. The water had been extremely fast and the scenery glorious. There had been only two rapids, at the lake outlet and just above Juniper. We attacked both; above Juniper we swarmed through a heavy rapid, bounced through the following standing waves, hurtled round a sharp curve, and made a skidding eddy turn into the park.

The park featured Juniper bushes, many varieties of birds, and a bright sunny tent site low and close to the water. There were pit toilets, one water pipe, and a staff trailer. We took the afternoon off and bird-watched. At a great distance, perched high on the ledges of the canyon wall opposite were some familiarly shaped birds which looked remarkably like pigeons. After exhaustive study with binoculars and much discussion, we realized that that was exactly what they were.

The Thompson was even faster than the Fraser, and presented new challenges to us. The shoreline was of uniform coarse gravel. There were no exits; no streams or obstructions along the bank and therefore no eddies, so stopping even with a powerful upstream ferry was difficult. There was no need to stop, though, except for calls of nature or at railroad bridges. We surveyed the first few bridges carefully. The standing waves between and below the bridge piers on the outside of curves were immense, but we had no trouble going between the piers on the inside.

Es'toy Perdido was a revelation. He was every bit as stable as our Old Town ABS Tripper with her bulbous ends and "u" shaped hull. He did dive into waves instead of lifting to them, and water cascaded over his bow and slammed into Beve, but the spray cover kept the waves out of our gear, and he always lifted. Eventually. His handling, even loaded as heavily as we were, was like a river kayak. Without the spray cover we would have sunk in the first two kilometers.

A long coal train rumbling along the far shore woke us Wednesday about 7:00 a.m.. An hour later we were on the water moving at speed and excitedly happy. Once, about mid-morning, we got unstable for a moment, but recovered.

The river above Ashcroft began to straighten out and drop even faster. At Rattlesnake Hill we stopped to admire and photograph some hoodoos, features of that arid landscape. Our landing in Ashcroft was awkward. I almost missed the only landing place as we came hurtling round a corner tight to the bank. We corrected with a spectacular eddy turn. As we touched shore Beve leaped out, caught her foot in the spray cover, and tumbled into the icy water. She got thoroughly soaked and was furious with herself. If we ever rolled that canoe, the tight fit of the spray cover might well make it impossible for us to get out.

We spent that night on the Goldpan campsite on the Thompson River. Most of the Thompson below there looked delightful from the highway, and would be great canoeing, but there were serious rapids, which, at that stage of the trip, in absence of back-up and with our heavy load, we had regretfully to leave for another time. Across the river from Goldpan was the main Canadian Pacific line, one of the busiest doubled freight lines in the world. Number one highway was on the near side of the river, where trucks and trains roared by continuously day and night making a hellish din. As the valley darkened, the cold glare of headlights and flashing railroad signal lights insistently demanded our attention. Way below all this was the fast-flowing but serene Thompson, flickers of surface moonlight the only hint of its force. I spent much of the rest of the night tossing and turning in the noise and glare, trying to remember more of Tennyson's The Brook:

Thursday we launched for Kamloops. Lunch was half way between Six Mile Point and Cherry Bluff, in clear and breezy air. A large male Mule deer wandered out on the train line beside us. Along came a slow-moving freight. The buck grudgingly left the tracks and casually leapt a three meter fence to crop grass on the other side, the huge train rumbling by only a few meters from him.

We stopped for the night on the shore of a marsh at the southeast corner of Kamloops Lake. Geese, Blackbirds and Loons were ignoring the continuous heavy trains. Next morning I was up early and down to the water with the camera and tripod to try for some wildlife pictures. There was a great snurfing and snuffling as two large Otters gamboled about close off shore. They rose way up in the water to inspect me, then swam leisurely off into the lake. By the time I had put camera, tripod, and the long lens together they had vanished.

Kamloops was further away than we had hoped. A strong following wind helped at the beginning, but it soon died away, and the current steadily increased against us. We crept slowly past the airport, the gravel operation, and a large island. Heavy rain began. We would have done better to have passed on the north side of that island where the current was much less, but we had no way to know that. The pull around the south side was heartbreakingly slow. We anticipated difficulty paddling through the confluence of the North and South Thompson Rivers, so we landed on the north shore and went exploring. We learned nothing about the river, but there were coffee and donuts at a Seven-Eleven. Fortified, we tried the river again. The rain had quit, the sun was out, the breeze was back behind us, the current died away and we had no difficulty at all paddling up through the confluence of the North and South Thompson to the Spirit Campground.

There we were allowed to use a recreational vehicle site for utility site prices, because the campground was not used by boaters, and the utility sites were far from the river. There were half a dozen motorboats, but we had seen no canoes or working boats since the native fishermen on the Fraser. Kamloops people did not seem very interested in their river. The manager of the campground would not go near the water, and her small black dog would not come near me. The dog smelled water on me, the manager said, and distrusted me. It had been thrown in the river as a puppy and now avoided all water but that in her water dish.

Saturday was a make and mend day. I spent most of the day reading Maria Coffey's Fragile Edge. Joe Tasker had been a world class mountaineer who had fallen off a mountain and died in 1982. Marie had been his significant other, and the book was her attempt to come to terms both with her grief and with their rather unsatisfactory emotional relationship. It unsettled me that a person would go to such lengths to do grief work and then want to tell the world about it. The book often seemed naive, but her openness and depth of feeling were remarkable.

Sunday we worshipped in Saint Paul's Cathedral. Sandy Stickney, the curate, preached the best children's sermon I had ever heard, despite being all heart and no head. The lesson was from Acts seven, the story of the stoning of the first martyr, Stephen. She told the children that Saul was horrified by Stephen's cruel death, so upset that he changed his name to Paul and became a Christian, thus embracing the faith he had previously attacked. The Bible lesson read only moments before had said that Saul had watched the execution of Stephen with approval, and only much later had been converted by a blinding vision of the risen Christ. But Sandy kept the children spellbound for ten minutes. She obviously loved them, and they her. Her re-interpretation of Saul's conversion reminded me of that of a ten-year-old Native boy from the Yukon, Edmund Stick, who wrote: "There was a man, a bad guy, his name was Saul. He burned churches and stuff. And God struck him down with lightning and made him sick and blind for three days. When he come to he was a good guy and an Anglican".

Monday we were up and running by 8:00 a.m. because we had many chores to do before launch. We loaded our re-supply and sent the prints we had developed back to the Sushynskis in Edmonton, then launched upstream just before noon into gentle breeze and current. The first seventeen kilometers were easy, and then wind and current picked up.

We were quite ready to stop, but could find no place to camp. Eventually Ken Ezzard offered to let us camp on his back lawn if we did not make a fire. Ken's huge dream home had been designed so that as many windows as possible faced the river. It was salmon pink, and had an enormous lawn, which Ken kept close-cropped with a large riding lawn mower. Ken's only regret was the Geese, who rooted up his lawn and befouled his dock. He told us wistfully that Geese were protected all along the river, and could not be hunted or disturbed. There were thousands of them, and they were pests. I think Ken hoped that if we camped, the Geese might give his riverfront a miss for a night, but they were coming because they liked his manicured lawn. If he would let his grass grow, they would leave.

Tuesday we were off early for Banana Island. Birds were everywhere. We identified Blue Herons, Kingfishers, Crows, Blackbirds, Ducks (mostly Mergansers), Lesser Yellowlegs, and more Canada Geese than I thought there were in all the world. The current grew steadily all morning, until our progress was a crawl. Our speed was hard to judge, because we were not sure precisely where we were. Late in the morning the map went missing. I thought it was lost, but it turned up much later under the spray cover where I had chucked it as a squall had hit.

Two longish sections had to be lined. Lining is walking along the shore pulling the canoe by ropes at the bow and stern. The idea is to keep the canoe at an angle to the riverbank such that the force of the current pushes the hull out and prevents it from grounding. It is slow, especially when the shore is cluttered, but it is a useful technique when the current is too strong to paddle.

Lunch was at 1:30 p.m., and we were exhausted. Upstream going was turning out to be tougher than we had bargained for. Black clouds were threatening. We arrived at a huge strange human-made constriction in the river. We figured out what it was far too late; it was an enormous log funnel, pointed downstream, perhaps six hundred meters long. Having missed the funnel's narrow downstream entrance in the middle of the river we were eventually forced to choose between going back five hundred meters or portaging over the huge logs of the boom. We lifted, grumbling.

An Osprey family had built its home on top of a huge wooden hydro tower. Mother lifted off the nest to overfly us at ten meters or so, then left to go fishing. The temperature continued about fifteen degrees Celsius, but the water was cooler. Much wading and lining made me long for my wool socks. Since lunch we had had intermittent showers and many strong sudden gusts of wind.

Eventually we got to Banana Island. The guidebook said to expect to see Keekwillie holes, the remains of traditional semi-subterranean Salish native homes. The center of the island was certainly pitted with a row of old holes, each about two meters deep and perhaps three across. If these were examples, they were surprisingly small. Banana Island was a recreational reserve, which meant that there were pit toilets and a sign. We were grateful and glad to quit. Our progress had been slow; nine hours of creeping upstream against that current had done us in.

By 9:00 p.m. Beve had, sensibly, gone to bed. I sat on the ground outside the tent, too pooped to move. In the gathering darkness a tiny round gray furball hurtled across the grass and over my foot. Two more joined it. They darted madly about, foraging, but the light was too weak to be sure exactly what they are. Voles, I decided. It was time for bed.

Wednesday we made a late launch, feeling light-headed. Earlier I had spent an hour reading in Robert Lindsay's A Gathering of Saints. Lindsay seemed to believe that religious doctrine is lunacy, that Mormons, united in professing lunacy, are wonderful people, living sacrificial and morally superior lives. Steve Christiansen, for example, was a moral and scrupulously upright person rather like the biblical Job. He was blessed with riches for many years, then went bankrupt and lost everything, finally dying horribly at the hands of a mad bomber who gained nothing from his death. I had less problem than Lindsay seems to have had in accepting God's mistreatment of those loyal to him. Teresa of Avila records this dialogue: She began: "Lord, on top of so many ills, now you send me this!" "That is how I treat my friends." answered God. "Ah, my God, and that is why you have so few of them!" responded Teresa. I have always assumed that religious doctrine was the result of organizing our complex sense experiences in terms of story or myth so that we could make sense of our lives. True religious doctrine is a form of mythic expression, and should lead to the authentic life.

Wednesday is memorialized for us as The Day That Beve Stepped Out. The current had become too strong to paddle, and we pulled into shore to line. Beve stepped out of the canoe quickly, so that the strong current would not carry us back downstream. Unfortunately she stepped squarely on a round boulder, and wound up armpit deep in the icy Thompson. She held on to the rope, her paddle, and her composure, but for the future she decided to carry her warm clothing more accessibly. While she rummaged and changed, the parents of a colony of bank swallows darted angrily about cursing us, refusing to feed their hungry chicks until we had cleared off.

The current grew steadily stronger and stronger. Beve suddenly drew hard in towards the bank to avoid something, and I followed. My paddle thumped hard on what turned out to be the back end of a 1942 Chevrolet six inches below the surface, its body metal shiny from sand scouring. The last six hundred meters into Little Shushwap Lake had to be waded and dragged in four centimeters of icy water shooting over gravel. Then Beve went off in the rain and found Lakeview resorts, where we later camped.

Thursday we were up at 6:00 a.m. and were finally ready to launch by 9:00 a.m.. Lakeview had nice washrooms and showers, but the electricity was off. The campground had a beautiful beach, but no one was using the water. Our start was slow because we had visited with the Pritchetts, a young Leicester couple, affirmative, joyous, open, enthusiastic, and uncritical. They had been to Canada before, travelling from Kitchener to Quebec via Midland and Algonquin Park. This time they were seeing the west. They had rented a camper, and were headed to Vancouver via the Okanagan.

Seventeen Celsius and very moist; there was condensation inside the camera box, where there certainly ought not to have been. Little Shushwap Lake was a gem. It was perfectly calm until a motorboat a long way off sent us a gentle pattern of shimmering undulations.

We left the Little Shushwap and entered the water connection to the main lake about noon. Climbing that was hard. The current was very fast, and the passage had to be lined along a tangled shore. We had no poles, which would have been useful. Just short of the top, at a particularly difficult and fast corner, rain mixed with hail suddenly descended on us. The sun still shone as the water and ice pellets bounced on the spray cover, which unfortunately was not completely snapped up. We had left it open at the ends of the canoe so we could more readily leap in and out. Soaking wet and freezing, we edged our way upstream and under a high bridge undergoing major repairs, from which mud dribbled down on us.

Shushwap Lake was well worth the pull. Lush vegetation and clear water enhanced the sandy beaches that ringed the lake. Hills rose steeply behind the shoreline; on the north and east those hills backed into the spectacular Monashee Mountains. Unfortunately the shoreline was also cluttered with cottages and KEEP OFF signs. The belligerence of the cottage owners seemed odd, but soon we would understand.

We landed at The Sorrento Center about 3:00 p.m. The director of that Anglican conference center, John Mash, and his wife Dorothy, formerly from Edmonton, were old acquaintances, and it was pleasant to touch base with them again. They seemed very happy. After supper we pitched our tent down on the beach, which normally was not permitted. We were, because we had several hundred pounds of gear that we would otherwise have had to lug up the cliff and along to the usual camping area. All the same, permission was given reluctantly. We wondered at this, but again, soon we understood.

Friday we breakfasted in Sorrento's dining hall, where we met some Quakers, an advance party of several hundred expected from Vancouver that night. They told us of canoeist friends who had gone from Canal Flats through Kinbasket, to the Peace, to Fort Chipewyan, to Fort McMurray, the Churchill, and on to Winnipeg. That had taken two summers; six people had started and four finished.

We launched at 9:00 a.m. Two hours later the sky upwind turned black, and we snapped up Es'toy Perdido's spray cover. The storm turned out to be ferocious, though it only lasted about forty minutes. We dried ourselves and ate lunch on the dock off Eagleview Marina. No one was about and we were unsure of our welcome. There, and all along that coast, angry signs forbade landing. It was all very strange; I had not seen such strongly worded signs since hiking near the Forks of the Credit River in Ontario.

We quit at 7:00 p.m. after a long hard pull. We were going fast enough to pass three motorboats trolling for Lake Trout. One fellow said that they had caught nothing, but he was really pleased at how well his fish finder was working. Forty-five kilometers that day, much of it against wind and storm, thanks in part to the KEEP OFF and PRIVATE signs, and the cheek-by-jowl cottages. We were cold, wet, and hungry. Rain poured steadily between 4:00 and 6:00 p.m. Emotionally we had handled the latter part of the paddle badly. We had vacillated between extremes of timidity and recklessness. We pussyfooted tight into shore around the earlier bays, but at the last one, when we were exhausted and exposed to the worst conditions of the day, we made a three-kilometer jump across open water.

Our camp was in a stunning setting at Cinnemousun Narrows Provincial Park at the narrows of Shushwap Lake. The park had tables, cabins, fire pits, privies, docks, hiking trails, nicely graded tent pads, and a superb view of the Monashee Mountains. All that was free, and the skies were at last clear!

The park was supervised by Pat and Dave Duncan, who were perfect for the place. Dave was spare, small, wrinkled and fit. He had a Fu Manchu moustache that hung well below his chin. Pat was blonde and pert. They were living in a century-old cabin of squared timber, going out from it each day to check the other twelve parks which were also their responsibility. Dave said: "People who come here mostly don't remember to bring an axe with them, so I always split up plenty of wood. You like canoeing, eh? I like mules. I prefer them to horses; easier to work with. They walk, don't gallop. Took a mule train last year from Three Mile Gap into a lake where my buddy has a farm. Took two weeks. Was wonderful. Saw a bear last week. Big fellow, five, six hundred pounds, maybe more. Saw him first on a big downed tree outside our cabin. Threw some stones behind him into the bushes and yelled, but he just sat there looking evil at me. So I sent the wife into the cabin and threw a rock right at him which hit him, and he ran. Later that evening he came back and tried to claw open our back door, but I made a lot of noise yelling and banging the door so he took off. I called Paul -he's a hunter and guide -and he brought up my rifle and his and we tracked that bear. Lots and lots of tracks, but no droppings. Now I know enough about bears to know that if there's droppings, that bear intends staying, but if not, he's just passing through. He's gone. Oh, you'll hear a Hoot Owl whose tree is that one blasted by lightning just down from your tent. If you stay tomorrow you might want to move into a cabin. If the one you want hasn't got cots, just help yourself from another. Sad thing two nights ago. Nice fellow fifty-five years old dropped dead of a heart attack. We called Sorrento and they had a doctor up here quick as a wink, but he was dead when they laid him in the boat. Me and the wife had worked on him - we're both trained to deal with heart attacks, of course,- but it wasn't any use …"

Saturday dawned delightfully, and as this was a holiday weekend we decided to stay an extra day to do a little hiking and lazing about. Mid-afternoon all hell broke loose. Dozens of houseboats churned up the lake and rammed up on shore as if they were landing craft at an invasion. Some less successful ones rammed into each other. More and more of them came crashing in, all loaded down with happy partygoers, each with several ghetto-blasters tuned to different radio stations and all at high volume. Within an hour thirty houseboats had been run up and staked about four meters apart on our little beach. A dozen fires were burning (none in the fire pits provided), and whooping and screaming youngish people were everywhere. Some of those ultra-stable one-person idiot water vehicles were writhing and roaring about on the water. Now we understood the refusal of the Sorrento people to allow campers on their beach, the proliferation of NO TRESPASSING signs, and Dave's offer of a quiet cabin for the night. We moved into one quickly. Later we learned that over four hundred and fifty houseboats had been rented for our immediate area on that long weekend.

Sunday morning early I went to see who among the house-boaters had survived the night. Mr. Older Macho-Man was giving landing instructions from shore to a giggling young woman who was trying to beach her houseboat that had somehow drifted off during the night. Hubby was snoring, and no one else on board seemed interested. Throttle open, she put the wheel over far too soon and rammed Mr. Older Macho Man's rental. He leapt gallantly into the water and pushed her hull towards land, then surged up onto the beach roaring: "Ve vill rape the women and children first!" His audience shrieked with joy. A junior jock-sniffer called: "Coffee, Bob?" " Yeah, but make it half Baillie's", responded the hero. "You got it!" chirped JayJay.

Dave came by to do his morning check. He told me that the previous evening there had been a dispute between two boaters. In the night one of them, drunk, had crept to his enemy's boat with a knife and cut it adrift. Hours later someone woke Dave, who went after the drifter, and unable to rouse him, towed him back. A theologian I admire says that religion is what people do with their lunacy, and I believe it, but those house-boaters proved that religion is not all one can do with one's lunacy.

We got to Marble Lake Provincial Park about 11:00 a.m., temporarily evading the hordes of water skiers, racers, derby fishers, houseboat admirals, and hung-over partiers. A fisherman showed us a three-pound Rainbow Trout. He expected that the winning Rainbow would be fourteen pounds and the winning Lake Trout would be twenty pounds. He said that Sicamous, where we would leave the Shushwaps for the Eagle River, had been proclaimed by someone as The Houseboat Capital Of Canada.  

Eighty meters beyond Marble Lake Provincial Park a hanging yellow rope alerted us to pull in to look at some old native graffiti which Dave had said that some scholars believed was of historical importance. The figures were dim, unexciting, and to us, incomprehensible. Strange that some people get so excited about old graffiti yet so strongly disapprove of modern efforts with spray cans!

We had lunch near Sicamous, and that was no fun at all. I sat by the shore in the steady rain trying to prevent Es'toy Perdido from being pounded to pieces on the rocks by the wake of passing motorboats and at the same time trying to eat my crackers and sardines. Beve was in a foul mood, shivering under a tarp, cursing houseboats darkly.

After lunch we searched for but could not find the outlet of the Eagle River. We wanted off that lake desperately. Looking for directions we blundered into a waterside recreational vehicle luxury camp. People had come to display their recreational vehicles and other accessory vacation toys to other guests. Many lovely motor boats were on display; none looking used. Each site was paved; no tents here! The recreation vehicles sported wheel shields to protect the tires from those same destructive ultra-violet rays that the client females, (the most attractive display items), were seeking so avidly from the tanning lamps around the indoor pool.

There was a pass-operated lift gate which was no trick at all for us athletic canoeists to evade. Two charming social butterflies at the desk were helpful. We got information and complimentary coffee, and left. Beve found John, a motel operator who would truck us up to his place in his Volkswagen Microbus for no extra charge. He operated the Sunshine Motel and the Zodiac restaurant. He had operated tourist lodges near Peterborough and Marmora, and dreamed of someday operating one on Vancouver Island. He had moved to Sicamous for the beauty.

John's son Robert worked with his parents when he was not playing Junior Hockey. Robert had only canoed twice before. Once was a three mile practice for a twenty mile marathon, and the second was the marathon itself, near Port Perry, Ontario. His arms had nearly dropped off, he spat out his lungs, and afterwards he could not walk for a week. "That damn lake went on forever, and we didn't seem to be moving at all", Robert said, "but we won".

John thought our voyage was just great, and he gave us pre-season rates on the room. The motel looked small and dingy from the outside, and was ineffectively advertised. But our room was clean, the mattress was new, there was ample hot water, and the furniture included a kitchen table with four chairs, a couch, and an excellent television set with full cable.

Monday we were up very early getting money and food and reorganizing our gear. The Eagle River would have been a tedious and time-consuming ascent, so we decided to descend it. John drove us and our canoe to above Craiglachie where the highway crosses the Eagle River, and we launched. The descent was by far the fastest that we had so ever experienced. The water was crystal clear, and we were terrified at first of slamming into rocks, but the river bottom was polished and the water depth sufficient, so eventually we just sat back and enjoyed the ride. In the first two hours we traveled over thirty kilometers! All the world sloped steeply away, and because the gradient stayed constant there were no standing waves. The weather was hot and sunny, a few fast moving clouds were suspended high above. We decided that we must come back some winter and try that descent on skis.

When the river had slowed down and we were relaxed, we came around a bend back of the golf course straight into the only rapid of the day. The spray cover was off and the camera box open, so we took it back-ferrying, slipping over the right side of the main chute. Even so we brought in a few cups-full of water.

Revelstoke was our next stop. Lloyd and Grace Northcote had invited us to stay the night with them; Lloyd was the rector of St. Peter's church. The Northcotes were busy people whose recreation was scrambling around mountains. Grace was an ambulance driver who had developed a professional life quite apart from the parish. She enjoyed her work, and resented her husband's frequent parish moves, which had required her to uproot her career every five years or so. She had great force of character, and believed in all the people-control side of issues: helmets must be worn by canoeists, seat belts in cars, smoking must be stopped, some people must be prevented from having babies, people must be required to do this or that. When challenged, she backed down somewhat. She may have been trying to be polite, or she may have recognized that her opinions sometimes resulted from frustration. Lloyd was ex-army. He was warm, relaxed, easy-going, and fit. He saw everything from the bright side, which I think sometimes exasperated Grace. Lloyd believed that God works his purposes out through community, which is where you find it. He was an enthusiastic Mason. The church was one place among many where community could be found, in which Lloyd saw himself as having a special leadership role. Lloyd and Grace were close, but they lived very separate lives. Their rectory was a century old, and filled with a cheerful clutter of plants and interesting things. Grace had a wonderful vegetable garden, and an unusual doll collection. Two children were off at University doing well at challenging work.

Thursday we launched into the Columbia. The river was tranquil and darkly majestic, with no hint of what it must have been before the Mica and Revelstoke dams flooded out some of the most ferocious rapids in North America. The voyageurs for some odd reason reserved the name Priest for the most violent and treacherous of rapids, and there had been Priest Rapids along this stretch.

I had picked up a copy of W.C. Rainsford's 1904 The Preacher's Story Of His Life from the dollar box in the local museum. Rainsford on his own account was a highly successful preacher, pastor of St. James Cathedral, Toronto, and later of Saint George's, New York. He seems to have been a simple forceful man, who saw life in terms of basic evangelical theology. His life was preaching. If his theology was correct and his faith was strong, then he would be successful, because God would bless his ministry. "At one of my last sermons in St. James Cathedral I preached to two thousand eight hundred people‚ four hundred of them stood in the chapel with great respect". When Rainsford's congregation in Saint George's declined, he was sure the cause was his defective understanding of the sacrament of Baptism. When he had worked through that, he found that the people returned to hear him preach. He reminded me of my friend Canon Moore Smith, who had been sent to be pastor of a quarrelsome declining church which eventually was closed. I went to console him. "Moore, you must feel badly about your church closing". "Oh, not at all", he said, smiling, "I preached, but there wasn't much response". I wish I had the faith of either, but Moore I envy. Years after retirement, his hair was still untouched by gray.

There had been steady rain all night before our launch, so the tent was packed wet and the gear was damp. Thick cloud and soggy air clung about us as we loaded; rain began again as we pulled away, to continue steadily for three days. At first the rain was enchanting. Large heavy raindrops fell vertically. As each drop hit the river surface a reaction drop leapt up to hang as a briefly suspended jewel reflecting the light. We moved through a thousand fairy rings, each with its own sparkling drop suspended above it.

The rain fell more heavily, and the air darkened. In the near silence our minds began to play strange tricks with the rhythm of the paddle and the drumming of the raindrops. Our brains would replay a bit of music, and then cycle it over and over again, mercilessly. Mid-afternoon Gordon Lightfoot's Hard Lovin' Woman started cycling in my skull, and would not stop.

Our campsite that evening was an old abandoned road, sodden and greasy. The fire needed encouragement from Boy Scout fluid (kerosene), and even then smoldered unconvincingly. There was plenty of animal sign - deer mostly - but we were not much interested. The air grew colder as we climbed slowly towards the mountain snows. We began to wonder if the Athabasca Pass might still have snow when we came to climb it. The only sign of humans the whole day was a deserted logging barge. The hills were punk rocker's skulls, shaved erratically by clear-cut logging. We were tired out and depressed.

Friday we started slowly, launching at noon. The rain had continued all night, and only stopped an hour before launch. We quit after only four hours at the Downie Resort, an old family business being run by Don Mark and his parents. They had the north side of Downie Bay, and the management of the Provincial campground next door. They offered snug cabins (one of which we grabbed), power until 10:00 p.m., and a small store with snack bar. Don was an unusual person, running an unusual operation. He would guide Moose hunters, or teach gold panning, or rent tents and recreational vehicle sites. He worked hard, but only doing what he wanted to do. When we arrived he was grading low exposed recreational vehicle sites on spits he had bulldozed out into the river.

The weather was at least consistent; rain had fallen steadily for over seventy hours. We had been dry while in the canoe and work kept us warm. The thirty young re-foresters who were camped at Downie Resort had a much tougher time. When we were in the store a young woman entered who seemed about five feet tall and four feet wide. She was not fat, just encased in many layers of clothing. Her blond hair was matted and her face smeared with mud. "How'd it go today?" asked Don. "Just great!" she replied vigorously. "I made my planting quota for the first time!" Her supervisor, who was a Habs fan (emphatically not a Canadiens fan), was ecstatic about Les Oilers, who had just defeated the Bruins in four straight games and winning the Stanley Cup.

Saturday we rose reluctantly to launch in a steady downpour. Everything got wet, because everything had to be portaged eighty meters from the cabin to the shore. As we snapped down the spray cover I accidentally knocked Beve's paddle overboard, got snapped at, and growled back.

The camera mostly stayed in its box during those soggy days. Once I wanted to photograph some logging operations, so I took the camera quickly out of the waterproof box. The long lens was on, which was wrong for the shot, but changing lenses in those conditions was asking for trouble. I decided to try with the long lens, bracketing my shots in the hope that something would be acceptable, but after the shutter clicked once the film promptly rewound. That was no place to change film, so I returned the camera to its box with the bag of anhydrous silica whatsit, which was supposed to absorb dampness and was being severely challenged.

The weather improved steadily through the morning, and so did our tempers. The rain finally stopped about noon. The river was beginning to narrow and wind. The scenery certainly improved with sunshine!

The rocks were becoming more colorful. Fluvial deposits gave way to solid rock. There were lots of variously colored minerals the names of which I had mostly forgotten since my introductory geology courses thirty years before. The west side of the river had been heavily clear-cut. Charred stumps and hollow logs littered the hillside, though some attempt had been made to burn the debris. The only signs of life were multitudes of odd black spiders and deer tracks among the tractor treads.

At only 4:00 p.m. we quit at Monashee Outfitters which hosted hunters (mostly European) of bear, deer, cougar, and moose. Big game hunting did not interest us, but this place offered much more. Vern and Hanna Scherrn had several buildings, lots of horses, a pack of German hunting terriers, and responsibility for a group of young German foresters-in training. Vern was tall and handsome, adorned for his role with wide red braces decorated with miniature deer heads and blooded tamarack, an encased Shrade folding knife, a leather tool holder, and a huge gold buckle on a massive leather belt. Hanna was small, blond, and perky.

We were invited to set up our tent behind the main lodge, and to supper, a huge tureen of split pea soup with bread and beer on the side. Vern, Hanna, Susan (their daughter), two Erics, Rudy, Wolf, Beve and I sat around the table. One Eric was Danish and spoke some English, enough to express some of what he thought of barbaric Canadian logging methods. Vern did not object to clear-cutting, but he wanted loggers to leave thirty per cent of the low old growth timber for ungulates to winter in. Throughout dinner the terriers chased the horses about outside while Hanna and Susan made sporadic efforts to stop them. Horses fed up with being chased had been known to turn and trample the dogs. Susan trained the horses and baked pies. All in all, these were happy people doing exactly what they enjoyed doing most. The only part of his job that Vern disliked was listening to his client's blow-by-blow accounts of the animals that got away.

At the Hummingbird feeder by the back window twenty or thirty Broad-tailed were competing for the eight feeding stations. For some reason one male left the feeder and tried repeatedly to get into our tent as we were setting it up. Finally a female flew over and chased him away. Those Hummingbirds were bold. In the morning as I left the tent one charged right at me. I thought it was an insect, and I tried to swat it. It stopped dead in front of my dropping hand, hung there for two seconds, then contemptuously zipped past me and around the tent for a quick tour.

We had a long way to go Sunday, so we were up at 6:00 a.m. and on our way in under an hour. Midmorning we were buzzed by a two-seater plane that came low around a bend in the river, put his nose down and dove right at us. If his purpose was to frighten us, he succeeded.

Near Mica Creek the land changed dramatically. The river narrowed, and for the first time there was evidence of current. The mountains rose more dramatically, the snow was more visible, and the canyon walls receded. We were at Mica Creek by 1:30 p.m. to meet Brent Flesher.

Brent was a good friend from Saint Peter's Edmonton. A social activist for romantic causes, and an excellent mimic and humorist, he had agreed to collect our canoe and heavy packs and move them to Jasper. That was the plan, but it had to be changed. The arrangement we thought we had made for a motorboat to tow our canoe back from the Wood Arm of Lake Kinbasket opposite the Mica Dam had fallen through. We were told that the pass would be snow-choked, and if we climbed up to it from the west we would be unable either to advance or to retreat until it melted. We decided to cross the pass from the east side of the mountains as far as possible, and then return. So we three left Lake Kinbasket and drove through the night to Jasper. My back was in agony after the long drive in the cramped and grossly overloaded car.

BACK

The Athabasca Pass over the Rocky Mountains rises from the Wood Arm off the historic Big Bend of the Columbia River. There is now no trail up the ten kilometer steep ascent to the Committee Punchbowl, (a small lake from which water drains both to the Pacific and the Arctic Oceans), but Jasper National Park maintains the old trail from the Punchbowl east down the valley of the Whirlpool River to the Athabasca River, fifty-one kilometers of wondrous mountain scenery. The drop is five hundred and sixty meters from a maximum elevation of one thousand eight hundred meters through glacial deposits and rocky mountain terrain. We (our friend Brent had decided to come with us) intended to hike up to the Committee Punchbowl from Jasper and then return. Interior hiking permits were required, and no fires were permitted along the trail except at designated campsites, at Moab Lake (km 1), Whirlpool (km 6.5), Tie Camp (km 11.5), Simon Creek (km 15.5), Middle Forks (km 21.5), Scott Creek (km 31.5), Kane Meadows (km 41.5), and Committee Punchbowl (km 51.0).

Monday May 28th was make-and-mend in preparation for the climb, at our campsite in a deserted campground. A demented elderly Missourian manoeuvred his huge recreational vehicle into the site beside ours. After he was thoroughly settled he came to ask if the stuttering roar from his gas-fired generator was bothering us, but did not wait for an answer before describing his plans for getting his juggernaut to Alaska. He seemed to have only the vaguest idea where Alaska was, and he had never heard of the Yukon. He had driven from Glacier National Park in Montana: "...You must know it, some of it spills over into Canada".

Tuesday I was up with the sun, while Brent and Beve slept on. I was too excited. Monday we had gotten maps and permits, and were told that we would be the first persons on the trail that year. There was deep snow on the McGillvrey Ridge, so being forced to hike it east-to-west was fortunate. We would walk twice as far than if we had gone west-to-east, but we could not now be caught high in the mountains, trapped by reluctantly melting snow. By 10:00 am Beve and Brent were up, everything was organized and packed, and we were off. Eight kilometers of easy walking up a fire road took us to lunch. We met two maintenance people riding mountain bikes, one with a chainsaw, the other with the gas, who had been trail clearing. They advised "When you get to Middle Forks, don't fool about trying to cross with dry boots. It's not possible this time of year, and you'll just waste time. Wade right in, and expect to go knee deep".

Six hours later we were in at Tie Creek, wet and frustrated. At the end of the fire road the trail had forked left and right. A sign there said: Tie Creek. Simon Creek (arrow pointed left) four kilometers. Whirlpool Camp (arrow pointed back) five kilometers. We took the left fork along the well-used trail past a ranger cabin, across a meadow, past a No Snowmobiling sign, and down into a swamp where the trail gradually dwindled away. We had assumed that the sign was at Tie Camp, that we were on the main trail to the left, and that the right fork at the sign had led to the Tie Camp camping area. The left trail had been heavily used, and there were fresh boot tracks in the swamp. We spent two hours floundering about in increasing dark and rain before we gave up and returned to the sign. The path in to the campsite kept on going, and eventually we realized that it had to be the main trail. The Tie Camp sign had been moved somehow back to where we had found it. Much later, back in Jasper, we reported all this to a permit issuer. She responded brightly "Oh yes, that sign has been fooling people for years! Don't feel bad, you're in good company!" I was too flabbergasted to ask why the sign had never been returned to where it belonged.

Camping at Tie Camp meant only eleven and a half kilometers the first day, which was not much of a day's climb, but floundering and slipping about in the rain had been slow and tiring. Exploring that swamp, which should have been left to its mosquitoes, had added an extra four or five kilometers.

We were up Wednesday at 7:00 am and ate breakfast in fine rain. Brent painstakingly hung our food on a bear pole for the night, making jokes about his "bear trap". We had seen bear droppings all along the trail, but no bear, which was fine with us. Five kilometers past the camping area we came to Tie Camp. Here were the remains of a large logging camp and sawmill for producing railroad ties. There had been about ten buildings, including barns and living quarters. No roofs had survived. The buildings had been made with saw, broad axe and hammer. The remains of two skiffs, a five-foot wagon wheel, bricks, saws, and other assorted bits and pieces were scattered about. A bird which was new to us, probably a Spruce Grouse Franklin's Form, was foraging about. He resembled a slim domestic chicken and was coal black with bright red wattles.

On to Middle Forks, where the incoming stream water was in full flood and quite mad, hurtling waist deep in many channels amidst a muddled tangle of trees. The trail maintainer's advice was useless. The water was not just over our boots, in places it was over our heads! We tried to stay near the trail, inching over downed trees and wading through the icy water, gradually drifting off to the north. We emerged after bushwhacking some three hundred meters beside a Ranger cabin. Rain still fell heavily, but the sky was beginning to clear. At least we could not possibly have gotten any wetter.

The trail soon opened out onto cold and windy alluvial flats. We were moving well, but getting grouchy. Not dealing with that nearly caused a serious accident. Brent was leading and I was bringing up the rear at a place where the trail tightly skirted the north bank of the swift and icy Whirlpool River. The bank was perhaps a meter high, formed from loose round gravel, and nearly vertical. It began to dawn on me that anyone who slid into that water (especially with a heavy pack) could not survive. The current was so fast and the bank so loose and steep, that the swimmer would never get out; those on shore could never catch up, and there was nothing to extend towards a swimmer anyway. Erosion had brought the river very close to the trail. Should I suggest walking well away from the river? There had been indications that I might perhaps be being too free with my advice recently. On the other hand, the possible consequences were too serious to ignore. I said "Uh Beve, I am getting nervous about this path being so close to the water. Rough if one of us were to fall in. What do you ...?" At that moment Beve turned to me exasperated, and Brent slipped and fell in. Well, he lost his footing as the bank gave way under him, but with cat-like agility he twisted in the air and landed facing the bank, his legs yanked downstream by the fast water, but his body over the crumbled bank. He seemed only upset at having looked foolish, and was quite startled when I said he was lucky to be alive.

We reached Scott camp, under Scott glacier, by 6:00 p.m., cold and wet. The wind had gotten stronger and the path more and more exposed, but eventually we reached the sheltered area. The glacier ice was a stern hard green, suspended far above us.

Thursday we started late, soon stopping to watch a Beaver playing, roiling about in an eddy. He was only about five meters away, in the fast current near the bank. Strangely elongated and thin, we took him to be an Otter at first. He was curious about us too, surfacing to lie on the edge of the eddy turbulence to watch us. Only after he dove did I remember my camera. Rarely has such unparsonical language followed such a wondrous sight!

Lunch was where the river narrowed, opposite a high glistening thin waterfall. The scenery was aggressive; hard clear air and clean invigorating crispness. We crossed and re-crossed the many inflowing streams from the Kane glacier, soaking our boots and freezing our toes.

By 4:00 p.m. we had reached Kane Meadows, too early to camp, so we headed up onto the McGillivray Ridge. Patches of snow appeared, and soon we were over our boot-tops. The snow patches became deep wet dirty drifts, often with streams of icy melt below. In the shade the snow crust would sometimes support our weight, but was undependable. Beve wrenched her ankle painfully on some tree roots in an icy rivulet beneath the snow. The ancient tree blazes got less frequent and the trail hard to follow. The snow became waist deep, with the trail invisible. We began to be concerned about trying too much that late in the day.

 About seven kilometers up and along the side of the McGillivray Ridge we decided to stop. Darkness was upon us, and camping where we were was impossible, so we bushwhacked down to the river where we built a small highly illegal fire and erected our tent on soggy snow. We were on very low ground, nervous that the Whirlpool River might rise in the night, but in the event we slept undisturbed. We had quit just below the second crossing of the river, at right angles to Mount Brown, high on the McGillivray Ridge.

Putting on wet near-frozen clothing Friday morning was a chore, complicated by the stitching on the shoulder strap of Beve's rucksack collapsing. The rucksack was as old as me, so we had no reason to complain of it wearing out, but the timing was bad. I sewed while Brent and Beve made breakfast on the Svea stove and packed. We decided to return from there. Close as we were to the Committee Punchbowl, our progress was painfully slow without skis or snowshoes, and a weather change, or more snow, could have been deadly.

Lunch was back at Kane Meadows. We ate hurriedly, wrung out our socks, and were off, moving swiftly down through damp, cold and unpleasant air. Beve's ankle was giving her fits. She had twisted it the day before in knee-deep snow trying to yank her foot free from a clinging root, and she had been limping ever since. We stopped for the night at Scott Creek, wet and sore.

Saturday we were up and off early. Suffering from a severe attack of barnitis, we charged straight through Middle Forks. The water level had dropped considerably, and I waded in waist deep for a half dozen steps, which was foolish in that wild water. My impatience saved a whole five inutes over Beve and Brent's time. They crossed on an upstream log. Of course, I had to wait for them, shivering.

That day is memorialised for us as Beve's Run. Brent, with the best of intentions, became far too insistent that he should carry Beve's pack to ease the load on her ankle. After she repeatedly refused, he made some comment about there being no room for pride in the wilderness, which was silly in more ways than one. Again he offered to carry Beve's pack as well as his own. She thanked him politely, declined, and then took off on a dead run. Four kilometers later she was still running hard on that bad ankle, still carrying her fifteen kilo pack. I was eighty meters behind her, cursing Brent, Beve, human pride, and my own lack of conditioning. Occasionally I got a glimpse of Beve's red pack off in the distance. Brent was jogging along behind me, too smart to try to pass. We expected Beve to rest at Simon Creek, but she charged straight over the bridge and on. There was nothing for it but to keep running. "No place for pride in the wilderness, eh", I gasped at Brent as I tottered on. That too was a mistake. Brent decided to take a break on a log at Simon Creek. It was the better part of an hour before we all got together again. We spent the night back at Tie camp, in company with some young fit-looking hikers who restored our spirits. They thought that their ascent up the trail as far as Tie camp at that time of year was a huge athletic achievement!

We were up and off Sunday by 9:00 am still stiff and sore, but moving well. A cow moose in a lake near Whirlpool camp put on a vanishing act for us. Despite their huge size moose move with agility and self-effacing elusiveness. This one waded casually out of sight under a headland. We downed packs and walked out on the headland to surprise her and get a closer look. No moose. Her tracks on the shallow bottom showed that as soon as she was out of sight she had surged ahead at speed along the shoreline and around the next headland two hundred meters on.

We were back at Moab Lake by 2:00 p.m. and in Jasper by nightfall as Bob Leggatt and Cathy Matthews's guests in Leggatt's Loft, the best of the self-contained loft accommodations in Jasper. Bob and Cathy had heard on the C.B.C. that we were on our way and had been expecting us. Their offer was very welcome; exhausted and inexplicably tense, we needed comfort.

Beve and I intended to launch in Jasper Tuesday afternoon June 5th, while Brent would head back to Edmonton. That morning we were watching a televised political commentary about events in Nicaragua when Brent suddenly demanded that we turn the set off and discuss the issues; he had strong left-wing beliefs about Central America, and distrusted television coverage. I made some rude comment about the futility of pooling ignorance, stormed off to load the car, and then roared off by myself down to the bridge by the warden's cabin and unloaded everything under the bridge out of the rain, in the process wrenching my already overtaxed back and getting thoroughly soaked, all of which I richly deserved. Beve and I had not caught up with the situation in Central America for months, and there was no use trying to discuss something we knew nothing about. But my anger had nothing to do with the situation in Nicaragua. Nicaraguans had chosen standard of living over the right to control their own future; nothing new about that, we Canadians are experts. I was angry because I was loosing control, and needed to be back in Es'toy Perdido. When I returned, Brent and Beve had discussed my irrational behavior and had decided that my blood sugar was out of whack. That provided an excuse for peace, the pastoral principle behind the preface to the 1877 Church of Ireland Prayer Book: "Let them, on the one side and the other, consider that men's judgements of perfection are very various, and what is imperfect, with peace, is often better that what is otherwise more excellent, without it".

Though peace was made with Brent and Beve, I was still furious with myself. Brent drove off. Beve and I hurtled recklessly down the flooded, rainy Athabasca at about twelve kilometers an hour for two hours to land at the Athabasca Campsite. I could hardly drag myself out of the boat. My back hurt horribly. During the next two days we went through some kind of crash which we have never understood. Some of the stuff I put on the tape in those two days was thoroughly incoherent. My back and right hip were in agony, and I was utterly exhausted. Beve was no better. Her feet and back were very painful, and she also was wiped. All we could do for two days was to lie in the sand and endure. We had no camping permit because we had intended to be out of the park on the first day. At least the weather was hot and sunny after that first evening; Beve got sunburnt.

On the third day we rose up and went thirty-three kilometers in about three hours to Brulé Campsite. Stopping there meant staying a fourth night in Jasper Park without a permit. The park border was just beyond Brulé, but even three hours had taxed us hard and we stayed, - despite our prohibited shotgun, cased, locked, and hidden though it was. Brulé was just opposite a train tunnel, where after the hundreds of freight trains we had seen on our voyage, we saw our first passenger train. The campsite was in a miniature meadow. Four kinds of butterflies were landed in one square meter, amidst over twenty kinds of tiny flowers. Purples, yellows, whites, and browns bespangled the dark sand.

We hoped to reach Hinton and a hospital emergency ward the next day. The doctor could probably do nothing except provide some muscle relaxants and painkillers, but they would be welcome. For the first time in my life I could not rejoice with the comment of George Simpson, the Little Emperor of the Hudson's Bay Company, when he wrote: It is strange that all my cares vanish as soon as I seat myself in a canoe.

Saturday we started across Brulé Lake. The current was very fast, even in the middle of the lakes. Normally Brulé and Jasper Lakes are shallow, but this water was at spring peak and we surged over the bottom. Folded sedimentary rock lined the west shore at first, but soon both shores were huge sand dunes. The canoe guide said that in summer snowplows frequently had to be used to clear blowing sand from the Canadian National Railway track on the lake's west shore. On the east shore whole telephone poles have been buried.

The Athabasca drops at a fast four meters a kilometer from Jasper to Whitecourt, and is difficult water to classify. There was only one designated rapid, but debris and fallen trees cluttered the banks, and flotsam covered the water surface. Our only serious problems were anticipating trouble far enough ahead and getting stopped. Both our backs were barely functioning, which did not make either problem easier.

We eventually landed just before the Weldwood Mill fence in Hinton. The company owned the whole river frontage on the east side, and had posted it every few meters with No Trespassing warnings. Our landing was near the last house on the river before the mill where we met a delightful lady living with her daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter. She gave us ginger ale and called a cab to get us up to the hospital. Her dream was to write a history of the coal mines in the Hinton area. She had boxes of photographs gathered through the past fifty-five years. She said her present house was too big, and she would be moving soon. What then would happen to the Jackass, three Jennies, five goats, the flock of geese, and the rest of the assorted livestock in their yard? We hoped her photographs would survive.

Eventually the cab came. The dispatcher had assured our lady friend that he knew exactly where she lived, but if so he did not communicate that to the cab driver. We saw the cab drive pass the house three times, but our hostess would neither rush to the door nor call the dispatcher. He'll find it eventually, she said airily, and he did. The driver had a Devon accent. He had been driving cab in Hinton for eleven years. He was sure I was a man of quality because of my accent and diction, which naturally predisposed me towards him. He took us to the doctor, who said and did what I expected. We were given lots of pills, and instructions to take to our beds for a few weeks.

We returned to the canoe, crossed to an island and made camp on dank mud amidst killdeer, geese and No Trespassing signs. Next morning I got up early to continue reading John Irving's A Portrait of Owen Meany. Irving's portrayal of faith and vocation was therapeutic but scary. Many clergy are closet atheists, who presume that God must go through them before He can act or even exist. We behave as if God is the sleeping owner and we are the real managers of His business, which is the church, and not the universe. When God acts, we clergy interpret what He has done in ways that suit us and our needs. We become magicians, not religious leaders, attempting to make God useful to us, instead of making us useful to God. Everyone attempts to manipulate God, but we clergy make a business out of it. A Portrait of Owen Meany confuted that, though I doubt that was Irving's intention.

The wind shifted to the south and brought pulp mill stench. There had been a lot of controversy locally about the mill, hence the high fences topped with barbed wire, sentry boxes at every entrance, and those signs. We disregarded the doctor's advice and pushed on. My back was painful and partially disabling, and might well not improve until it was rested, but we could not stay there, and the only alternative was the river. Beve was much better, though she would not be for long if she had to do all the lifting. We thanked God that there was only one portage in the next six hundred kilometers. The radio predicted an eighty per cent chance of rain, a hundred per cent for the morrow. By noon the sky was already darkening. I felt better on the move, even as the rain began. I could barely stand or crawl, but I could paddle.

By late afternoon we were near some kind of wood processing plant south up a dirt road from the river by a single lane bridge. A conveyor belt crossed the downstream side, extending at least six hundred meters uphill to the south towards a huge cone-shaped tower, and to the north up and over a hill out of sight. The road on the bridge was paved, well engineered, and well lit. We camped just upstream. Later about twenty brawny half-tons crossed this single lane bridge heading south, each with a load of complex looking muddy all-terrain vehicles. Later still a solid wall of black cloud moved towards us out of the west. The radio weather forecasters were becoming hysterical, predicting eighty millimeters of rain overnight, and advising of a small boat warning.

Rain did fall all night, though never heavily. We launched and paddled all Monday morning in that rain. By 1:30 p.m. we were at the Emerson Lakes Bridge, a little over five-and-a-half kilometers above the first Oldman river. There are three Oldman rivers in Alberta; we would meet another about a hundred and thirty kilometers downstream. We had lunch and explored. I crabbed feebly across the bridge, and on the far side lowered myself gently onto the embankment to rest. A speeding half-ton with wobbly pistons roared up. The engine misfired a half dozen times as the driver looked my prone figure over, then roared again as he hit the gas and vanished in a great cloud of wash-out spray.

Beve had gone off to check out a primitive campsite on the river bank below the bridge. There were fire rings, lots of all-terrain vehicle tracks, cut poles everywhere, rough tables, cross poles for hanging deer or moose, and some primitive but efficient privies.

By 2:30 p.m. we were off again. Two Whitetail Deer and later two Moose came out to the river bank to look us over. The Moose were a mother and calf. I saw the calf first, at about forty meters, and whispered urgently: Look Beve, another deer! Just as I realised that there was something very odd about that deer, I saw the mother bulking huge and much darker beside her calf. They were examining us with great curiosity, and left when we were only ten meters away. The wind had been blowing upstream, and I think they thought we were a colorful and strangely shaped floating tree.

Later we found the first Oldman river. It was pouring, so we were paddling with fogged glasses (my choice) and with no glasses at all (Beve's choice). We surged around the bend at the confluence and saw what was coming far too late. Our arrival was unceremonious and scrambly, - an extreme upstream ferry accompanied by unclerical language and the loud crunching of Es'toy Perdido's hull on coarse gravel as we slammed sideways into the bank pointing upstream. The camp site there was excellent, though firewood was scarce and soaked, and there was too much water. A thousand people could have tented there. There were twenty fire rings, half a dozen bear poles for food, no garbage, a few beer tins, and an all-terrain vehicle trail entrance.

We were apparently near the sole rapid between Jasper and Whitecourt. The canoe guide said: The most difficult point in the choppy stretch between the Oldman River and the Berland River confluences is the Gooseneck rapids at km 64 located at a narrowing of the river at the headland jutting out from the first Oldman Creek. At high water levels this rapid is class three, and consists of 3 meter standing waves and exposed rocks. We should have been able to see the Gooseneck rapids from where we were, but could not. We expected no serious problems, but landing to survey (which sounded like a good idea) would not be easy because we would be moving so quickly. From the bank markings the river was as high as it ever got, and the water was shooting. Our normal flat water rate was just over four and a half kilometers an hour but we had been averaging better than fourteen kilometers an hour.

We never did find those Gooseneck Rapids. Either we went through them without seeing them, or they were drowned out at those water levels. They were supposed to be immediately after a major widening of the river, at a sudden constriction in the middle of a right-left bend. A large island blocked the view. The portage was across the constricting peninsula immediately after the right bend, opposite the bottom of the island. We found what seemed to be the island and the channel towards the constriction, but we were moving very fast despite our backferrying, bouncing in meter high waves. The peninsula where we were supposed to portage was a cliff face! There was no way at all that we could land where the river current was at its fastest, cutting into a twenty meter vertical wall of slick muddy clay. We still hoped to view the rapid before we were actually in it, so we swung around into an upstream ferry, and by using all our strength managed to get over to the island and land in a bit of an eddy behind a fallen tree. I hobbled down the island to check out the rapid below while Beve hung grimly on to the canoe and the downed tree. The river looked no more dangerous than it had been for days! I returned, we pushed off and ran down through what may have been the Gooseneck. My best guess was that the water levels were so high that the end of the peninsula where the portage normally crossed was under water, and the usual obstructing rocks were as well. At least we did not need to portage, for which we were truly thankful.

By noon the temperature was still only four degrees Celsius. The radio said that we gotten about seventy millimeters of rain the previous night, and most local roads were closed by flooding. Highway 16 was closed by mud slides, which had killed four people, and the Icefield Parkway was blocked by snow.

The rest of that day we contended with nothing more serious than that explosively fast water. There were dirty brown whirlpools and fast floating debris, and rain fell heavily that whole bloody day. In continuous heavy rain your raingear keeps you are dry and warm at first. Then the water finds little gaps in the waterproofing, at seams and minute holes. Some trickles down your arm from your raised wrist. Slowly your second layer of clothing gets damp, and then wet, and finally soaking. When the air temperature is near freezing, you get very cold. Clothing which was ridiculously warm at launch time slowly becomes damply inadequate. Do you unsnap the spray cover and get more warm clothing? But how and where do you stop? Will not the inside of the clothing bag get wet while you are rummaging and changing? What will be done with the wet things? At what point does your discomfort overwhelm all these things? I usually mull everything over and do nothing but work myself up into an unreasonable foul temper.

Mid-afternoon Beve showed her mettle in recovering from a potentially lethal situation. We were surging down towards a small debris-covered island over unusually active water. I bellowed: Go left; Pry hard! Beve twisted and made an immediate powerful cross-bow draw. As her blade went deep under the hull, a fierce current sucked the blade even further, and Beve was nearly plucked off her seat and pitched over the side. Her reaction was instant and correct. She let go of the paddle, which flipped high and out into the torrent. If she had not, we might well have gone over, and Es'toy Perdido with her. She snatched the spare from the velcro holder behind her, and we were back under full control. But the lost paddle had been a treasure, a gift from friends of ours years ago and far away. A light and flexible cherry, Beve prized it highly. There was no recovering it. Tossing and leaping around in a midstream whirlpool, it showed no desire to join us downstream where we waited in a bank eddy. Eventually we had to go on without it. Only a piece of wood, said Beve, but we both knew the loss was much more.

An hour later we landed at the campsite by the Berland River confluence. The guide said that the Berland had clear clean water, but under our conditions all water was a gritty uniform dark brown. Berland had another all-terrain vehicle hunter's campsite; there seemed to be one of these at every river crossing. Here there were a dozen pole crossbars from which to hang deer or moose carcasses. Two Alberta forestry workers made no effort to conceal their opinion that we were mad to be paddling on the river. They drove off in their beefy three-quarter ton truck, one of them shouting: You're at the asshole of nowhere,- good luck to you, you'll need it! They left us some split wood, and we soon had a warm fire by a rigged tarp. The split wood was especially welcome because my axe handle had died, and I had been reduced to splitting kindling wood by striking the axe head with a rock.

We were fed up with the rain. The river was still rising, and we had never gone this fast before, which was pleasant, but we wished the rain would give over. The forestry people had been wrong; the paddling was really not dangerous. An error could have fatal results, but every morning in Toronto thousands of commuters pack the subway platforms as the trains come flying into the stations, where any false move would be equally fatal. Still, our radio declared a state of emergency in the Grand Prairie area to the west. The next day a hundred year record for total precipitation in any one month for our area would be broken with only half the month gone. Six people had drowned upriver when their van skidded off a washed-out bridge.

Beve was glum. She rambled on about her high school days, and the quality of her teachers. She remembered teachers by their enthusiasm for their subject, which is unfashionable. Two different English teachers had tried to get across Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. One succeeded, one did not. Although she remembered one attempt with joy and the other with disdain, she still got her fullest understanding of the play through seeing it performed. Her musings ended with: Anyway, a paddle is just a piece of wood.

Three degrees Celsius Wednesday morning, and again rain had poured all night. We had left Es'toy Perdido close to the river edge. About 2:00 am the wind reversed and blew fiercely. I woke up frightened that the canoe might be blown off into the river so I went charging out to check, stark naked. As soon as I hit the mud of the road I went ass-over-tea-kettle and landed splat in the mud on my behind. Do you know that fine old Canadian canoe expression ass-over-tea-kettle? In times past the tea kettle (a recycled lard pail) rode on top of the load in the centre of the canoe. If the canoe stopped suddenly, perhaps as the result of hitting a rock, the stern paddler would be flipped forward over the tea kettle. So the phrase came to mean an unexpected and drastic deviation from tranquillity with eventual humorous overtones.

The river, impossibly, had risen another ten centimeters overnight. Morning rain was predicted, then the skies would clear for two days, to be followed by more heavy rain. Whitecourt was sixty-seven kilometers on, and we were determined to sleep in a motel there that night. Lunch, after twenty-five kilometers, was at the Windfall Bridge crossing, shared with a truck driver. He drove a recreational touring motorcycle when he was not driving his truck, and he belonged to something called the International Christian Biker's Association. He was off that weekend to Saskatoon for a Bible Run. He would have liked to cycle all the way there, but had insufficient time, so he intended to put his and the little woman's bikes in the back of his half-ton, drive to just outside Saskatoon, park the truck and drive the bikes into the rally. Different strokes for different folks. I could not imagine enjoying any part of that, but we were glad he was.

We got to Whitecourt late Wednesday evening and checked into a motel to bathe, do laundry, fix the axe handle, and sleep and sleep and sleep. Refreshed and with chores complete, we launched again Friday morning and pushed on to an isolated island camp, where for the first time we were able to fire our shotgun. The rifled slugs made appalling holes in driftwood logs! We also discovered that some very expensive scaring-flaring cartridges supposedly capable of being fired from an unchoked twelve gauge shotgun destructed damply inside the barrel and were useless. We had brought them for emergency signalling and to scare off bears.

Fifty-eight kilometers Saturday in gentle rain brought us to camp by the Highway # 33 bridge at Fort Assiniboine. A tiny and unlovable community, it had distinctions. Eight ultra-light aircraft sat about in a field on the edge of town. One of the two local drinking spots boasted a piece of ruined filthy Persian carpet (Ispahan?) on the dirt floor by the door.

Sunday we got to a road which ran north from Vega to dead-end on the Athabasca. There was a small steep path at a tiny gap up which we climbed to the road turn-around. Camping places were so few and far apart we decided to stay. The river there was still a focus for local people's lives, even though they did not go out on it. We met a man and his son who had driven ninety kilometers just to check out the river. Father had lived in this area all his life, and as a boy had hunted deer along the river with his father. We talked for a bit, and then he was off with: Best get the boy home to bed. School tomorrow.

We were right on schedule, though the river was slowing down, and we knew we would not in future be able to make the incredible daily runs we had been. Thirty-eight kilometers that day, in the process passing one thousand kilometers out from Vancouver.

The night was lovely and clear, but we were glad to be in the tent. God no doubt created Athabascan mud and mosquitoes so that the Boreal forest would not be confused with heaven! Coyotes and Loons made an awesome row.

Monday the river continued to slow. Breezes picked up, but were fluky. Ravens, Hawks and Phalaropes were busy, and there were rustlings and stompings off in the bush, but the river listlessly plodded northeast. Glutinous mud and willows lined the shore. Two years previously on a trip through here Beve's younger brother Jeffery was hauling on a rope and sank to his knees. We all laughed. He kept on sinking, to his thighs. We stopped laughing. It took twenty minutes to free him; we had to cut poles and pile them about him, and haul him out with ropes.

The campsite at the Pembina confluence was large and messy with deeply rutted tracks of all-terrain vehicles and flattened beer cans. Inexpert axes had whacked everything without much result, but there was a corner for our tent and wood for our fire. Water was not so easy, but we did get enough for our ham pasta à la rivière.

Launch on Tuesday was a triumph of sorts. After breakfast, cleanup and packing, we had to load the canoe, then drag it with ropes and prod it with sticks across a five meter barrier of deep slick mud and then down a meter drop into the river without losing it. The mud lubricated our shoes wonderfully, and we glided along as if on skates, but without edges to stop. At different times each of us glided gracefully and helplessly off into the river, and our struggles to get out afterwards were not helped by the other's hysterical laughter. Once finally in the canoe, and it on the water, things settled down. The temperature was twenty degrees Celsius, the sky was cloudless, and the air smelt faintly of honey.

Later Beve needed a shore break. We tried two places but she was unable to get out because of the mud. The third attempt was at a large downed tree projecting out into the river from the bank. We swung in perfectly along the meter-thick trunk. Beve stepped out on it, and it promptly sank. The upper end had rotted, and the part in the water was waterlogged. She ran agilely up the trunk as it submerged, grabbed a branch for balance (which broke), put one foot on shore and sank to her knee in the glutinous mud. As she struggled to extricate herself, I snatched for the spare paddle which had been swept overboard by the broken branch. Lunging over another log Beve eventually reached solid ground. There she did what she had gone through all that to do, making loud rude comments about the sexist Creator who had made males such that they could stay out on the water when females must land.

A heavy north headwind against which we could barely move blew up about 11:00 am. An hour later we quit at Chisolm Mills for lunch and for water. The town had only eight families, and was about two kilometers from the river up a dirt road. There had been a mill there, but all that remained was a huge square field of raked flat rubble. Nobody seemed to have told Canada Post, though, because there was still a post office and a postmistress. She showed us where to find the communal water tank. The pump had a pushbutton which had to be held depressed while the pump operated, and a rubber band with a large ball bearing glued centrally on it to defeat the purpose of the pushbutton.

After we were back in the canoe frantic honking from some invisible goose alerted us that two sticks on the water in front of us were really two gaggles of goslings, swimming determinedly towards shore from the middle of the river. On the top of a tree on the opposite shore was a huge dark immature Bald Eagle. Another floated by high overhead. When we came closer, an adult took flight from a tree not forty meters from us, circled us, and then rose up to join the kids. Throughout, the invisible goose kept up its anxious honking. Bald Eagles vary their usual diet of fish to include the occasional gosling.

We spent an uneventful night at O'Rourke creek. Half an hour after Wednesday's launch we were at the Highway # 2 bridge over the Athabasca. Smith was four kilometers ahead, the outlet of the Lesser Slave River opposite. Smith was once an important centre for trans-shipping freight headed for the Peace River country via the Lesser Slave River. Now it was a tiny battered community whose solitary boast was a stolid small square church, white with black trim, and no sign.

The river swung north again about noon. The sun was hot but the air cool. Wind was infrequent, but came in violent gusts. Once Beve's lifejacket was plucked off the deck and went swimming. We wear lifejackets for warmth and in fast water for safety. Nowadays there is great pressure to wear them constantly, but we do not. I get too hot in one, especially on very warm days, and my skin gets scraped raw under my arms and around my neck. You cannot move quickly, nor swim efficiently, in them. Also, their automatic use encourages the dangerous assumption that technology can replace skill and judgement. For thousands of years paddlers in Canadian canoes wore no lifejackets. There are no statistics, but I doubt there were more fatal accidents in times past per mile paddled than there are today. Once I asked an old prospector whether he believed that native people had some innate or racial ability to paddle well. He replied that most natives were fine paddlers because they could not swim, and so took their skills seriously! There was an appalling picture in the April/May 1991 Canadian Geographic showing a gung-ho group of immaculately clad recreational paddlers on the upper Athabasca. Their gear was brand-new, there was no scratch or dent on their gleaming aluminum canoes. They were all wearing useless hard hats. The two leaders were distinguishable from all the others by the color of their hard hats; they were wearing foremen's hard hats in white while the rest wore laborers' green! Someone once made a brief critique of religion that I have never forgotten: religion is like being marched off in formation to view a sunset. Some recreational canoeists approach their sport in the same conformist spirit. The modern trend towards disciplined reliance on technology in place of skills and reason rots my socks. A stupid young man managed the other day to upset his canoe above Athabasca Falls, to plummet fifteen meters, and survive. An R.C.M.P. officer said he survived because he was wearing his life jacket. I think it was dumb luck. Everyone else who has gone over those falls has died, life jacket or not. Just possibly the young man ought not to have gone over the falls in the first place. Maybe he ought to learn how to read a map properly, or to acquire the skills to get out of a fast river without overturning his canoe. It is even possible that because he was wearing the life jacket he believed himself protected from the need to use his head, learn skills, or keep track of where he was. He may even still hold those beliefs (though I doubt he canoes) supported by that knee-jerk comment of the R.C.M.P. officer. A good friend who is also an R.C.M.P. officer says that life jackets are valuable because they make bodies (live or dead) easier to find, thus shortening search and rescue time and protecting the lives of the rescuers. I was not sure why I got in such a bad temper reflecting on technology and canoeing, but whamming a few fat greasy flies made me feel much better.

By mid-afternoon we were making good time, though we were not certain precisely where we were. We needed four topographical maps over this sixty kilometers, and through some ineptitude I was missing two of them. But we knew the river, it was not possible to get lost, and there were no Falls ahead. A Whitetail and her fawn took off up the hill about fifty meters from us. By this time of year they were the same size, but the fawn was a bright reddish brown while the mother was dark.

We settled for the night in a snug cabin, safe from a threatening thunderstorm. A group of Edmonton business people owned the cabin, and had left a sign welcoming visitors and asking them to clean up. There were lots of notes, the latest dated July 1989 and left by a party of canoeists from Whitecourt headed for Athabasca. There was a fine wood stove, and Beve was baking biscuits in it as the storm hit. Our radio picked up Lister Sinclair's Ideas on C.B.C., though the reception was faint and punctuated by thunder and lightning. David Cayley was interviewing Father Thomas Berry, a Passionist theologian or "geologian". Berry argued that the traditional Christian concern with the human drama of redemption has reduced concern for the natural universe and the human place in it. He recommended that Christians should leave their Bibles unread on the shelf for twenty years, and study instead the sacred history of nature. Father Berry said that we in the west today suffer from a sub-conscious rage against the human condition, for which two sorts of solutions have been proposed. One was the classical religious position, that our real home is in heaven and the unjust life we live now will eventually be put right by God. The other was the Pelagian heresy, that with more work and more sincere dedication we could manipulate this world to make it good and the human lot in it acceptable. Neither of these answers satisfies religious needs today. Berry suggested a third alternative, that we come to realize that we are minuscule but significant parts of creation, both in time and space, who must reach a "mutually enhancing human-earth relationship" in which the universe is not an object to be exploited but a subject to be communed with. Ecology is central to the modern search for meaning, not because we ought to feel guilty for the terrible havoc we are wreaked on our world (that would be to assume we are separate from and superior to that world), but because by understanding the interrelated nature of our world we can find our own humble place in it and be content. Right on! Our Bible was on the shelf for only two years, not twenty, but the search for a renewed theological perspective along the lines he suggested was why we were where we were.

The electric storm continued to play havoc with the radio reception, and that attempt of the natural world to commune with us made the rest of Berry's interview impossible to appreciate. We heard him quote Thomas Aquinas: "There is nothing in the intelligence which is not first in the senses", and took that as advice to go to bed.

Thursday we were moving quickly near Tomato creek when we passed a magnificent Coyote at about five meters. Edgy but curious, he made no attempt to run, but stared us out of sight.

By mid-afternoon we were tired. Lying back on our break we drifted along, watching the languid strobe of light and shade flickering overhead. A Great Blue Heron seemed as stunned as we were; he thrashed to life and fled croaking when we were less than four meters away.

We landed at Athabasca at 6:00 p.m. Throughout that evening people drove into the campground, looked us over, and drove out again. At 8:00 p.m. we decided to treat ourselves to dinner. We had an unexpectedly superb meal at Grandmother's Touch, run with élan by Chef Michel Savard. We stayed until 11:00 p.m. discussing the failure of Meach lake, which Michel and his son viewed as the betrayal of an obviously superior French Canadian life style by barbarians typical of those who surrounded them in Athabasca. I told them that they were overstating their case in a manner only to be expected of those in whose veins flowed the blood of feckless and over-excitable voyageurs. We got on well.

Ed and Helen Sushynski, our Edmonton friends, arrived Saturday, and we were very glad to see them. We spent a refreshing two days together, visiting Calling Lake and enjoying a second superb meal at Grandmother's Touch.

The Athabascans we met were cautious but proud of the power of their river. Marge at the local Chamber of Commerce tourist office told us that her next door neighbor’s boy was missing and presumed drowned. His father had been working on his trapper's cabin when the three boys took out the aluminum boat for a spin. They somehow upset it in a hole, and only one boy survived. "He was thrown right out of the boat and up onto shore!" Marge announced. A Jet-boat driver said: "So you're going to try our river, eh? Well, good luck to you. We were down at McMurray yesterday, and nearly swamped my twenty-foot jet boat. Canoes just won't cut it in that water!" Strange, the pride they took in how dangerous their river was, and how certain they were that canoes had no place in it. On the one hand, their concern was misplaced. Those we talked to had no knowledge of canoes or canoeing, and they seemed to think that Beve and I had gotten there from Vancouver by accident. On the other hand, two or three canoeists a year do drown below Athabasca, presumably novices. According to the local paper one such who survived but whose buddy drowned planned to sue the Federal government because they had been swept over a ledge not marked on the topographical map.

The rapids downriver were certainly fearsome. Brulé Rapid, for example, was described as a grade four, a grade over the possible limit for open canoes, and the map contour lines showed its banks rising sheer out of the water. There would be no chance to survey, line, or wade, and once at the rapids we would never be able to return back up the river.

Our launch Monday was a disaster. The bank was high and very muddy, and I was suffering from the effects of the night before. We loaded the canoe and then tried to slide it down the bank into the water. The fresh re-supply had made the canoe heavy, and the bank was very steep. The bow submarined. We then had to clamber down into knee deep mud, unload, dry everything out, and reload. While we were doing this someone stole our camera tripod. That day we made an early stop below a farmer's field on a road allowance after only five hours on the water and went straight to bed.

Tuesday morning a F18 warplane overflew us following the river south, going slowly, making an appalling row, about a hundred meters up. Later we saw what appeared to be a herd of cattle having a bath in the river. As we got closer they turned out to be eight large mule deer who left, in no hurry, when we were forty meters away.

By 11:00 am we were at an Alberta recreational area campsite. Rain was threatening, so we bolted lunch. We came in for the night at a campsite at the mouth of La Biche River, after having been poured on all afternoon.

Wednesday we made a slow start after a night of steady rain. The river was slowing, flexing and stretching in deep swirls and long back eddies. We saw a number of what we took to be Great Blue Herons, though they were bluer in color, shorter and more compact than usual. Perhaps they were young.

We stopped at 1:00 p.m. at Calling River, at a pleasant recreation area intended for road but not river traffic. There was a shed and lots of wood, and the grass was mown. Unfortunately there was no water other than from the Calling or Athabasca Rivers, filthy, and available only after having crossed ten meters of sucking mud. We quit there because we needed to dry out, my back was acting up again, and I had injured my leg somehow.

Thursday began gloriously clear and sunny, after a night of Coyote serenades, - wild yapping and yowling which continued for hours. Our launch was nasty but we were prepared. The drill was to wade out through the mud clenching our toes so as not to lose our shoes, and load. Then clamber in, feet hanging over the side. Remove shoes, scrape off mud with the paddle, and swish feet and shoes about over the side. Replace shoes on feet and feet in canoe.

The day proved cloudy and monotonous. We passed La Pellier Rivière Jaillant, which had a pleasant campsite. The Athabasca was picking up speed. Lunch was at a hunter's camp, a wooden frame shelter covered in clear plastic boasting an excellent stove, camp built chairs and tables, and a pit with about a hundred empty liquor bottles. Some had contained Caribou, a hideous synthetic cherry whiskey made in Quebec which I had not seen in thirty years.

By 2:30 pm we were at Duncan Creek, with dark clean water which we took full advantage of by bathing, washing our clothes, and filling every available water container. Later we stopped about three kilometers short of Iron Point at an elaborate log hunter's cabin, after forty-nine kilometers that day.

The sky was clear Friday morning, though rain had fallen heavily in the night. Loon calls floated through heavy mist off the river. We saw our first white pelican; solitary, supercilious, and immaculately white. A sick or starving cow moose was so curious - or incautious - about us that we drifted past her within ten meters.

By mid-afternoon we were at Dick Neuman's cabin. Short, handsome, and taciturn, Rick was a well-know river character with no gift for conversation. He had lived alone there for most of his life. He kept the grass around his cabin well mown for something to do. He said that the river was extremely high, and that we should expect the upcoming rapids to be very bad. He had once descended them, but his laconic description was no help to us.

That night we quit at dark on a crash campsite by a stream immediately after the Stony rapids. They had been grade two: fast, with large standing waves, but no problem. A big storm hit as we washed up after a sketchy supper. During the night heavy storms rolled over us. The total silence that followed was broken abruptly by a massive plunging and splashing in the stream beside us, and a loud huffing and snuffing as something big, probably a moose, tried to catch our scent.

All next morning the riverbanks rose higher and steeper, and the current increased ominously. Huge slumps of earth and trees had collapsed on the cutting banks of the river. Often trees had survived and continued to grow at crazy angles, some even projecting at right angles out over the river. We were watching carefully for La Rapide de la Joli Fou, a rapid named as a voyageur's rude joke. A sleepy solo paddler once drove his canoe full tilt into the only rock for miles, went ass-over-tea-kettle right out of his canoe, hit his head on the rock, and drowned. When we got there we found that at our water levels La Rapid de la Joli Fou was no joke; waves were washing right over the canoe throughout it, and the fatal rock was deep underwater.

Just before lunch we met a cow Moose with her calf. We were not trying to chase them, but they could not get up the bank from the shore and got quite panicky trying to evade us. The calf went into the river, swam along for a bit, and then climbed out and charged the bank. He fell and hurt his leg. On his second try he made it up to mother.

We were at the House River Indian Cemetery by 3:00 p.m., where there was said to be good camping. We wasted time ascending too far up the House River, but returning found a huge flat field of long grass and a cabin high above the river. The grass was soaking, and in places had been well flattened by deer. The cabin was unlocked, no one was home, but there was a current issue of Playboy on the table.

We arrived at the top of the Grand Rapids about 6:00 p.m. after over sixty kilometers that day. As we crept down to that grade six rapid we noticed two lots of orange surveyor tape on the water's edge, about a kilometer apart, each marking some kind of steep trail straight up the seventy meter cliff. They did not necessarily have anything to do with the portage, as there had been numerous surveyor tape markings along the river, and neither matched the description of the landing. We skipped the first lot and continued to line timidly down towards the rapid. The roar was deafening and the earth trembled. We could see nothing of the rapid because of a major landslip just ahead.

We gave the second lot of tape a miss as well, but only a few meters on Beve was in to her waist at the foot of the landslip. The current was powerful, and further lining was impossible. We could easily have ferried out blind into the current to pass the landslip, but that did not seem too bright an idea at the top of a grade six rapid. We went back to the last trail up the cliff, and I explored up it. It was clearly some sort of portage. The first trail linked up with the second at the top of the cliff, then continued north along the escarpment. It was rough and very poorly cleared. The canoe was going to be a real chore to thread between those trees; it was hard to believe that this was the Grand Rapid Portage.

After about two kilometers the trail ended abruptly at a two-pole bridge spanning a deep clay-sided streambed. The gap was about ten meters, and the Black Spruce poles were only about eight centimeters thick, greasily wet, and sloped upwards at about thirty degrees. The rain was still pelting down, and the stream below was roaring muddily towards the cliff edge and over. I was not going to try to cross that bridge. If I fell I would be flushed straight over the hundred meter high cliff and out into the Grand Rapid, and Beve would never know what had happened.

I returned, and we moved the night pack and the kitchen pack up close to the pole bridge. Beve set up a crash campsite on a small wet meadow by the cliff edge while I took a flashlight and headed back to the canoe for water and the monster pack. Rain was still falling steadily, and dark was upon us; I left without a glance over the cliff edge at the rapid. The return trip took forty-five minutes; it was pitch dark long before I returned. Supper was two tins of cold meat and biscuit, munched by flashlight and washed down with gritty lemonade tasting of water purification tablets.

First thing on the first of July I crossed our little clearing to look down on the Grand Rapid. The river was perhaps six hundred meters wide, divided by a wooded island extending two kilometers down the rapid, well towards our east shore. Huge rounded boulders, harder than the host limestone, had over time been eroded out and rolled down to form a massive boulder dam, over and through which, for hundreds of meters, the water boiled insanely. The formation was especially treacherous because the top part, where fewer of those massive boulders remained, looked runnable from water level above the rapid. Further down there were more and more boulders, until the river becomes totally blocked by a monstrous impassable wall of them.

In times past the traders and shippers had landed at the top of the island and portaged down it. The Hudson's Bay Company even built a rail track for freight dollies, of which nothing remains. The boats were launched at the foot of the island to descend into the reunited river in the Little Grand Rapid.

Our alternative was the portage on the east side, which normally began at the foot of the stream bridged by those two greasy spruce poles. Our water levels were so high that the portage had been extended two kilometers upstream, and it was over that rough trail that we struggled. We brought up the canoe, paddles, lifejackets, ropes and spray skirt, and then rigged a rope by the spruce bridge. In daylight that bridge was not as fearsome as it had seemed the previous evening, but it still terrified me. By the time we had brought up more water and had done the chores, we decided to spend another night at our crash camp.

Monday at first light I walked over that pole bridge, but before I could return down that thirty degree slope I had to give myself a stern talking to. Beve had a lot less trouble than I did. In the end we carried everything over that bridge except Es'toy Perdido, whom we swung across on ropes. After another hundred meters of very rough going we reached the flat area above the proper portage and set up camp.

A strange lassitude enveloped us. We should have humped the canoe, monster pack, and loose articles down to the end of the portage for the next day's launch. Instead we laid about reading, and talking in fits and starts, and inventing chores, and sleeping, and finding new ways to avoid the incessant rain and cold. We stayed in all for twenty-four hours, until we faced the fact that we were simply afraid to continue. The constant rain, roar, cold, and constantly shaking land had sapped our courage and made us timid.

Our fear certainly was not rational. We knew our skills, and did not doubt that we would get to Fort McMurray. We were simply afraid of putting ourselves to the test of an uncertain future. The devil tempts with the illusory hope of a life that is secure, certain, and perfect. Good religion helps us recognize the insecure, the uncertain, and the imperfect in life, and nerves us to face them. Bad religion soothes us by reassuring us that some celestial parent is looking after us, that we can be secure in the certain knowledge that everything will turn out perfectly for us without change or effort on our part. Everyone knows that what bad religion teaches is a lie, but both living and religion for many of us is little more than wasting an appalling amount of time and effort trying to ignore what we know.

Once we had named our fear we were able to get on with what we had come to do. Early Wednesday we launched into the Little Grand Rapid. Heavy bank waves and rocks made it necessary to launch in deeper water over waves that lifted and dropped the canoe a full meter. I held while Beve loaded, which went surprisingly easily. After that Little Grand Rapid itself was simple. Thanks to the high water, we ran straight down the east bank, maneuvering among the occasional giant boulders. Below the rapid a moose casually swam through the rough turbulence across the river in front of us, helping to put our anxiety in perspective.

Midafternnon we were at Buffalo creek, just past Brulé point, at a famous escape of natural gas; we landed in a mass of smelly bubbles. Gas escaping from a short rusty pipe driven into the bank ignited readily. A battered vented pail could be inverted over the pipe to make a crude but effective stove. A trapper's cabin had once stood there, heated and lighted by the gas; not too surprisingly, it had burnt.

By 8:30 p.m. we were in at an excellent crash campsite above the Algar river. Brulé Rapid had been straightforward. We took it on the left, backpaddling through ponderous waves and maneuvering easily amongst large boulders.

The night was pleasant, apart from some pesky flies. The Thursday morning sky was clear and the atmosphere balmy. We stopped for lunch at 2:00 p.m., after running Boiler, Middle, and Long Rapids. We were too cautious at Boiler, going in to shore to line too soon, and eventually becoming trapped inside a massive rock garden from which we had difficulty escaping. We ought to have stayed out until much closer to the huge boulder dam, and then lined that, but from upstream that dam looked so fearsome that we had stayed well away from it. Middle Rapid was a solid grade three which we charged aggressively, possibly because of our over-caution at Boiler. Apart from monstrous waves, it was no problem. The Long Rapids that followed were in fact short, and nearly drowned out. We quit at 3:45 p.m., thoroughly exhausted but very pleased with ourselves. After we landed I went into automatic pilot while Beve slept. I gathered firewood, laid a fire, cut a pot stick, and swung the pot on it. Then I slept. Two hours later I rose and lit the fire. What appeared to be steam rose quickly from under the lid, but it was not steam. I had hung the pot with our plastic bowls and metal cutlery inside, but without water! After a horrendous cleaning job the cutlery and pot were saved, but the bowls were gone forever. From then on to Fort McMurray we shared out of the pot.

Friday we left for Fort McMurray in gray and gloom, which for once did not dictate nor reflect our emotional state. The first half of the Crooked Rapids was easy, but we needed to maneuver with precision through the second. Both had to be surveyed as we rode, as the banks rose vertically and the river twisted and turned. Rock and Little Cascade Rapids were uneventful but enjoyable.

We tiptoed gently down the Cascades, and that turned out to be a good idea. The last ledge was very tricky, and the chute hard to see. A third across that huge river from the east side, I thumped my paddle on the limestone as we slid down through a twisting chute, hard left and hard right, and then erupted out into the biggest standing waves I have ever seen. Beve was buried by a wave which curled over her head, and which without a spray skirt would certainly have put us down. A split-second later another came over my right shoulder. Both waves dropped on us rather than pushing at us. Es'toy Perdido stayed perfectly stable even though completely submerged for some seconds.

There were three ledges between the Cascades and Mountain which were not discussed in any literature we read (though two were shown on the topographical map). We took them seriously. The first two we passed left and very close to shore, and the last right. It was at one of these three ledges that the young man we had read about in the Athabasca paper died, whose partner intended suing the Federal government because their topographical map had been inaccurate.

The fearsome Mountain Rapids were anticlimactic, after their blind entrance. The drawing of them in J. W. Tyrell's 1908 classic Across the Sub-Arctics of Canada is heart-stopping; the waves seem to be a good ten meters from trough to peak. Classified as grade four, they were described in our canoe guide as: three ledges demanding the most precise maneuvering skills. For us they were a simple grade three slalom: right, middle, right. We whooped when we saw them, and charged. Soon after we ran grade two Moberly Rapid and were in Fort McMurray.

BACK

We stayed until July 10th in Fort McMurray with Roland Landry and his daughter Lisa; the rest of the family being on holidays. Sunday we went to worship at All Saints Church, where their handsome young Assistant Curate Bruce Chalmers was preaching. He said that the greatest Christian virtue is toleration, and that doctrinal differences are relatively unimportant. To illustrate he told a story of a conversation between a Rabbi and a Cardinal, both of whom completely misunderstood what the other was saying, but who worked together well because both assumed the other was trying to be helpful. Bruce told his story well, and it was amusing, but the sermon left me unconvinced that doctrine has so little connection with quality of life, or that the chief modern social virtue is the chief virtue my Lord taught. The second lesson, part of the seventh chapter of Romans, was read without passion by the Lay Reader Kathy Brown, who we later found bright, congenial, and knowledgeable. The lesson was the apostle Paul raging against himself: "I do not understand what I do; for I don't do what I want to do, but instead I do what I hate ...", but Kathy's flat reading was teddibly Anglican, reminiscent of Dorothy Sayers’: "At the name of Jesus, every voice goes plummy, every gesture becomes pontifical, and a fearful creeping paralysis slows down the pace of the dialogue ..." But there was a great feeling in that church. Banners hung everywhere, and enthusiastic children and young people tumbled about. One delightful older lady gave up a determined attempt to recruit me for the choir only after discovering that I was a clergyman.

Late Tuesday morning we launched upstream into the Clearwater River. Eric Morse, in Fur Trade Routes of Canada, Then and Now, observed "Like the Athabasca, the Clearwater is a fast river and anyone planning to paddle between Ilè-a-La-Cross and Fort Chipewyan (not especially recommended) should certainly do it from south to north; in the eighty miles of the Clearwater are a falls and six rapids." Having no choice, we ignored his advice. We struggled upstream to the beginning of the last set of meanderings, perhaps ten kilometers, then stopped for repairs and gear sorting. That night the clean icy stars twinkled high above and quite separate from the languorous air which enveloped us; an illustration of the ancient belief in a celestial layer cake of spheres above the earth.

Wednesday we made a slow start under a hot sun. Late that afternoon our thermometer reached the predicted high of thirty-two Celsius. The work was harsh,- lining, wading, and dragging through strong current and shallows. Despite our best efforts we ended two kilometers short of our goal, the confluence with the Christina River. On our breaks we swam and watched fish; mostly Pickerel and what seemed to be Sturgeon.

On Thursday the upstream work in that heat continued desperately slow. We gained only four and a half kilometers in the first two hours, and we had worked like dogs. The first two kilometers were mostly lining, but after the entrance of the Christina River the current slowed enough to make paddling possible. Poling was difficult because the depth changed frequently and abruptly. Our thermometer read thirty-four Celsius by 11:00 a.m.! By lunch we had come only a little over seven kilometers, though the current was slowly diminishing. Three Kingfishers were diving headlong into the river.

Mid-afternoon we met three canoes descending the river, two solos and a double. Curiously, the previous year we had met three of those paddlers. These had been given free plane rides to Lloyd Lake near the headwaters of the Clearwater River by their employer, Suncor. They were the first canoeists we had met since Vancouver.

Later we met Leo Chessman, an Indian trapper who with his daughter was sitting in their motorboat among the shore weeds. Their motorboat had stalled, and they had been sitting there for four hours. Leo was afraid to pull the starter cord too vigorously because he had a weak heart, and his daughter had recently been injured in an accident and could not. Despite the antipathy that all things mechanical have for me, after a little fiddling with the choke and some vigorous pulls I was able to get their engine going, which made my day.

We stopped fourteen kilometers along at Green Tree Recreation Area. There were five primitive recreational sites on the lower Clearwater River, each with lots of sawn unsplit wood, fire rings, privies, and good tent sites. Green Tree Recreational Area seemed to have gotten its name from the wood supplied. The others areas were Christina, Miseieutin, Engstrom, and Cascades. Edward Engstrom was a trapper and boat builder who had lived here quietly and alone for twenty-five years before he died in 1971, his body found drifting down the river in a boat he had designed and built. In 1993 Leo Chessman would be found drifting in the same way.

Up to Cascades Rapids the Clearwater was jet boat country. Powerful, big, and fast, with very shallow draft, jet boats were summer transportation between the recreation sites, the trapper's cabins, and Fort McMurray. There were few of them; the locals could identify each boat by its engine noise. Two jet boats arrived that evening. Jim Lewis, his wife, daughter, and daughter's friend arrived in the first. Jim was the local Snap-on tools representative. The company's best salesman in western Canada, he was off the following weekend to Toronto to watch a road race as a sales prize. Tall and strong, Jim had an impish sense of humor and a consuming interest in the river and those on it. He was a close associate of Blair Jean, a trapper and friend, who had a fine cabin between Engstrom and the Cascades. There were only four or five cabins along the whole length of the Clearwater, because each must belong to a registered and working trapline. We had met Jim the previous year, when he had invited us to camp beside Blair's cabin. Then we had been descending the river in darkness, cold rain, and clouds of flies. Now all was hot, bright, and vibrantly alive. The second jet boat contained three young East Coast men, employees of Syncrude or Suncor. Curious about what we were doing, they were not interested in ever doing something similar themselves. No way I would even think of coming upstream from McMurray in a canoe, let alone cross Canada in one! Of course, the fact that they were in a flossy jet-boat that probably cost three years of my salary may explain their reaction.

We were also visited by two Sea-do riders: Rick Short, the local Bombardier lessee, and his friend Wayne, a novice out for the first time. Rick had been running Wayne up onto barely submerged sandbars at speed, which both of them seemed to enjoy. I commented that the way local river-users knew and cared about each other was very impressive. Rick replied "Yeah, but the same people who are real buddies on the river will leave you to rot by the side of the highway if you're in trouble there".

Friday the thirteenth was our wedding anniversary. I finally got to a three-day old issue of the Globe and Mail, full of the failure of the Meach Lake agreement. The political cartoon showed two men loaded with camping gear getting into a canoe. One exclaimed "Sky, water, wilderness; what else could one possibly ask to make this a quintessential Canadian experience?" Behind a bush, about to step into view, was a political pollster with a clipboard survey headed: Whither Canada?

Later in the morning I proved either my age or my sexism. We were passing an anchored jet boat, decorated in decadent Disneyland. The deck was shimmering silver stars embedded in bright blue plastic edged in fluorescent pink. The customary gloriously filled bikinis were sunning on the forward deck, the heroes fishing and drinking beer in the stern. I asked directions from the men while ignoring a lovely young woman in a orange-peach bikini who was trying to offer me far more comprehensive and helpful information. Beve pointed this out later. I pleaded that I needed to get my directions without any unnecessary distraction.

A hot tough pull against a strong current brought us fourteen kilometers to the Miseieutin recreation site. There were no people, but some ominous signs of weekend visitors: a tent, a laid fire, a liter of whiskey, two dozen beer, and two coolers full of ice, pop, and food. We set up camp and cooked our anniversary feast; spaghetti with an oversized can of corned beef in packaged sauce with a bottle of Chianti. As we were washing up a wood and canvas freighter canoe with a ten-horse motor droned slowly upstream towards us. This belonged to Larry Comeau, a well-known local character. He was a trapper, and certainly looked the part, though some of the things he did were odd. He meticulously prepared several shaved fire-starting sticks, though our fire burnt brightly only a few steps away. Then he lit the shaved sticks from a piece of solid fire-starter! Larry told us that he had a cabin at the Rattlepan and Clearwater River's confluence. He was congenial, friendly and generous, and we got on fine. We visited while we split wood together. He would drive his ax into a section of sawn log, then repeatedly drive wood and ax together upside down onto another section until the first piece split. We got about the same pile of split wood in the same time.

The cached food and drink turned out to belong to two young couples. Another couple's boat had broken down, and had been left tied to Leo Chessman's dock. The first couples had rescued them and brought them to Miseieutin where the nine of us spent a convivial evening. Sharon led the singing, accompanied by Laurie's wicked guitar. Sharon said that she had only a mimic's voice, but it was clear and sweet, accurate in pitch, and from the heart. After singing there were deep discussions about the truly best way to fillet a pike, and why you should not carry loose matches in your pocket (Sharon once had some ignite while she was driving a snowmobile along a trap line, with embarrassing results). Barb's friend was to be married, and Barb intended throwing a stagette party for her. She was hoping to get a male stripper for the event, and asked if I was available. I referred her to my agent, Beve. The party began to break up after 2:30 a.m., when the last of the deep fried pike fillets had been eaten.

Nothing happened in any hurry Saturday morning. Larry groaned out shortly after me, to be met by his sister and brother-in-law up from Fort McMurray for the weekend. They were dressed in matching foul weather gear, and they needed it, for the rain fell steadily all morning. One by one the others emerged, to gather under two large tarps, eat a leisurely-prepared brunch, and visit. Jim Lewis arrived just before noon, as the rain grew heavier. Mid-afternoon Jim gave us a lift in his jet boat over the thirty kilometers up to the Cascades where the serious rapids began, a thrilling fifty-minute roaring run skimming over waves through the pouring rain. Blair recognized the thunder of Jim's engine and came down to the dock expecting to greet him. He stood there, gaping and amazed, as we thundered past, Es'toy Perdido projecting over the stern. Jim laughed impishly; like some mischievous schoolboy pulling off a perfect prank. At the Cascades Jim split a pile of firewood for us, extracted a promise that we would call him from La Loche when we got there, and roared back downstream. Our supper was a great feast of eggs, moose sausage, smoked pork chops, bread and milk, all gifts from our new friends who had insisted that it was all extra, and would just go to waste if we did not use it.

Sunday I bolted Brother Bill's unpatented portage vehicle together and used it to roll over the twelve hundred-meter Cascades Portage. Bill had designed the first practical dolly I have used. It suspended the canoe, with packs in, between two bicycle wheels. Four vertical equilateral triangles of strong angle aluminum supported the wheels on short axles between the bottom points of each pair. A stabilizing bar just below the axles joined the inner triangles. The four upper horizontal sides of the triangles were bolted to a rectangular frame, beneath which the canoe was suspended by visegrip clamps on the gunnels. Unfortunately we were short one axle-locking nut. In the midst of the packing flurry I had thrown extras in, but when we assembled the dolly we found that the extra nuts were the wrong size. We made a lash-up that held over Cascades portage, but would not last long on the Methye Portage.

Thirteen kilometers of difficult upstream wading and lining took us to the Rattlepan River, the paddles lying unused the whole day. The river was fast, rocky, and comparatively shallow. Two thirds of the climb up Le Bon Rapids (three kilometers of class three) we chose the left channel around an island, only to find that the passage by the top of the island was impassable, and an overland portage was impossible. We had to return and go up the right channel, an extra four kilometers. Larry had offered us the use of his cabin, which was tight, highly organized, and clean. A picture window gave a great view of the river. Guns and ammunition were neatly put away. There were skin drying patterns, lots of fold-up chairs, two bunks, family pictures, and lots of Snap-on advertising on mugs and calendars. There was also ample reading material, ranging from Mors Kochanski's Northern Bushcraft to stacks of Hustler and Playboy.

A trapper called Woody had stayed in the cabin for nearly a year and had left a handwritten journal. The local trappers formed a community linked in winter by a snowmobile road along the east bank. We had met some of them: Blair, Jim, Larry, Sharon, and Leo. Woody recorded people dropping in to visit almost every day, and he himself was often in town. On Christmas day Woody had nine visitors. One frequent visitor was Archie who always came by with a thirsty look in his eye.

I stayed up into the small hours reading the journal Northern Bushcraft. Kochanski seems to have a wide knowledge of bush survival, yet his teaching is doctrinaire and sometimes curiously unrealistic. He decreed that the bushman carries three lots of matches, in a match safe in the pants pocket, in another in a shirt pocket, and in a waterproof main supply in the pack. No matches should be carried anywhere else, especially loose in a pocket. (Sharon would agree!) Good stuff, if pedantically expressed. On the other hand, Kotchanski must spend thousands of hours each year sharpening his axe and knife, if he does what he advises others to do. The axe must be sharpened to a mirror finish, and re-sharpened after each Black Spruce is felled, using a variety of stones and emery papers. The aim is to produce axe and knife edges suitable for surgery. The few bushmen I have known kept their axes sharp, but used only a two-sided disc axe hone after occasional touch-ups from a file. The book was full of other interesting lore, very European. Kochanski hardly mentions the bushcraft of Canadian natives, and he would have no use for that of the Sierra Club.

I glanced through the pornographic magazines. A Hustler had one of those pretentious philosophical pieces, which included "Some ... people, especially clergy, forget that the chief purpose of life is to have fun. The purpose of existence is self-enjoyment, nothing less." I, as one, cleric, had not forgotten that, I merely rejected it.

Red-eyed, we set off up the main rapids next morning. The portage trail information had gone missing, but as we had intended to line up the rapids anyway, I was not concerned. We never saw the downstream end of the Un Coup and Gros Roche portages. The rapids were taxing to wade and line, tougher than portaging would have been, but we got up them. The Rapide Des Pins finally undid us. We kept edging around corner after corner, the current increasing and the rock wall rising ever more vertically out of the river. Eventually we had to give up and retreat to bushwhack cross-country to the upper end of the portage we ought to have used, which took us well over an hour. After the difficulties of the first two rapids, we would have used the Portage Des Pins if we could have found it. All we knew was that it was river left, two-and-a-half kilometers long, ending on a secondary channel of the Clearwater, probably unmarked at that end. We may have been the first people to ascend the Clearwater by canoe in this century, so it was not surprising that the lower ends of those portages were not obvious. Canoeists descending the river seldom use the portages; they came to run rapids.

The beginning of the kilometer portage at Whitemud Falls was rough, but we were able to use brother Bill's dolly on the second half. Whitemud is one of Canada's most spectacular hidden treasures. The river descends to divide around a flowerpot island, gathers force over a series of meter high ledges and plunges over a fifteen-meter drop the full width of the river into a huge pool. From the pool the river swings left and then right to dive over a narrower twelve-meter drop, then over yet another twelve-meter drop. Another river flows into the larger pool from the east, contributing to the violence of the whole. The limestone western bank is forty meters high and uncluttered, and in several places deeply undercut. One can walk out onto projections and look vertically down on three sides into the torrent. The Grand Rapids on the Athabasca were larger and more expansive, but Whitemud Falls was more impressive. It was enclosed, so we felt more a part of the action, surrounded by thundering water below, the rock trembling underfoot, and mist enshrouding us. Someday the falls will be a major tourist destination, with guard rails, garbage pails, and a parking lot for the tour buses. The campsite had lots of level tent sites and plenty of firewood. There was an outhouse, where a colony of wasps claimed squatters’ rights that we did not challenge. It was all heavily used; campers must come by helicopter and land in the camping area, or land from a bush plane a few kilometers upstream and descend by boat.

 We took Tuesday off at the falls, shooting two rolls of film trying to capture something of that magnificence. The pictures turned out well, but Whitemud Falls demanded better photographic skills.

Wednesday we were off upstream. Downstream paddlers would pass a flowerpot island on the right, then hug the shore around and into a fork in the river. Right, the water continues tortuously down to rejoin the main river well below the falls. Left, the fork rejoins the river above the falls, the portage beginning just before on the right bank. Going upriver, we crossed from the beginning of the portage over to the north bank, carried a hundred meters up past the flowerpot island, to launch where the current was weakest.

By 7:00 p.m. we had come seventeen kilometers to the start of the Methye portage. A proud Merganser mother with twenty ducklings swam by as two pairs of nighthawks darted about. The campsite was Dene. There were lots of cut poles and simple examples of superb ax work. Four axe blows had cut down two six-centimeter trees such that each tree stump ended in a deep notch lined up with the other. One of the felled trees was trimmed and laid into the notches to form the ridgepole of a lean-to. The other tree was trimmed and run horizontally at right angles to the ridgepole and tied to another tree. Lots of Spruce had been dropped and left to dry. There was a smoking and drying cooker; a frame of three-meter long horizontal poles suspended two meters or so above a long narrow fire. There was also an ingenious toboggan intended to be towed behind a snowmobile with a plywood running surface, steam curved and nailed onto an ax-cut natural knee frame.

Rain fell throughout the night. Late Thursday morning we were packed and had begun the steep two-hundred meter climb up the west end of the Methye Portage, a stern beginning for the longest portage trail (twenty kilometers) that we would walk on our whole voyage. The load was too heavy to push everything up on the portage dolly, but the two heaviest packs went up in the first go. We ascending steadily on what seemed from the map to be an unnecessarily long trail. Alexander Mackenzie described the climb as over "... a succession of eight hills, some of which are almost perpendicular...", suggesting that the trail may once have started more to the west, over a much rougher but shorter trail. Alternatively, it is possible that William Combe who re-cast Mackenzie's Voyages From Montreal may have altered Mackenzie's description. The first is more likely, because the famous view out over the Clearwater River Valley would then have been further west and down the valley, as the historic drawings show. The modern view faces north across the valley.

The dolly worked magnificently all the way to Rendezvous Lake, a third of the Portage. Only one tree had fallen across the path, and it was easily cut through. The trail was gently rolling, sandy, firm and quite wide. Winter snowmobilers had used it heavily, and there were Dene animal traps along the side, tunnels formed from sticks, one end blocked and snared. One contained a very dead Fisher.

We paddled across Rendezvous Lake to another Dene campsite, where there were smoking frames, drying frames, basic shelters, a cache of tinned food, and an ax leaning against a tree. The Northern stores sell two weights of axe. We used the lighter two and a half pound head, but this was the three and a half, dull and rusted. We were on top of the world, under a huge sky, on flat land where trees and brush squatted.

Friday we began part two of the portage rolling along in fine style. Cool and sunny weather soon brought out the flies. Beve wore her insect head-net in swarming clouds of gnats and black flies. Three kilometers on the lash-up failed and the wheel seized. I tried to fix it, working in clouds of bugs, adding to my protein intake each time I inhaled. The second repair lasted only a hundred meters or so, and this time an outside axle nut was lost, so we disassembled the frame and loaded it (minus the bicycle wheels) onto one of our packs. Ten kilometers still separated us from La Loche Lake, and we would have to walk thirty kilometers to get everything there. Our shoes were disintegrating. We had a little water, but no more would be available before La Loche Lake. Our next re-supply was to be at the town of La Loche, so at least we had little food to carry. I was soon wearing a bug head-net that I dislike because I get so hot in one, which drives the bugs into a frenzy. Beve could only carry the canoe ten minutes at a time. Four kilometers from the end we cached the canoe and monster pack and pushed through with the rest to the stream where the portage ended.

I had huge blisters. The first aid kit was four kilometers back in the monster pack. Beve did surgery, draining the blisters by the light of a flashlight and using her Sharpfinger belt knife sterilized with Seabreeze, a facial cleansing product containing alcohol.

We slept late Saturday morning, returning for the monster pack and the canoe midmorning. In four hours we were back. I carried the canoe the four kilometers without putting it down; the quicker the better on those blisters. Then we moved everything from the stream where the portage ended by canoe down to the three-meter high historical cairn.

 The east end of the Methye portage is not at the cairn, but where we had spent the night. We had learned that the previous year when we had crossed the Methye east-to-west in the opposite direction. That was where Es'toy Perdido got his name and where I learned the original meaning of that fine old canoeing phrase: that sure scrapes my neck!. We had paddled directly from La Loche to the cairn, explored the clearing around it, and found a broad well-traveled trail headed northwest which we assumed to be the Methye. It was only 2:00 p.m., so we decided to carry the canoe and one pack up this trail to ease the next day's work. The initial ascent was clean, dry and gentle, through a large burn area. The sun was bright, but the temperature was only about six degrees Celsius. The trail then descended into the worst muskeg I have ever sunk into. We were soon thigh deep in a mixture of peat and ice water, cursing murderous mosquitoes which I could not swat while carrying our new and as yet unnamed canoe. Suction held my feet, but momentum pushed me on; several times I landed on my nose, the canoe whacking down on my head, the mosquitoes whining with delight. Once through the muskeg we began a climb up what seemed more like the bed of a glacially fed stream than a portage trail. Every forty meters or so this leveled off into another muskeg swamp, each worse than the last. Four kilometers of this exhausted us. We cached the canoe and pack, and returned to the cairn. That had taken six hours!

Here Archie Herman, his wife Pauline and grandson Trevor, joined us. They had come to snare rabbits, for which this area is locally well known. They arrived in a traditional Dene skiff, made by Archie in one day from one cut-up sheet of three-quarter inch plywood and some thick axe-cut spruce for stem pieces. Gaily painted in bright blue and yellow, it had cost him forty dollars. Archie said his boat was rotten and leaking, and since none of the three could swim, (nor had life jackets), he would build a new boat soon.

I explained what we were doing, and where we had left our canoe. Archie was very curious about us, courteous with his questions, but very direct. He asked how old Beverly was, had we any children, and did we go to church. He told me that he had eleven children, one had died, and thirty-five grandchildren. His family worshipped at the only church in La Loche, a magnificent Roman Catholic Oblate building. I asked him about the Clearwater rapids, which Archie had descended many times by canoe. He made no attempt to describe them, but he took up my paddle and mimed how to run them, slowly and precisely, complete with sound effects. Then he smiled shyly, and went off to set his snares.

He returned in the gathering dusk, about 11:00 p.m. As he did the stuttering roar of a big outboard shattered the evening calm. Down the little stream and around the corner came another Dene boat at full throttle. It charged the shore, where one man leapt lightly out, tied the rope to a convenient stake, and turned to catch the three quick tosses which landed all their gear.

Archie was pleased to see the newcomers. "My wife's family", he announced slowly and significantly. "These are great bushmen." They certainly were. I watched in awe as two men in their sixties in less than ten minutes produced a great blaze in the growing darkness under a swung pot, raised a shelter, and split a pile of wood. The older man made about twenty deep, one-handed slashes with a short axe into a seven foot vertical length of black spruce, and then appeared to roll the log between his hands as if it were an over-sized cigar. It promptly disintegrated into kindling!

After their supper the Dene chatted. Then Archie, his face concerned, came over to our fire. "Tell me of the trail where you took your canoe", he asked gravely. I described it. "Ah!" he erupted joyfully, "You took the wrong trail. You went towards my father's lake!" We both laughed heartily, though my laughter was a little forced. The two older Dene had been on the Methye Portage, had seen no sign of us, and told Archie so. The east end of the Methye Portage begins a hundred yards up the small stream from the cairn, on the opposite bank, at a beaver dam. A winter trail goes from the cairn on to the beaver dam, but in the summer this section is too wet and overgrown to be used, and people ascend the small stream. We had headed up a different trail, which went off at a slight angle to the Methye and ended ten kilometers on in a small lake not unlike Rendezvous Lake, but with no exit. If we had not met Archie, we might still be there, unable to go forward, uncertain whether or not we were in Rendezvous Lake, and unwilling to retreat over that awful trail. As it was, our getting lost had cost us twelve hours of backbreaking labour, not the best preparation for a twenty-kilometer portage, especially when our new canoe was fitted with such an accursed excuse for a yoke. At the end of the Methye I lowered the canoe and said with feeling: "That sure scrapes my neck!" For our cross-Canada trip brother Bill had made us a fine carved beech yoke which, fitted at the balance points on the gunwales, made it possible to carry the newly named Es'toy Perdido for miles with comparative ease.

 Camped beside the cairn, we had just turned in Saturday evening when a father and son arrived. I got up to welcome them. They were not camping, just curious. If you ask a native what he is doing, he will usually answer: Looking for moose. This is a euphemism for just checking around. There are very few moose along major waterways. But while looking for moose the natives catch, shoot, or snare whatever comes along; partridge, pike, coyote, deer, whitefish, duck, hares, etc.

Sunday we were off across La Loche Lake in a perfectly flat calm. The temperature was twenty degrees Celsius and the air was clear. Es'toy Perdido left a lovely pattern of tiny waves expanding behind us as far as we could see. At La Loche we wound up at the Northern Lights motel. Father Jacek, who had our re-supply box, was on pilgrimage with two-thirds of the town at Lac Ste. Anne in Alberta. Sharron, a parishioner, was left in charge of the rectory, and she knew nothing of our box. Father Jacek would not return until at least Thursday, so we stayed at the motel, which was pleasant. Everything was brought there except Es'toy Perdido, who was chained with a huge padlock to a massive tree in the rectory yard. Everything in La Loche except the church was chained or locked. Windows in public places were metal-screened or barred, and doors were bolted and double locked. We were told that a major problem with the annual pilgrimages was that while two-thirds of the town attended, the other third were robbing the pilgrim's homes.

The liquor store was surrounded by a high chain fence, was windowless, and featured doors as if from a correctional institution. The manager lived in an attached house, and the R.C.M.P. detachment was on the other side. We were told that despite limited choice and a small staff this liquor store did more business than any other in Saskatchewan. Natives drank openly along the waterfront and in several tolerated public areas. The tourist campsite was unused, because of drunks harassing the campers.

John and Lorna McBain owned and managed the motel, and were wonderful to us. John took us on a tour of the town, after which we collapsed in our room, unwell. This may have been a delayed reaction from the rigors of the Methye, a change of diet, or a problem with the water. We were exhausted, nauseous, and suffering from cramps and diarrhea. I tottered around town to explore early Monday morning. A dog snarled at me and I snarled back. He then began, quite companionably, to follow me. Soon I had a retinue of ten or so mildly curious dogs with nothing better to do to escort me back to the motel.

Our re-supply box became available Tuesday. Our laundry was done and our repairs completed, and we had recovered our equilibrium. Wednesday we would begin our descent of the Churchill River, the heart of our voyage.

BACK

We did not get away from La Loche on Wednesday July 25^th as planned; we were just too nauseous, dizzy, and lacking in energy. John and Lorna looked after us. Impulsive, affectionate, and generous, John reacted strongly and immediately to people and situations. Lorna was short, with a tremendous capacity for work (which was just as well, given the demands of that motel operation). She made clear immediate decisions, which she did not dramatize as John did. Their motel operation included a gas bar, a well-attended restaurant, ten clean motel units, and other smaller enterprises, all run by the McBains and four helpers. One was a native woman who hired and bossed the cleaners. The other three, Jack, Dennis, and Lila, helped run the restaurant. John admired Chipewyans as "eye-ball people", meaning that it was best to make expectations of them known clearly and forcefully, as they would of you. The Cree were different. They were subtler; they avoided eye contact, which they considered rude. When John had been a Fire Marshall and gave fire prevention talks to mixed groups of Crees and Chipewyans, each scored equally on the evaluation tests, but the Cree drove him crazy because he thought until he saw the test results that they had been ignoring him!

Plenty of Federal and Provincial money had been spent in La Loche, but the people were poor and the streets were littered and unkempt. Houses were painted in East Coast colors in a small number of highly stylized ways. I asked several times why a particular color had been chosen, and got the same answer, "that color paint lasts longer."

Thursday we finally left heading south down the lake, looking for the entrance to the La Loche River. We missed the tiny opening in a huge reed bed and had to backtrack. The river flowed briskly through reeds and sandy shallows amidst a great variety of birds and water mammals. That night we chanced into a lovely campsite. Beve noticed a small opening in the reed bank where a short trail led up into a circular clearing and on through a huge open stand of white spruce. There were smoking-drying racks, and some casual fireplaces. Shortly after midnight I left the tent, and a Great Horned Owl took flight from a branch above my head and silently flopped away.

All next morning we herded diving ducks. Parents fluttered ahead of us doing their broken wing routine, and a dozen or so ducklings swam frantically until we got too close, then dove. Some would surface again just beside the canoe, only to panic dive again. Twice we came across teenagers nearly able to fly, who strove desperately to get air-born, running on the water and thrashing their wings. Beve had to duck to avoid one frantic quacker. Midmorning we arrived at a low abandoned bridge just as a muskrat swam past our bow. The bridge was only a meter high and four meters wide but we had to lift over it carefully because most of the poles were missing or rotting. They had been nailed in place and the projecting nail heads could easily have torn Es'toy Perdido's hull.

The river flowed into a huge swamp, meandering from side to side across its ample valley. Current was firm and even. Landing was difficult except where the river touched the sides of its valley, where there were good campsites. We stopped for the night at one about half way through the marsh. Someone had brought the old ten-by-two meter Hudson Bay Company sign from La Loche to our campsite, where it lay in two pieces on the ground. Two years before the Hudson's Bay Company had divested itself of its northern stores, and the famous signs had come down across the north. How this one got here was anybody's guess. There were also fish sticks, meter long sticks of green wood, axe cut, flat at one end and pointed at the other, some carved with designs. The broad flattened end of the stick is inserted up from the tail of the gutted fish. The sharp end is driven into the ground to suspend the fish over the fire in the smoke. Sometimes the fish is split along the backbone and spread with willow twigs before being put on the fish stick..

We were beat. Beve slept, but I was too nauseous and drained, and also angry with myself. Somehow when I had packed the tent that morning I had left the tent pegs behind. I would have to cut pegs in future. A Chipewyan family arrived, and father came up with two children to visit. Father was strong, fit, and curious, looking for moose. They had a skiff and a canoe, to transport eight children ranging in age from five to fifteen. Only two were his. We talked about skiffs. Archie Herman had already given me the conservative view. Skiffs were made between sunrise and sunset from available materials, including some axe-cut pieces, some sheets of plywood, and some improvised fittings and bang strips. Our visitor had his skiff built by his cousin in three days. He commented "The older people build in a day, but the boat is better if it is built slowly. If I made my own boat I would need a week or more. My boat cost $120.00, and should last about five years." He queried "How many children have you?" "How old is your wife?" "Seen any moose sign"? After we had answered all each other's questions, he left, deftly and politely.

The young teenagers with him could not paddle for beans. They lifted their paddles high in the air, using far too much energy, zigzagging from bank to bank. I felt cheated; I still had the silly expectation that natives ought to be good paddlers. On the other hand, we were slowly coming to accept that we were.

Saturday the temperature declined steadily from the previous day's twenty-seven degrees Celsius. The breeze was cool and strong, bursting the cattails and tugging at the autumn leaves. Birds and animals seemed to be moving more quickly and purposefully. Even the river flowed with more energy as the meanders began to straight out. By 11:00 a.m. the temperature had dropped to thirteen degrees Celsius. The bank alders and willows were thicker, and the river was flowing deep, straight, and narrows. Then it began to drop and twist among sharp rocks, shallow and fast. For two hours we ran rapids, which needed concentration, but our hull remained undamaged. These rapids had been airily dismissed by the guide, but they were tricky. Some were fast, the correct channel was by no means always obvious, and sharp, hard-edged boulders throttled everywhere the river. By 2:00 p.m. we had reached the Kimoir River confluence.

We quit at Lawrence Paul Sylvestre's cabin, about five hundred meters below the Kimoir confluence. We knew his name because it was on a Confirmation - First Communion card nailed on the wall beside a battered postcard of a lurid Mary and baby Jesus. The cabin was simple but sound. A fire was laid ready in the iron stove, and there was cut wood. There was a little tinned food, a table, a chair, two built-in bunks, a shovel, and an axe. The radio antenna was a ten-meter copper wire in the trees leading down into the cabin by the table. There were no books, not even the usual pornographic magazines. The whole was stark, reminding me of bare rooms in a Barbados lunatic asylum I had visited in twenty-five years before. The only relief from the severely practical was the religious cards nailed to the wall.

Sunday we seemed to have rediscovered the Sargasso Sea. From mid-morning we floundered through thick long weeds. They all pointed downstream, so there must have been some current with us, but they clung to the paddle and slowed Es'toy Perdido's progress to a crawl. The river was too deep to wade, and the shore was too cluttered to line. Poling was possible - we tried - but the bottom was rocky and uneven. So we paddled, for about four kilometers, using long careful strokes. Lots of insects were on the weeds, and Lesser Yellowlegs rushed about collecting them. Struggling around one corner we saw a huge white mass several hundred meters ahead of us that looked as big as a motorboat, but which turned out to be the largest White Pelican we had ever seen. If he had landed on the canoe, he might have sunk us!

Lunch was three kilometers short of Peter Pond Lake. The Saskatchewan guide assumed without discussion that canoeists would paddle the lake's east shore. Only an idiot would bang straight down the center of Peter Pond, which is enormous and subject to terrible sudden storms. The distance down the west shore was about the same as the east, and if the wind was from the west, which it most often was, the west shore would be more sheltered. John McBain believed that the voyageurs used the west shore, and that their night stops originated communities like Dillon and Michel. We decided to do try the west.

At the river outlet we met Mark Robbins, a solo canoeist named who had just banged straight up the center of Peter Pond Lake. He was going from New York City to Alakanuk Alaska in one season, using a racing sculling rig with sliding seat in an open Canadian canoe. Forceful and determined, he was moving at about fifty-five kilometers a day, which even with his speed rig left him with little time to enjoy the sights. He was right on schedule. He might have been towing his canoe like a toboggan when he finally got to the Bering sea in mid-October, though, as freeze-up was due October 6th. He carried only thirty kilos of gear. With the gear, himself, and his canoe and sculling rig, his gross weight would have been about a hundred and sixty kilos. By contrast Beve and I, with Es'toy Perdido and our hundred and twenty kilos of gear, weighed about four hundred and fifty kilos. Mark was strongly motivated; barring accident or early freeze-up, we believed that he would get to the Bering Sea. But meanwhile he did not seem to care about where he was. He was going so fast that he had no time to enjoy what he was doing. Beve and I could have quit anytime, and our voyage would have been a roaring success. Mark would think himself a failure if the last river froze a week early, leaving him a few kilometers short of his goal. He had us sign his "witness book"; he did not understand that the only persons who cared whether or not he made his goal were he and those few who cared about him.

Mark had said that he had been moving so fast that the events of his journey had become blurred. We were in danger of going too leisurely, and he was a needed spur. In Fort McMurray we had been seven days ahead of schedule; now we were eight days behind. Parting from Mark we pushed out into Peter Pond Lake into a strong west-south-west wind. The west shore was not possible, and the east shore little better. Whichever side we chose, if the wind increased we would have been blown onto off-shore shallows and pounded to pieces in the surf, so we turned back to camp, to prepare for an early start the next day.

Monday we rose at 5:00 a.m. but the wind was up before us, blowing firmly from the southwest. We chose the west shore, partly in the hope of eventual shelter from the wind, and partly from fear of those eastern shallows. By 9:00 a.m. we were exhausted and had moved forward only five kilometers. We tried turning into shore where the wind was less but we kept dropping hard onto sandbars. By noon the wind had died and so had we; we landed and collapsed on a sandy beach by a stream outlet. For some reason an elaborate pole bridge had been built across the stream. On the far side a brightly painted blue table and two stump chairs had been placed as if waiting for some pair of cribbage players.

In the evening we quit at what we thought was Willow Point. Actually we were between Michel Village and Dillon, on the reserve far short of the point, but we did not find that out until the next day. Our tent was tucked into a lovely cove back of a sand beach. Pelicans, Gulls, and Loons were interacting. The Pelicans sometimes seemed to be casually belligerent. Frequently Pelicans came in to land right on a Gull or a Loon. In every case the smaller bird effortlessly avoided being sat on at the last second. Three times that day a Gull high in the sky made a single pass at a Pelican causing it to swerve violently. Neither bird seemed very agitated by these encounters. Half a dozen times we had seen a Gull and a Pelican close together on the water and looking quite companionable. One such pair was just off shore as we ate dinner, and we threw them the remains. I was not surprised to see the Gull go after the Kraft dinner - Gulls will eat anything - but I was surprised to see the Pelican come in for his share.

Tuesday half way through the morning we paddled up to a prosperous looking town that ought not to have been there. The town was Dillon; later we had lunch at Willow Point where we thought we had spent the previous night. After lunch, and close to shore, Beve spotted a simple white cross with two names and a date, marking where Roland Toulojour and Edward Montgrand had drowned on May 23rd 1970.

Old Fort Point was our night stop. We had hoped to be much further on, but we got delayed watching waterfowl. The variety was remarkable; there were swarms of Cormorants, Gulls, and Pelicans, with Black, Forster and Common Terns, Herring Gulls, and some small dark diving ducks.

Wednesday the water was flatly calm, despite a gentle northwest breeze. Early on we had two visits from birds. The first was a group of eight Loons drifting by facing each other in a perfect five-meter circle. They made no noise, but were obviously communicating, concentrating fiercely as they twitched their heads about and ruffled their feathers. Shortly after two Lesser Yellowlegs walked up the shore by the canoe to gather food from under our feet.

Much later we ate lunch tucked into in the reeds, after a hellish pull. The breeze had followed us down the bay from Fleury Point, so we had headed straight for the Kisis Channel connecting Peter Pond Lake and Buffalo Narrows. The further exposed we got the stronger and more northerly the wind got, until we feared being blown south out into the bottom end of the lake. We turned north into the wind, and pulled for the low marshy shore. With no distinguishing landmarks on the north shore I tried to use a huge flock of birds on the water as an aiming point, but we seemed to be headed more and more to the east. The flock was perhaps four hundred Cormorants and a hundred Pelicans in a tight long mass. Gradually I realized that the whole mass of birds was moving slowly from west to east. Birds at the extreme west end were taking off to fly down to the east end. They were fishing on the surface; whatever they were feeding on must have been moving downwind east, the flock following. Eventually we did get to the turn into the Kisis Channel, where the bird life continued overwhelming; Western Grebes, Great Blue Herons, three varieties of Terns, two of Gulls, three of diving Ducks, Cormorants, Pelicans, Blackbirds, Lesser Yellowlegs, and Ravens swarmed in the channel mouth.

Another tough hour's pull into a north wind got us to Buffalo Narrows, which made twenty-eight kilometers that day. Considering our late start, and our problems with the wind, that was acceptable. The manager of the Northern store told me that when the boys of St John's School Alberta passed through a year previously headed north and west, the wind was up and Peter Pond Lake had eight foot waves! They were already three days behind schedule, and wanted to move on, so every vehicle in town was rounded up to drive them on to La Loche. He was very proud of the way his town had pulled together. Beve went shopping and I went to look at the two Roman Catholic churches. The new church was locked, but looked practical and interesting. The old church was open, its interior partially wrecked, and scribbled graffiti all over the walls. No respect was shown for the old church when it was no longer used. It was treated as the old native skiffs were, unsentimentally abandoned when no longer useful.

The wind was still strong, and afterwards we let it blow us back up the channel to the outlet of Peter Pond Lake, instead of trying to cross the bottom of Churchill Lake to the MacBeth Channel in the heavy crosswind. The campsite was pleasant, a long sandy beach backed by level ground and poplar trees. A mouse had died in our monster pack. Mice frequently move into canoe food packs. Each evening when the pack is dumped, the mouse runs and hides, then at night creeps back to scrounge and shelter. Our mouse had been crushed. We had not opened that pack since Sylvestre's cabin, and there was a smell.

Thursday the wind was as strong and from the same direction. We had a tough hour just getting back to Buffalo Narrows. Then we worked our way north well up Churchill Lake along the south shore of McKay Island in order to get the wind behind us, and turned to run down with that strong wind, surfing on good sized rollers towards the Macbeth Channel. In open water the wind shifted to the north and we began taking waves over the back and left side. Es'toy Perdido got quite squirrelly. Canoeing out into large bodies of water with a wind behind is always tricky. Wind and wave will only get worse, to the point that turning back may become impossible. But we had shilly-shallied about too long in Buffalo Narrows, and should have made up our minds sooner. We crossed the lake successfully, landing for the night on a sand beach immediately south of the entrance to the Macbeth Channel.

Friday morning brought a convention of fuzzy caterpillars, about three centimeters long, black with absurd long white whiskers at both ends, and bright orange in the middle. The Macbeth Channel was wide and open, the sun was bright, the air cool, and a gentle breeze followed us all day. Once we were slowly overhauled by what seemed to be a huge square-hulled sailboat, or perhaps a cabin on a raft with a huge sail. It closed quickly and noiselessly to about three kilometers, but we rounded a bend and never saw it again.

We quit where the Macbeth channel became the Aubichon Arm of Lac Ilè-à-La-Crosse, at a well-used campsite. There was a large sign which on the west side said: Ilè-à-La-Crosse Lake and on the east: Deep River. We went swimming, and then tried to do laundry, but about twenty leeches seemed to find either the soap or our dirty clothes irresistible. None of them found us.

The Aubichon arm was much broader than the Macbeth Channel, and people had used it much more heavily. There were lots of cabins and trails down to the water. By 11:30 a.m. we passed a microwave tower not marked on our topographical map, but which we assumed would be close to Ilè-à-La-Crosse. We kept expecting to round one last point before the turn south into the town. We could simply have turned north up Lac Ilè-à-La-Crosse, which would have saved a few hours, but we had left our fishing rod and line behind at a campsite on Peter Pond Lake and wanted to replace them. There had been nothing available in Buffalo Narrows; natives fish with nets or hand lines. By 2:00 p.m. we were very hot and steamy, stopped for lunch. We were certain that we were on the last point, way past the microwave tower, but there was no way to tell for sure. In fact there were over twenty more points to round before we finally got to Ilè-à-La-Crosse, at 5:10 p.m. We had expected the Northern Store to close at 5:30 or 6:00, but it had closed at 5:00 p.m.! The town was deserted. Everyone was at a wedding in the church except for three small children collecting bottles and cans for the deposit. The wedding ended and the congregation rushed out, loaded into cars and pick-ups, drove a dozen times around the church square, then past every building in town, and finally up the highway towards Buffalo Narrows.

We left and jumped the three kilometers across to Big Island, a significant place in our history. Two years before we had camped on Big Island to begin an eight-hundred-and-fifty kilometer journey to Cumberland House. Now our cross-Canada voyage was taking us along this same glorious path. On our previous visit, a sudden fierce squall had caught us as we crossed to Big Island. We had left the town in a serene evening calm, but the wind had risen with appalling quickness and ferocity. Black cloud and a series of rapidly increasing gusts had given us brief warning and led us to pull hard for the island. The wind had been from the east, doing its best to blow us straight up into the open water of the Aubichon Arm. A mixture of rain and small hail had lashed our faces. We had just been strong enough to keep the canoe pointed into the wind and not losing ground. Twenty minutes later the squall had blown itself out as quickly as it had come, leaving us thankful but trembling.

Two years before our island camp had been disturbed by a raucous Saturday night celebration in the town opposite, then by nearby shotgun blasts which had wakened us at dawn. This time we camped behind the beach in among the poplars on the back side of the island, away from Saturday night revelry. Garbage of the twentieth century affluent life style was scattered everywhere, including dirty pampers, used feminine hygiene products, empty Styrofoam coffee cups and fast food packaging.

Water was a problem. The whole lake surface was a thick green scum coated liberally with feathers and bird droppings. Mark Robbins had told us that he had drunk Ilè-à-La-Crosse water after he had strained it through cloth, without boiling or purifying it. He had been using a high-tech water-purifying device that worked very slowly and jammed if the water had not first been strained. Frustrated, he had given up on the device in Ilè à La Crosse Lake. A year later we learned that Mark had ended his voyage in Great Slave Lake, where he had been hospitalized with Beaver Fever. We strained our water and then boiled it for twenty minutes, but it still tasted foul.

Sunday we rose about 7:00 a.m. wakened by rifle shots, but took two hours to get on the water in a placid, dead flat calm and thirty-five degrees Celsius. Faint ripples testified to some far off or long since passed motorboat. A recently shot deer lay on the sand spit off the end of Big Island.

The heat got fiercer and our progress was slow. We stopped for lunch at a locked cabin, found some shade, and stayed for two hours. All we could see of the cabin's interior was a desk and a small collection of books. Someone had scrawled on the door in pencil "Please leave the cabin as you found it. Don't burn it down. No scrooning." Scrooning is slang for extended drug-alcohol sessions.

We quit at the tip of a sandy spit about a third of the way up Ilè-à-La-Crosse Lake, north of Black Bay. This was off a deep bay enclosing a stream where we hoped to get clean water. Pike heads littered the sand and flies swarmed. A pair of Bald Eagles glared at us from high in the trees. Here two years before we had met Henry, a talkative Dené fisherman who told us many fabulous things. He warned us against camping in Black Bay because Black Bears would attack us. He had earned $70,000.00 profit in two years from fishing and from his two lakes of wild rice. He intended to get a rifle with an infrared sight like one some American hunter he had once guided had. The American was much admired because he sipped straight over-proof rum. Henry gave us a Pickerel and a Sager for lunch, explaining how the old women smoked Sagers whole for winter after pulling out the guts through the gills and replacing them with a small piece of smoked bacon.

We got to bed early intending to rise and pull hard. We had experienced sudden violent winds twice before on this lake, once on the passage from Islè-a-la-Crosse to Big Island, and once up lake when the wind had veered from a south gale to a north gale in less than twenty minutes. We launched into a flat calm by 7:00 a.m., encouraged by a faint following breeze. A huge hatch of pesky but harmless fish-flies covered us, the canoe, and the surrounding water surface.

We moved well during the first two hours, to Halfway Point at the entrance to Abitau Bay. Our attempts to find water up the bay just beyond our night's stop had been a failure. The bay had been choked with wild rice and the stream was unapproachable. We did not want to damage the rice or waste more time, so we were leaving, when a woman came out on a dock by some cabins and called us. She and her husband were there to protect the rice, to fish, and to holiday. She had relatives in Pinehouse Bay some distance ahead, and also in The Pas, so she was especially interested in our voyage. Her home was Ilè-à-La-Crosse, where there were three food stores, which competed with each other and the Northern store. The three smaller stores were much the less expensive. She thought the Northern stores were greedy, and that competition was keeping prices down, but it could be that the elaborate credit system of the Northern stores accounts both for their past success and for their present high prices. She told us that the commercial fisheries had been closed on Ilè-à-La-Crosse lake to give the Pickerel stocks time to recover, which was why we had not seen Henry and his fellows, and why the lake seemed so deserted.

Es'toy Perdido moved slowly over dead flat water between Abitau Bay and Alfred Bay among some large islands. Beve stripped off to get the maximum benefit from those priceless ultra-violet rays, a practice not recommended by the Canadian Cancer Society. We had read their advertising, but on a risk-benefit basis, Beve chose to tan, perhaps to motivate the sternsman.

We stopped for an extended lunch break on a peninsula four kilometers north of Alfred Bay, at a large well-used site. There was garbage everywhere, including fast food packaging, beer cans, and empty boxes for twenty-two rifle bullets. There was also a meter-high pile of rabbit fur covered with flies, and a large smoking-drying rack.

By 8:00 p.m. we had gotten off Lac Ilè à La Crosse and were camped above the Shagwenau rapids, pooped. The site was marshy and buggy, but the water was clearer and there was lots of wood. Tuesday morning the air was fifteen degrees Celsius, breezy and cool, and the water was bright and sparkling. A huge thunderstorm had rolled over us after we turned in, bringing lots of noise and strong winds from the west, but little rain and no damage. We were close to Patuanuk where the Northern Store would not open until at least 10:00 a.m., so we were in no hurry to get going.

In Patuanak Beve did the shopping and I watched the canoe as a perky weasel darted about my ankles watching me. We loaded and left, then out in the lake realized that the checkbook was still on the counter at the manager's office. Credit cards had been useless from La Loche to Pelican Narrows, but our cheques had always been honored with only token identification. We returned and I went up to get the checkbook. Dwight the manager was interesting and helpful. An east coaster from the Labrador north shore, his last store had been somewhere in the middle of Hudson's Bay. He had married a Toronto girl, and they had a young daughter. As a souvenir to go with some heavy hand fishing line we bought (he had no rods) he gave us a huge Len Thompson #4 spoon, which had been there for years and which no one wanted. It would catch pike, but they will hit anything, and the locals netted their fish. Any pike that would hit that lure had no business in our canoe!

Beve chatted with a group of young boys; one's dad had run out of gas ascending the Drum Rapids and the boat had overturned. No one was hurt and almost everything was recovered, though everyone, including the son, was still laughing over it.

The wind was up by the time we left to cross Lake Shaganau. The waves were strong and high, the lake outlet was difficult to spot. I set a course too far to the east, only realizing my error as we were in danger of being blown by the powerful northwest wind onto the rocks of the easterly long peninsula. Then I compounded my error by again mistaking the outlet, this time catching the error so late that there seemed no chance of avoiding the rocks. We pulled like maniacs, moving along the shore inch by inch towards shelter, but being driven inexorably closer to the rocks. Once among them, Es'toy Perdido's hull would have been smashed before he could have been lightened. I took a sight off the tip of the peninsula towards which we strove, and watched the background beyond slowly moving in relation to us. Individual trees took forever to creep past. Arbitrarily I decided that if and when Patuanak's microwave tower lined up with the end of the peninsula, we would have won. We got there when we were only ten meters from the waiting rocks, after two hours of desperate pulling.

Night stop was at a camp-in church just above the Drum rapids, an appropriate place to give thanks. The huge camping area was dominated by an eight-meter high black iron cross set on the bank above the landing. An altar stood below the cross facing into the field. Many coats of white paint testified to its use over many years. Two years before the furnishings had included a pulpit, a credence table, and a shelter over the altar, but those were gone. The outdoor church was mostly used for the annual Patuanak pilgrimage, where Dené, Cree, and Métis gathered for a Christian celebration. There were many such pilgrimages in the north, but that one was the Feast for Fr. Louis Moraud, a priest Oblate of Mary Immaculate who served this area between 1916 and 1965. He was one of those servants of God whose will and self-confidence were as firm as his rock-like faith. Single-minded, ascetic, and totally consumed by his mission, he made many enemies by his suppression of native religion and practices he believed sinful. Nevertheless his commitment to his people was total, and soon after his death he was venerated as a saint.

We became uneasy about a cloud of dense black smoke off to the northwest of our camp. Six skiffs went by, obviously headed for the fire, but probably to see it and not to fight it, judging from the number of children along. The skiffs turned north up the Mudjatic river, which entered the Churchill below the Drum and Leaf Rapids. The whole horizon darkened, and the smell of smoke grew stronger. We had first noticed the fire at 3:00 p.m.; by 4:00 p.m. there were thick clouds, and later a resinous murk enveloped us.

The night was pleasant enough, but Wednesday morning was dark and cool, ten degrees Celsius, breezy and cloudy. The smoke had gone, but the strong smell remained.  The Drum Rapids just below our night camp began a series of the best-known (but little paddled) rapids in Canada. The Drum, Leaf, and Deer are ferocious and fast, but technically easy. Dipper, which follows, is unrunnable. They were unlike the Athabasca rapids because they were in a smaller river, in clear water, and were much shorter. For us, they were less formidable because we knew them. Drum Rapid had three parts. The first was fast, descending straight down into a right hook at the bottom, where there are some mid-channel rocks. The second part began some four hundred meters below the first, and was a mixture of fast water, rapids, and rocks. The third similar section followed four hundred meters on. 

The first part of the Drum was fast, with heavy standing waves; exciting, but technically undemanding. Part two was good adrenaline-pumping fun. Part three was more tricky; we started left of center, then moved right to avoid a big hole as we braced in some huge standing waves, then moved left to avoid another huge hole. The standing waves were so high that we found it difficult to force our eyes up towards the final hole; it was tempting to stay with the more stable high brace instead of trying to angle and backferry. The knot in the elastic, which kept the cockpit part of my spray skirt tight under my arms, came undone, and one end vanished into the hem. If the elastic were not taut every wave that came over the gunwales would eventually drain into my cockpit. A temporary solution was to grip the front of the nylon with my teeth; I could no longer bellow suggestions at Beve, but that seemed to have no significant effect on our progress.

By noon we were above the Deer rapids, surrounded by lots of spray painted graffiti on the vertical rock surfaces. These were well-used camping areas because the next good ones were some distance away. People at Patuanak said that only half a dozen canoes a year passed there; these campsites were not for them.

Dipper Rapids were wild; two kilometers of steeply descending continuous foam and rock ledges. Natives and whites consider them unrunnable at any water level. Fr. Moraud once arrived at the top of the Dipper rapids with a native helper and a load of construction supplies. The native leapt out and went up the trail to get the dolly used to portage over the rails around the rapid. He expected Fr. Moraud to get out and hold the skiff, but the priest was engrossed in his prayer book. The skiff drifted away from shore and down into the rapid backwards. Miraculously, Fr. Moraud and the whole load survived the passage, greatly improving his prestige with his parishioners.

Shortly after the portage we entered Dipper Lake and headed east to cross it under graying skies and with a firm wind behind us to Fulbish Bay five kilometers away. We hit the entrance perfectly (which was just as well in those sullen meter-high waves) and began looking for a camping site. A large granite outcrop looked possible. A steep trail ascended thirty meters to erupt into a Wagnerian opera set. The stage was a circular flat knob of granite, about thirty meters across, dotted with gnarled and twisted trees. The ground fell steeply away on all sides into dank mist. The fragments and feathers of a large hacked-to-pieces hawk were scattered about a Cree fireplace along with a few cleanly knifed moose bones. A rabbit dangled from a cord noose in a sprung stick trap at the edge of the stage. All was soaking and dark.

Thursday we were up early and away in perfect paddling weather, cloudy and cool. By 2:00 p.m. we were approaching the Crooked Rapids, where the river hair-pinned, the rapid on the curve. There was supposed to be an eleven hundred meter portage cutting off the curve and rapid, but we did not find it. Probably the only portages open in the area were those used as winter roads for snowmobiles. An excellent winter road further south connected Primeau and Knee Lakes and avoided both Crooked and Knee Rapids. In summer natives ran up and down all the rapids except those (like Dipper) which have rail portages. Moose, who first made the portages thousands of years ago, no longer go where they can be easily found, so the portage was probably abandoned. The Crooked Rapids could have been lined on the inside, but we ran them down the center. There were three parts. The first, on a curve to the east, was fast and full of barely submerged rocks. The second, left past an island, was extremely fast and featured a truly awesome hole. The last, just past the south turn, was shallow and fast. Masses of rocks and the many ledges required most careful maneuvering. The Crooked Rapids were shown on the 1:50,000 topographical map as in two parts only, and the Saskatchewan Guide booklet also described two parts. However the two parts on the map were our parts two and three, and the Guide's two parts were our one and two. The 1:250,000 topographic map agreed with us.

Knee Rapids, not far beyond, were tricky. They started immediately after the turn to the east, (much sooner than shown on the maps), and were studded with rocks. They were difficult to survey, but certainly should be, because they grew increasingly difficult. We started on the right and moved through them slowly towards the left, setting to avoid the rocks. The map showed several kilometers between the two parts of Knee Rapids, so after part one we decided to eat lunch as we drifted, which was a mistake. Honey, peanut butter, smoked pike and biscuit got jumbled together under the spray cover as we drifted smartly around a corner and into part two, which featured lots of submerged and partly submerged boulders. The night stop was just beyond, on Knee Lake, at the border of the Knee Lake Indian Reserve. We landed pleased at having run all the rapids since Ilè-à-La-Crosse except unrunnable Dipper in fine style.

Three Cree in a motorboat arrived after breakfast Friday. Danny Wolverine leapt out to hold the bow. The leader was Matthew Smores, who was building a cabin around the point in Knee Lake. Matthew was quite chatty. Portaging only at Dipper, he frequently ran his motorboat to and from Patuanak. He guided hunters and fishermen, and intended his new cabin to become the base of a new outfitting business. He understood that to be successful he had to make it on the outdoor sports show circuit in the United States, and he had spent a lot of time doing that.

Matthew told us the legend of an American named Alexander who in 1927 lost a trunk of gold in a nearby rapid, which had been searched for ever since. Many thought it at the bottom of the Drum rapids. Two years ago two of Matthew's fishermen were ascending the Drum when the motor ran out of gas, and the boat struck on a rock and overturned. The men survived, but much gear was lost. Matthew recovered the motor while keeping a careful eye out for the gold. Probably the unfortunate fisherman was the father of the young boy Beve had talked to in Patuanak.

Mid-afternoon we arrived at a small island and met two bald eagle youngsters on the ground. They were fully feathered, the size of young turkeys, and obviously thought we were mummy because they gaped at us for food. We had left quickly because we did not want to meet mummy, so excited by the encounter that Beve left her Tilley hat behind.

We camped about 5:30 p.m. just past Elak Dase, a small community with one of Fr. Moraud's churches. People no longer lived there all year, but natives from Patuanak come for the summer. We camped just past the town on the west side of the channel leading into the Haultain Marshes. A young native family came to visit: father, mother, ten-year-old daughter and three year-old son. There was a thirteen-year-old son, but when the mother had suggested he get in the boat he had refused. "Will he ever be upset!" explained mother, "He just wouldn't believe that there were white people camped here!" Father was well informed on world affairs and brought us up-to-date with much we did not want to know, all of which began by him striking an attitude and announcing "World in terrible shape!" Iran had invaded Kuwait, amidst other imbecilities including hostage taking and poison gas. We chatted for a while, mostly questioning about the other's life style. They were curious how a priest could have a wife, and about our tent. We were too polite to ask how Mother kept her hair so beautifully and stylishly cut. When the mosquitoes got bad, they left and we turned in.

We had decided to meet the Edmonton Diocese Voyageurs in Otter Rapids if we could. I had formed them and led their first voyage the previous year on Lake Kinbasket in British Columbia, and Beve and I knew all but two of the current year's group. Our itinerary had us at Otter rapids on the 20th, and they were to launch from there on the 19th, so if we pushed we could join them.

Saturday morning we moved through heavy mist in four degrees Celsius. Autumn was coming; most leaves had changed color. The Haultain Marshes were full of quiet birds, especially Buffleheads and other small diving ducks, with Bald Eagles, Pelicans, and Osprey.

The outlet from Dreger Lake was tricky to find. We had read descriptions of how the rapids there could be terrifying, but there was only a little fast water. Our lovely but well-used campsite was just short of Sandy Lake. Es'toy Perdido and much of our gear was by the water, but we were higher and back in amongst the trees on soft fragrant ground. Spaghetti for dinner, with onions fried in olive oil, and Earl Grey tea. On the other side of the river a Coyote called. I answered, and he liked that. We serenaded each other until we both got bored. The night was quiet, but about 7:00 a.m. some small animals began charging frantically around the tent making an awful row, and got us up. Probably they were squirrels.

Though the canoe guide and the topographic map knew nothing of it, there was major road access between Sandy Lake and McDonald Bay at Snake Rapids. Snake were extremely steep and fast, especially at the top. We ran the first part, lined a nasty few meters near the start of the portage, and ran the rest. The standing waves made us grateful for the spray cover.

We quit at 5:00 p.m. at the top of McDonald Bay, at the entrance to Pinehouse Lake. The weather was so beautiful that we stopped early to swim and enjoy, getting an early night for a strong push the next day. Camp was behind a sand beach, with lots of wood, clear water, and great swimming. About 8:00 p.m. two native boats went by at top speed, which was unusual. Half an hour later the sky began to darken. Black clouds swelled over us from the west, then heavy rain fell. At times the whole sky lit up with lightning. Crashes and booms deafened us and went on for hours.

Next morning the wind still blew hard and waves pounded straight on shore. After a successful though scrambly launch, we worked around the end of the peninsula and into the lee of the west shore of Pinehouse Lake, out of the worst of wind and wave. Our first stop, about 9:00 a.m., was at a point half way to Cowpack Island, which we had to fight hard for. By the time we got to the island we were still moving, but desperately slowly. When canoeists pull hard against a whistling wind, conversation may be impossible and minds may behave oddly. At least, my mind often does. I pondered how Cowpack Island could have gotten its name. "Packs of Cows? Cows, of course, are normally meek and placid creatures, herding together in peaceful tranquillity. But when they get horny, and come together in packs, then its a whole udder story ..."

Two more storms rolled over us before we stopped for lunch at Belanger. During lunch the sky began to clear. Once many people had lived there, but apart from ruins all that remained were two cabins, one still usable. The stove was good. There were many notes scrawled on the walls inside, many written by snowmobilers forced to spend the night because of bad weather or mechanical failure. Other things were less easy to understand; dumped on the ground outside was a large roasting pan and about thirty used meter-square pieces of plywood, in quite good condition.

Sandfly (or Needle) Lake opens out from a long rocky channel into a huge island-filled lake. Historically, navigation here has been oddly difficult. Two years before we had wandered off course to the south, finally finding the outlet rapids by paddling to their sound, but this trip we hit the portage perfectly. A man was fishing off the end of a granite peninsula just beside the portage, and we went over to chat. He was Markus Frank, from Germany, who with Germot Kettler his partner was descending the Churchill River by rubber trek-boat. He invited us share his campsite and his fish. Shortly afterwards Germot arrived with a twenty-two rifle and a plucked and cleaned bird. These young men were having a wonderful time. They could not believe how isolated the Churchill was. In ten days they had talked to only one person, a native whose opening words to them had been "World in terrible shape!" I christened them The Teutonic Horde because of their overwhelming energy and enthusiasm. They had managed to get from Germany to Winnipeg by air and from Winnipeg to Ilè-à-La-Crosse by bus with their inflated raft, their rifle, and a complete outfit of camping gear. When two mink chased each other over our shoes, the Horde were so anxious not to look like neophytes that they actually succeeded in looking bored!

Tuesday morning we left the Horde and headed off across the portage around the rapids at the outlet of Sandfly Lake. It was the first of many pole skids. Sometimes these were no more than logs laid at right angles to the portage over which a boat could be dragged. More often they were poles nailed onto a strong double frame, across which boats were skidded.

We ran Needle rapids, ineptly, about 1:00 p.m. The rapid was an "S" bend. I flexed my wrist at the first turn, my watch strap broke, and the watch went swimming. I snatched at it and missed, losing concentration so that I reacted far too slowly to Beve's frantic draw. She was trying to avoid a large hole below a sliding drop, neither of which ought to have been there. I had assumed that the rapid would be as it had been two years before in much higher water. We skidded sideways across the sliding drop, just missing the bottom hole. If we had gotten into that hole sideways, we almost certainly would have found out just how difficult getting out from under the spray cover would be with Es'toy Perdido upside down. Subdued, we went on to Needle Portage where we photographed some native cooking arrangements. Scattered about were a number of racquet-like branches with heads of woven green twigs, used for smoke drying, and several smoke-drying racks. Chipewyan smoke-drying racks had been about two meters long, a meter-and-a-half high and a half-meter deep. These Cree ones were set in a pyramid of poles six or seven meters high, enclosing a two-meter square meat shelf. There was an additional shelf of flat rocks on poles interposed between the meat rack and the fire.

About 4:00 p.m. we ran Silent Rapids, where the river flowed through an impressive notch in a granite ridge. The chute was easy and obvious, with gentle whirlpools at the bottom. The guide booklet suggested that somewhere close there was petroglyphs, but we did not find them.

Camp was just north of Hadley Island, on a granite spit at the entrance to Great Bear Island Lake. There was plenty of wood, and we made a huge fire; after supper Beve made biscuits on the coals. She was depressed, and baking was her therapy. The evening was clear and cool. Autumn was upon us. The birches had gone yellow, and birds were moving purposefully about.

We were tired, and so rose late Wednesday, to launch leisurely into a stiff east wind. Lunch was at the gentle unnamed rapid in the middle of Great Bear Island Lake. This lake was so island-choked there were actually three sets of rapids in the middle. Soon after lunch the Teutonic Horde caught up to us. Their rubber trekking boat, though long and narrow and designed to go as fast as a rubber raft can, was slow compared to a canoe. We had not been pushing, but would have thought it impossible for them to catch us. They wanted a picture taken with their camera. After, Marcus said "Thank you, we have met no one else to take our picture. We will rest now." They headed for shore, and that was the last we saw of them.

Just before we landed that evening, Beve caught a huge pike on a hand line that escaped when she tried to heave it up onto the deck by the leader. Twenty meters on she got an even bigger one. I grasped it firmly under the gills and heaved it with both hands high but only half out of the water while Beve paddled us ashore from the bow. That pike made a magnificent dinner, leaving lots for smoking.

Thursday as I left the tent there was a great splash in the water beside us. Through the brush screen I could just make out a white pelican furtively making off. He had been about to land when he had seen me, tried to change his mind about landing, and crashed. We launched into an icy ten degrees Celsius north wind under an overcast sky, and were at Birch Falls portage for lunch. The rapids were not runnable on the south side of the dividing island, yet there were no skid poles on the portage, so either motor boats used the north side, or did not pass there. Tourists had been on the portage; empty cigarette packages replaced chewing tobacco tins, and diet coke tins replaced beer tins. Recreational paddlers canoe between Birch and Otter Rapids.

Supper ought to have been at Trout Portage but owing to incompetence on the part of the navigator was not. We had to retrace six kilometers after I got us too far out into Trout lake and embayed. Wasting time figuring out where we were and then portaging over a shallow shortcut which ought to have had ample water cost an extra three hours.

Two years ago here we had met a madman named Mike Wallace on his way upstream. He had started in Ottawa and his goal was the Yukon, but he had "portaged" Lakes Superior and Winnipeg. He paddled his fast cruiser canoe with a heavy fiberglass paddle wielded like a shovel; three this side, three that side. His lining was no more elegant than his paddling; he sank lining up the Crew Lake Rapids (the shorter but much more difficult route between Trout and Nipew Lakes) and had lost all his maps, fishing gear, and most of his food. He had asked us where the next store was, and would not believe it was ten days upstream. But he was having fun covering a lot of miles and meeting a lot of interesting people.

Thursday night flock after flock of honkers passed overhead. At dawn Friday the sky was almost clear, with only a trace of wispy high cloud towards the west. The temperature was five degrees Celsius. Paddling that day was wonderful but slow. We went over Trout Portage (two hundred meters), ran the two sets of rapids into Stack Lake, then those at its outlet, lifted over Rock Trout Portage (two hundred fifty meters), and ran the four sets of rapids into Nipew (Dead) Lake. Lunch followed, both for us and a mink who ran down his meal right before us, making a surprisingly loud paw-patter doing it. Camp was late after forty kilometers, two portages, seven sets of rapids, and lots of lingering to savor what we were passing through. Crossing Nipew (Dead) Lake was peaceful; we used the north Channel towards the Devil Rapids, stopping in the throat of the channel on a small island after 9:00 p.m. The tent was deep in among fragrant conifers on a flat thick bed of needles. Firewood and clean water were close and ample. The current was quite noticeable, even well out in the lake; the riffles glinted in the dying rays of the sun.

Saturday the sky was perfectly clear and the temperature eight degrees Celsius. Midmorning we had to choose between two ways to get to Devil Lake. One was through a kayak’s playground, with competition gates for slalom running, at the bottom of the first and steeper descent into Devil Lake. We chose the second and more gradual descent, through Great Devil and Little Devil Rapids. The first two hours of the descent were fast. The current was firm, and we were working hard to get to Otter Rapids by noon for the earliest expected time of arrival of the Diocese of Edmonton Voyageurs. Water levels were very low throughout. Two years before with high water we had run all the Devil Rapids without incident. We portaged Great Devil this time,- sheets of water sliding inches deep over rock shelving - and then ran everything else. Respect for Es'toy Perdido's bottom demanded a painstaking descent that seemed to take forever. When we finally got into Devil Lake the wind had shifted from a firm northeast wind to a southeast gale, making progress excruciatingly slow. It was 4:00 p.m. before we reached Otter Rapids.

We were still there before our Edmonton Voyageur friends. Beve hitched a ride to the store in Misinippi while I set up camp and thought about why meeting these young people were so important to us. We had not seen them for four months. Over half of them were friends, members of St. Peter's congregation in Edmonton, and mostly actors in a travelling church group Beve directed.. We needed our friends, and to share some of our joy. They finally arrived about 7:00 p.m., just after Beve returned. After a boisterous welcome they set up camp beside us.

Sunday Beve and I ran Otter Rapids for pictures. Kevin Flesher (Brent's brother) operated my camera. Unfortunately I had neglected to show him how to turn it on, so we had to carry the canoe six hundred meters back to the top and run the rapids a second time. Big standing waves and the Anglican church flag fluttering at Es'toy Perdido's stern ought to have made superb pictures, and would have, except I had also neglected to explain the zoom lens to Kevin. The canoe in the picture we saw moths later was tiny and lost in masses of boisterous water. Three pictures I took on the same occasion of some happy but technically inept paddlers turned out superbly, their canoe filling the frame.

The Edmonton Voyageurs were a zany and high-spirited bunch, ably led by Priscilla Haskin. It took until 11:00 a.m. to get everyone launched, normal enough on a first day. Once on the water they moved well. We ended that day with a Eucharist on the start of Stony Mountain Portage. Beve and I talked about our experiences and motivations for our long trip, and we sang the old songs and prayed the ancient prayers.

The pull on Monday was not easy. A strong headwind strung the six canoes out badly. Beve and I had to adjust our speed and tactics to others for the first time in two thousand kilometers. We also had to be careful of the feelings and responsibilities of the leaders; it would have been easy to lapse back into our previous year's roles, especially among so many of the same people.

A group of enthusiasts built a sweat lodge just at dark. When I got there the tarp was already in place and the lodge was full, so I sat on a rock talking with Donna, another late arrival, whom I had not met before. Suddenly the tarp flew high in the air and eight whooping loonies charged down through the darkness to the water to leap in. Unfortunately Beve leapt on a rock and sprained her ankle so badly that she had to be carried back to our tent deep in the woods.

 Early Tuesday morning we were off to Stanley Mission. Stanley was an Anglican town that provided two most telling illustrations of the lunacy of religion. In winter the population was either Anglican or practiced no religion. In summer it was overrun with small groups of evangelists, each of whom assured the townspeople that they were not there to proselytize, (heaven forbid), but only to introduce the native people to a fuller joy in Christ. The evangelists were not after money; there was little money in Stanley, and what there was, was not spent on religion. The other (and supreme) illustration of religious lunacy in Stanley Mission is Holy Trinity church. The Reverend Robert Hunt had in 1850 constructed in this remote wild corner of the British Empire a full-sized wooden replica of an English gothic parish church. His son, the Reverend Strather Hunt, described his father's work:

Why did Robert Hunt build this lovely but incongruous church? Did he imagine that worship in an English gothic church would lead through acceptance of all things English to an increased trust in God? Was he mad, an example of the English eccentric? Was he, like Mother Teresa, just trying to do something beautiful for God? Or was he merely desperately lonely, surrounding himself with associations that would ease his homesickness? Stanley Mission must indeed have been a lonely place for its first missionaries. A memorial plaque commemorates Annie Maria Trivett, the wife of one of Hunt's successors, who died in 1879 and was buried below the floor inside the church. The place of burial was not to honour her, as if this was Westminster Abbey. She was buried there at her own desperate dying entreaty, because she was terrified that if she were buried in the graveyard the half-starved Indian dogs would dig up her body for food.

Back in town Rachel got a lesson in cross-cultural values. She bought an ice cream cone at the Northern Store, and a native urchin pestered her for a taste. She pleaded, cajoled, and began leaping up on Rachel, snatching at the cone. Rachel did not know what to do; finally in disgust she simply handed the cone over. In Edmonton, if the child was not native, Rachel would probably have refused firmly, and possibly belted the urchin if she had persisted. But the urchin had grabbed the initiative and taken advantage of cross-cultural insecurity.

On to Stanley Portage, between Mountain and Drope Lakes, to the North Channel where the river divided around an island. Beve and I ran the south channel against the advice of a native, who, having warned us, sat down to watch us go swimming. We did touch, but came though easily. The portage on the North Channel was made of a number of heavy plastic rollers, three meters long and eight centimeter in diameter, set low in a solid downward-sloping wooden deck. The Edmonton Voyageurs slid their canoes over those nearly as easily as we had run the rapid.

We camped together towards the end of Drope Lake. The next morning Beve and I left early after an emotional good-bye. The Edmonton Voyageurs were to turn south out of Nistowiak Lake and on to Lac La Ronge. Beve and I went east through Nistowiak towards Drinking Lake. A fly-in fishing camp squatted across the eastern outlet of Nistowiak Lake. We landed on their dock and carried about a hundred meters down a boardwalk to below the falls. Beve still could not walk on her ankle, and my back was still barely working, so the portage took time. No one was there, and the windows and doors of the fishing camp were boarded up.  

Thunderstorms struck that night, and it was as well that our tent site on Drinking Lake was well drained. Thursday morning came cool and cloudy, with a whistling west wind. My back was improving, and Beve was hobbling much more actively.

We chose the eight-kilometer Inman Channel instead of Island Portage to get between Drinking Lake and Keg Lake. That may not have been the right choice; though it saved a portage and was more interesting, with those following winds we might have made much faster time banging straight out into Keg Lake. The low water level made the small rapid at the top of the Inman Channel much trickier than the canoe guide had suggested. The falls below was a delight; a steep tiny chute which we ran with ease and joy.

At Keg Falls the water rolled over a ledge a hundred meters wide to plunge eight meters. The portage had skid poles, but they were old, broken and rotten. Obviously there was little traffic; we saw no sign of people in Keg, Drinking, or (later) Trade Lakes. We camped at the start of the Grand Rapids Portage, after running part one. There was a pleasant campsite right at the start of the seven hundred meter portage around the lower and unrunnable section of the Grand Rapids. There were many downed trees across the trail, and the drop at the end was slippery and steep.

Trade Lake was fun, all the more so since the last time we had been there the wind had been dead foul and the rain cold and steady; then we had shivered under a flapping tarp for eight hours in the company of a small tame brown Rabbit. This time we came ten kilometers in an hour and a half, thoroughly enjoying ourselves in the hot sun, driven on by a following wind which pushed up meter-and-a-half steep rollers. We were too busy keeping straight to put any force on the paddle, but we surged along happily. We left the Churchill River at historic Frog Portage, a few kilometers past the end of Trade Lake.

BACK

Our route took us from the Churchill River over Frog Portage into the headwaters of the Sturgeon-weir River. Frog Portage (Athiquiisipichigan Ouinigam) was named by the expanding aggressive Cree of the last quarter of the eighteenth century who were attempting to dominate the Dené and prevent their trading with Europeans. They mocked Chipewyan/Dené fur preparation techniques by hanging a frog skin stretched on a tiny drying frame at the portage.

We got there Friday, August 24th. A boat dolly running on steel rails was rolling a motor-boat south over the portage and the workmen who had been repairing the wooden ties were leaving for home. After skidding Es'toy Perdido onto the dolly ramp we went to look at the cairn. The historical plaque was riddled by rifle bullets and shotgun pellets, as the plaque at the Methye Portage had been.

A Cree family with two men, a woman, and two children (nieces of one of the men) appeared from the south pushing their boat on the dolly. They had left Pelican Narrows at 3:00 p.m. and said they intended to spend the night in Sandy Bay. That must have been native humor, - it is not possible for a motorboat to travel to Frog Portage from Sandy Bay at that time of year, let alone in that short time. While we chatted a bush plane landed with a load of lumber for dock repair. The workmen who had left as we arrived were supposed to have waited to unload the lumber from the bush plane and take it to shore. The pilot would not have landed if he had known that they had left, but he had confused the boat on the dolly with that of the workmen. He eventually persuaded the newcomers to take the lumber to shore, where they dumped half of it in the water, loudly denouncing the laziness and stupidity of the workmen who had left early.

Next morning the temperature was minus two Celsius. We had stayed up late smoke-drying some pike, so we were slow getting moving. The missing workmen arrived about 8:30 a.m., explained at length why the mix-up the previous evening was not their fault, and then cheerfully setting to work to repair the rotten ties.

There was a large low log construction in front of the cairn which turned out to be a helicopter landing pad. A helicopter arrived, but the pilot landed twenty meters away from the pad on the grass. Not knowing what the log frame was for, we had built our fire too close to it, and the downdraft of the chopper might have scattered sparks and burning wood. Also our tarp was spread out to dry close by the pad; a helicopter pilot had been killed in a freak accident two days before when a similar tarp had been sucked up into the whirling blades.

The portage was usable despite the work in progress, and soon we were in the confined, contorted, shallow, lovely channel leading to Lindstrom Lake. Lindstrom led to Pixley Lake and lunch. Wood Lake, which was immense, followed; with hundreds of cabins, motorboats and commercial fishing nets. We spent the night on a bay inside a large island half way down Wood Lake. A campsite was difficult to find because every available space already had at least one cabin. Some of the settlements were big; groups of large buildings with sheds, fire pits, cut grass, and extensive docks. We finally crashed just around the corner from one such settlement where we were comfortable, though it was dark before we got set up.

Our breakfast Sunday morning was canned turkey, corn, smoked pike fillets and biscuit, replacing our usual oatmeal. We could easily have fetched Pelican Narrows Sunday, and we wanted to push, but there was no point. Our re-supply box was at the bus station and inaccessible until Monday and we had no money. Camp was therefore early, just below the first of four small skid portages into Pelican Lake. Those by-passed small falls, and there was heavy traffic over them. One young native and his wife could not get their boat started up the skids, so Beve and I helped. As expected, we got no thanks; indeed there were no words at all. The couple had a baby snugly wrapped and tucked into a fish bucket, which made a perfect cradle.

Monday began uneventfully, but then storms pursued us across Pelican Lake. One passing north of us rocking us with some strong gusts and driving rain. Then another blasted past us to the south, giving us the same treatment. The last of the three loomed right behind us, and we took refuge behind a small island eighty meters off the town and waited it out.

Later we picked up our supplies at the J and D confectionery (and restaurant, take-out, gas bar and bus station), and to our surprise they took Visa! So we charged two double burgers, two double fries, onion rings and coffee, and ate down by the canoe. The town sewage treatment plant was beside us and there was a smell, but our appetites were unaffected. Then we took a cabin with hot showers and a laundry in a fishing lodge east of town. Rain was forecast for the night and the next day. The fishing camp was short on marketing techniques and the finer touches, but relaxing, low key, and took Visa. The only excitement recently had been the native band (who owned the camp) blocking their own access road in solidarity with the Lubicon natives' land dispute. This seemed stupid, but most of the Band really did not want customers. The lodge had been built with Federal money, and was valued by most Band members only as a place to get a meal and showers whenever they wanted.

Reluctant to leave our civilized comforts, we delayed our launch Tuesday until early afternoon, then paddled leisurely down the west shore of Mirond Lake and camped, ready to tackle Corneille Portage the next morning. The shore seemed to be one long low granite wall, but it was fissured and fractured, in places pierced by fjord-like openings that ran back for hundreds of meters. Our camp was in one that opened up into a respectable harbor.

The sun dropped, the water became calm, and the air buoyant. We felt tuned to our surroundings and at peace. All around the horizon, at a great distance, dark clouds were under-lit by the setting sun. Timeless tranquillity enveloped us, - despite some determined insects gnawing industriously on our ankles. That night my digestion went into revolt, probably because of too much fried food in Pelican Narrows, and drove me out of the tent repeatedly. Paul Kane might well have painted that harsh bright clarity of moonlight on the soft contours of smoothed rock by tranquil water. Loons were calling crazily and continuously, Geese were honking south high overhead, and higher over everything the northern lights flickered and pulsed.

Next morning we made Corneille portage before noon. Signs of civilization were increasing, one being heavy chains attaching two aluminum boats high up on shore to big trees. The boats probably belonged to one of the three fishing camps we had passed. Our route took us south and then east around a fat peninsula, then back up and over Dog Portage into the Sturgeon-weir River again. This river was known to the voyageurs as La Rivière Maligne because of the swift current facing those ascending it, and the dangerous rocks obstructing its descent. Today descending it in light touring canoes makes for a wondrous short trip, combining glorious scenery, taxing but not dangerous canoeing challenges, superb fishing, three distinct topographies, and special historic and exotic flavors.

Camp was half way between Dog Portage and Birch Rapids, on a basic campsite right by the river. The canoe was only three meters from the river, the fire was four meters from the river, the tent was six meters from the river, and when Beve tripped over the monster pack, she wound up in the river!

Thursday we made a good start into misty damp under heavy cloud, the narrow dark river flowing straight south. Mid-morning we were at Birch portage, which might easily be missed. The river first broadened out into a fair-sized lake, entering from the northwest and exiting from the southwest. A kilometer-long peninsula extended up into the lake from the south end. The river flowed between that peninsula and the west side of the lake, forming the banks of the channel containing Birch Falls. The portage was across the base of the peninsula connecting lake and river below the falls. There were no skid poles, but plenty of tire tracks, and probably a portage vehicle off in the bushes, which we did not find.

After back-ferrying under the highway 106 bridge and threading through the rocks below, an American tourist on shore called us over to inform us that we had done it all wrong. "You gotta go faster than the current, he said, or you can't steer. You go too slow!" "That's certainly one approach", I answered, remembering Bill Mason's description of how he learned back-paddling the hard way:

I instinctively developed a technique of backpaddling down the rapids to give me time to make the necessary corrections in course. I was doing quite well when I discovered that any references to running rapids talked about running rapids under power to maintain steerage. If you didn't paddle faster than the current, you wouldn't be able to steer around the rocks. I decided to give it a try ... In retrospect, I realize that this was the closest I ever came to getting killed. I gave what was left of the canoe a decent burial and walked the ten miles out to the road. So much for steerage or powering through rapids! I went back to descending rapids slowly and developing skills in side-slipping back and forth across the current with a strong backwater or backpaddling.

Sunday morning we ate an enormous breakfast of eggs, potatoes, bread, and fish to celebrate my fifty-first birthday, then launched at 10:00 a.m. in pouring rain. That day was to be wondrous; forty kilometers of challenging water and classic rapid running as my birthday gift. The temperature stayed about three degrees Celsius. Rain fell strongly between 10:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m., then gradually let up. All day the wind was strong out of the northwest. When our hands got too cold, we put them in the river to warm them. Beve wore her neoprene gloves, but mine were back in Athabasca.

First came Leaf, a good example of why not to charge into rapids. The river made a long gentle curve down and to the left, the bottom not visible from the top. The slope and the speed increased dramatically, until the rushing water dissipated at the bottom into shallows and nasty rocks. The rapid demanded a strong back-ferry from the top, gaining time both to react and to avoid those bottom rocks. I would have enjoyed watching the clot who had advised us at the highway bridge trying to descend Leaf!

Next came Scoop Rapid. Voyageurs could always count on scooping a fish out of one of the rock pools at the bottom of the falls. All was creamy and beautiful, the limestone smooth and elegantly rounded, the Pelicans behaving as if at some stately religious ritual, lined up in hierarchical order along the edge of the fastest water. The light was faded, the rain fell steadily, and everything seemed time-suspended in shades of grey-green and cream; water, rocks, and Pelicans. An illusion only, for the falls thundered and fish were being gulped down in hundreds. None-the-less there was the strongest sensation of equipoise. The exit from the portage at the foot of Scoop Rapid was tricky. We swung out from the shallows into a powerful upstream eddy, and crossed it to slalom among huge limestone boulders, displacing Pelicans who glowered reproachfully from a safe distance.

Snake Rapids followed. This long three-part rapid was steep, fast, and filled with rocks. Strong back ferries took us through. Once again the bottom was the worst. Spruce Rapids were last, and unrunnable. We arrived about 7:00 p.m. Beve brought everything up to the camping area halfway along the four hundred meter portage while I got a fire going. Neither was easy. The campsite was excellent, though it would have been improved if it were not drenched and littered with decaying pike offal. 

Next morning a group of eight fishermen who had walked over the portage to "have a look" carried all our gear on their return journey. They were dressed in identical rain wear, perhaps mine issue from Flin Flon. We were soon far out in Amisk Lake (known as Beaver Lake to the local white population). Jet and outboard motor boats swarmed, mostly carrying holidayers from Flin Flon. We had never before seen such flashy motorboats. Two of them with outboard engines of a hundred and fifteen horsepower! Those boats were designed to travel long distances over open water at speed, then anchor to fish. They were pure conspicuous consumption, toys for the competitive with lots of cash. Each carried between four and six passengers, often wearing identical color coordinated outfits. They did not seem to catch many fish, though there were exceptions; an older local guiding two tourists caught fifteen fat pickerel in less than an hour. For the most part, though, fishing was an excuse for enjoying male company and displaying purchasing power. Es'toy Perdido threatened that. Four macho-boats came roaring up to us in the first hour to ask if we needed help. When we replied that we did not, they shook their heads and told us harrowing tales of daring rescues of foolish canoeists who had risked paddling on their lake.

We camped on Amisk Lake, on the tip of the third of the four long peninsulas off the south shore. The west faces were great blocks of creamy yellow limestone coated with red lichen, stacked up twenty-five meters high. Seen from the west in the evening distance, the peninsulas picked up the setting rays of the sun and glowed like fiery red knives stabbing north out into the lake. The opposite side of the peninsulas had been eroded down close to water level, and their tips were masses of shattered limestone. We camped just back of one of those broken rocky beaches. Just before dark another muscle boat dropped by our campsite to see if we needed rescuing. It's pretty rough out in the lake, you know, said the captain. No problem, replied Beve, We're in for the night. The tent was up, supper was over, and we were leaning back on rock slabs, mugs of tea beside us, trying to read a last few pages in the fading light. The captain insisted on telling us in great detail about a rescue two weeks previously when he had saved two canoeists who through some ineptitude had stranded themselves on an island. The castaways had lots of beer, but no food, shelter or warm clothing. Well, if you're sure you're OK, then, said the captain reluctantly, and swung his boat away to roar off into the dusk.

Off early Monday under a mackerel sky, we warily eyed a massive black front stalking us from the west. Es'toy Perdido seemed glad to be away from the sharp limestone chips on the shoreline. Lunch was at T & D Outfitters, at the outlet of Amisk Lake. Beve's ankle got a rest when Dean drove her, perched on the front of his four wheeled drive all-terrain vehicle, up from the beach to the store and back. Then we were off down river. The black front had missed us, and the sun sparkled over the water surface.

The first rapid, right at the outlet of Amisk Lake, was long and obstructed by dangerous bridge cribbing. The current was firm, and there were many rocks in a shallow channel. The rapid demanded sound maneuvering skills, but was not difficult; good fun, and a great introduction to what was coming. The next rapid was also shallow and studded with two- meter boulders. The guide referred to it as a minor rapid, but it was at least as difficult as the preceding one. Next came about two kilometers of difficult rapids which must be scouted, but nobody could have pushed through those tangled shorelines to scout. The rapids demanded a strong consistent back ferry, excellent teamwork, and lots of anticipation. Long steep twisting "S" bends were obstructed by rocks and shallows. A large boulder-throttled lake with strong current followed, then the tiny outlet into the Crooked Rapids. Once again the shallows at the bottom gave the most difficulty, especially when the river swung around at the bottom right at the sun and the submerged rocks vanished in the sparkle on the water surface. We touched twice, but going slowly. For the rest of the day occasional huge boulders or limestone ledges would suddenly loom up in the sparkle just under the water surface. We hit none of them, which was just as well; running up on a sloping rock can roll a canoe right over, especially a round-bottomed hull like ours.

A pattern had emerged. Wide fast current areas studded with huge boulders suddenly narrowed to twisting very fast sections where the river dropped over ledges and through chutes. At the bottom much of the force of the water dissipated amongst the shallows and boulders. The pattern was familiar to us, but I had never before seen rocks so broken nor a river shallow so abruptly. It was invigorating and great fun. But after we had been at this for four hours or so, our concentration began to slip. We were lining up for one chute when a spare paddle slid off the deck into the water. We carried two spares, one for immediate use and the other to which I had clipped the map, canoe guide, and Beve's watch with the broken clasp; it was the latter which went swimming. The clip separated, and we had a busy few seconds gathering up paddle, watch, map, and guide, then running the chute. The clip sank. Just below a great Blue Heron was stalking a frog, with one eye on us. Usually they took off long before we got close, but he hung in until we were just three canoe lengths away, then darted his head down at his dinner, and three quick gulps later was gone.

Late afternoon the descriptions in the canoe guide ceased to make sense, and we soon had no idea where we were. A winter road appeared which the canoe guide did not mention, and we identified a timbered island which has rapids on both sides at least ten times in different places. Camp was on a pleasant opening high above the reeds in the breeze away from the bugs. Our evenings had seemed increasingly rushed of late, because the sun was setting earlier. Sturgeon Landing was just ahead, and though in Saskatchewan it kept Manitoba time, so we put our watches back an hour.

Off again Tuesday early, and at once in rapids. A flock of Pelicans over-flew us in a huge perfect "V". They usually flew in file, so at first we took them for Geese, but Geese are never silent. Just as they passed directly overhead, all twenty-six of them simultaneously hitched up into a glorious glide. Pelican perfection!

In the night a beaver tail-slapping contest wakened us, and seemed to go on for hours. After launch we passed in the first eighty meters thirty-two heavily tramped trails from the river up into their poplar wood-lot! Palatial beaver mansions marked each end of the logging operation.

Yet another rapid around a timbered island appeared. The Goose Rapids had to be close; our guide booklet had stressed that they must be portaged, so we had been keeping our eyes out for the portage opening, but Es'toy Perdido's spray cover ends were unsnapped. We slipped over a limestone ledge with a tricky entrance and into some waves beyond, then down around a great curve to the left, ready to eddy out if necessary. There were no problems except that the standing waves were unusually big and slopped a few litters into Beve's open bow. Swinging into the bank to bail we found ourselves at the bottom of Goose Portage!

A series of fast, shallow rapids with a few rocks followed. The shoreline became sandier, though there were still regular limestone ledges. A steel suspension footbridge crossed the river at the Sturgeon Landing Reserve. Six hundred meters beyond we swung in to the fishing camp at the outlet into Namew Lake.

Tuesday morning we left through a group of fishing boats wind-bound in the river mouth. Wind on Namew Lake was brisk out of the north-west, our course south-west. Our plan was to hug the north shore hoping the wind would drop, but after we had rounded two points the wind was making a sincere effort to blow us out into the middle of that broad lake, every third wave breaking over us. Our forward progress became non-existent, and we turned aside into a reed marsh to read and wait. Four hours later the wind showed no sign of decreasing, so we retreated a few kilometers to camp on the shoreline out of the marsh.

Up before 5:00 a.m. Wednesday to try to beat the wind, we were soon on the water. Wind and waves were much as they had been the day before, but in time gradually died away. By 9:00 a.m. we were at the southwest corner of Namew poised for the turn south towards Cumberland House, in flat calm. We stopped to cook up bacon and potatoes for breakfast at the base of a limestone cliff where the limy-blue water dropped straight off.

By 1:00 p.m. we were at the narrows above Whitney Narrows, where we quit. We had left the limestone and were into an area of unsorted fluvial deposits, at a heavily used campsite featuring a huge pile of garbage with a mound of recent bear dung in the center.

Thursday morning we paddled gently down the marshy connection into Cumberland Lake. After noon we began checking the thick reed south shoreline for the outlet into the Tearing River, the shortest connection to the Saskatchewan River. Two years before water levels on Cumberland Lake had been so low that the local native band had tried to dam the Tearing River. We had never heard what finally resulted, but the Tearing River might have been no longer navigable. If we could find it we would try it.

At 2:00 p.m. we stopped for a late lunch. The lake was uniformly shallow, and the shore reed beds grew steadily thicker. These were difficult to see into, particularly when shallows forced the canoe hundreds of meters further out into the lake. We finally found a river inlet among the reeds. The entrance was marked by a pole, which was just as well; it was only about four meters across, though it soon broadened. There was some current. The passage was surprisingly populated; there were many buildings, ponds, and herds of cattle, then a big sports field. Motorboats, two seven-meter square-sterned wood-and-canvas freighter canoes, and a fleet of racing canoes were pulled up on shore. An hour later we passed under a major road bridge, and finally accepted that this was not the Tearing River. It flows southeast, but we were descending south-west, and had to be on the Bigstone River. We had missed the first river entrance, if there had been one, and would now need to paddle an extra ten kilometers or so, but at least the Bigstone was deep. Es'toy Perdido moved smoothly. Muskrats swam fearlessly about us, and there were lots of Kingfishers, Blue Herons, Ducks, Crows, Lesser Yellowlegs, and many Cows. We got to the confluence of the Bigstone and the Saskatchewan by 10:00 p.m., where there was a boat launch and camping area, fire pits and mown grass, but no privies.

Bert McCully, a local Métis farmer returning from a short hunt with a snow goose, stopped by to visit. His house was only a kilometer up the road. The water from both rivers was dark brown and stinking, little better than a cattle wallow. We asked Bert for some water from his well. He replied that we were welcome, but his well water was extremely high in nitrates and almost undrinkable. "Why not drink the river?" he asked. After tasting his water, we boiled the river water for half an hour and made strong tea.

Bert explained that we could avoid the rapids at Pemmican Portage by paddling upstream on the Saskatchewan three kilometers and then portaging half a kilometer into the old channel, or we could paddle down to Pemmican and portage or line for about two kilometers. Bert told us that The Pas was a hundred and thirty kilometers off; we had estimated eighty. At least we had ample food.

Four rough-looking half-tons had been parked at the confluence when we arrived. Their people returned long after dark weary and loaded down with waterfowl. Friday before dawn they and their excited dogs were off again in the early morning gloom. Bert arrived, offering to take us and our gear by truck to down river of Pemmican Portage. As we drove he showed us his hundred-and-thirty head of cattle, his twenty horses, his fields which had produced enough hay for his own purposes and to sell, his house, boats, cars, and trucks. Bert used to be a manager at the Government agriculture farm, but when that was taken over by natives he had quit.

We launched just below the ferry at Pemmican Portage. Wind and current cooperated, and we moved well. The Saskatchewan River looked much as it had near Edmonton; high banks, firm shores of sand and gravel, deciduous cover (now in fall colors), and a firm if unspectacular current in a gently winding river bed.

Kenny Dorion, a young Métis, swung his motorboat beside us for a chat. He was headed to Cumberland House with three sturgeons, which he said would fetch $3.50 a pound in The Pas. He expected to get $80.00 for his three fish in Cumberland. He told us that he took two and a half hours between The Pas and Cumberland House. Bert had told us the trip took eight hours. Some of the difference was in the motors; Bert used a ten horsepower, and Kenny a twenty-five. Kenny was also exaggerating; he was quite taken with Beve.

Most of the non-native people we had met on our voyage used the rivers only for recreational and emotional reasons. That was probably true even for the Clearwater River trappers; I doubt that any of them earned their living by trapping. Many native people used the river as the only practical means of earning extra money and food. The Métis seemed emotionally tied to hunting and fishing, and they used the river for that, but the men we had met earned their main livelihood elsewhere. Bert and his son were farmers, Kenny was a construction worker, and one Métis duck hunter had been an electrician.

Landforms repeated themselves, making navigation tricky. On our map the Manitoba border followed a large island and a major north bend. There were six such islands before north bends; when we were sure we had entered Manitoba, I made an earnest attempt to mark that important milestone in our progress by a rousing rendition of:

 Most regrettably, I was hooted down by rude noises from the bow. But I should like it recorded of us, as the Reverend George Monro Grant did in 1873 of Milton and Cheadle's cross-Canada expedition, that: ‘... the pluck that made them conceive, and the vastly greater pluck that enabled them to pull through such an expedition, was of the truest British kind."

After forty kilometers that day we camped on a sand spit covered with tracks of Bear, Deer, Lynx, and many birds. Whippoorwills lulled us off to sleep, their calls punctuated by the slapping of Beaver tails. Then about midnight a severe short windstorm woke us abruptly. The canoe and tent were well staked, but the stakes were in sand, quickly pulled up by the wind. Thrashing about that beach by moonlight stark naked in the middle of a sandstorm was both uncomfortable and undignified.

The riverbanks were growing steadily higher and more vertical. Saturday we took our first break at a hunting camp below Watsekwatapi Lake, one of the few places where it was possible to land. My mind drifted towards the coming winter and the resumption of my vocation, musing over the organization of a model Anglican parish. Ideal anythings are pernicious, and none of those ideas would ever be tested, but playing with them was fun. One such idea had in fact been tested fifteen years before at Saint Mark's, Port Hope. This had been a giving system based on monthly billings of one-twelfth the annual pledge, mailed with the monthly newsletter. The bills were paid by check through the mail or by regular monthly automatic bank account deductions. Givings increased forty per cent in the first year, but many regulars were unhappy at accepting contributions from non-attenders. Rather than consider why people wanted to give money to an organization in which they were not participating, some regulars demanded a return to the old ways. Had not Jesus Christ given us the offering envelope system, together with the awesome march of the privileged up the center aisle carrying the cash, and the subsequent solemn elevation of the alms basin? Surely change would offend Him! The Offertory Procession (with the mailed-in cheques) and the solemn elevation were restored, but the grumbling continued. As soon as I left the new system was dropped, a wholly unnecessary $185,000.00 tracker organ was purchased, and the need to bang the drum to pay for that kept the church solvent in the good old way. Just possibly I was not quite ready to go back to work.

A large Great Blue Heron tried to rush out of the reeds and take off. He left it far too late, tripped clumsily on his nose, and thrashed up looking dazed. By the time he had struggled to where he could take off, our canoe was only two meters from him. He flopped off, croaking dismally.

Camp was at an access point on the east side of the river eighteen kilometers from The Pas. Bulldozers had made a rough access to the water from a bush road that followed the river, and we camped in the middle of the access area. Not ideal, it was the only possibility we had seen in hours. The bush road might conceivably be used in the night, but the access to the river was presumably for winter, and we expected no visitors. About 1:00 a.m. a muffler-less truck roared off the road and into our access area. Stopping just short of the tent, spotlights and headlamps lit us up as if we were under military assault. I rolled over and out of my sleeping bag, fumbling for the shotgun and buckshot, frantically ordering myself not to overreact. Before I could extricate myself the truck abruptly reversed back onto the road and was gone.

Sunday morning we launched off the mud and soon passed another huge Ducks Unlimited project, with a sign reading Carrot River Triangle. A concrete retaining wall enclosed a large lake, presumably a breeding sanctuary. Two Otters were cavorting by a Beaver house, which they had taken over.

Big Eddy was a local place name occurring several times on our map in this area. We speculated about some popular local chief called Big Eddy until we arrived at Big Eddy Shoulders and found the river doubling back on itself in the most enormous eddy either of us had ever seen. An hour later we landed in The Pas, where I used a convenient phone to call the Venerable Fletcher Stewart, a classmate of mine from Trinity College Toronto whom I had not seen in twenty-five years. His daughter Kate answered the telephone. I asked for directions, to be told that the nearest building to where I was standing was the Anglican Church, and the rectory was next door. Fletcher and Pat's kind hospitality made a perfect end to the first half of our ocean-to-ocean adventure.

BACK

The second half of our journey did not begin at The Pas as planned because Lake Winnipeg was still solidly frozen at the beginning of May when we got there. We decided to paddle backwards from Fort Frances to Pine Falls on Lake Winnipeg, then paddle from The Pas to Pine Falls, then continue east from Fort Frances. Doing that not only let us paddle over ice-free water, but allowed us to travel the hundred-and-twenty kilometer open sewer which is the Rainy River between Fort Frances and Lake of the Woods downstream in only two days instead of upstream in ten.

Sunday on our way to Fort Frances we stopped in Pine Falls to worship with the people of the Church of the Advent. Their building was small and lovingly maintained, perfectly suited to its people. The grounds were inviting, the woodwork glowed, and everything was in its place. Only in the Priest's office was there the traditional Anglican holy dirt and disorder. That priest was Canon James Whitford, an interesting older priest of English extraction. He took the service with unhurried aplomb and dry English wit straight out of the old Prayer Book, including an optional and seldom used prayer for the Queen's Majesty, which had been added to the liturgy in the sixteenth century in place of a prayer for the Pope. The hymns were well chosen and sung; mostly seventeenth century Church of England classics. The good Canon ruffled the hair and lightly slapped the cheeks of children brought up for a blessing during Communion; mostly they wriggled and ducked. At the coffee hour he tried to hug a woman who fended him off vigorously with her rolled brolly. Then he announced: "From what I have been told I understand that Confirmation classes will be beginning this week. I remind the parents that if the children are not regularly at church, I will not present them to the Bishop when he comes. Then he introduced me, concluding: Perhaps they'll listen to you, Father, they pay no attention to me!" and left the room.

After church we drove to Fort Frances and set up camp. Next morning we launched below the Canadian and American Pulp Mills which together completely close the outlet from Rainy Lake. Sunny light airs surrounded us as firm current pushed Es'toy Perdido. Snow had fallen the previous day, but had melted.

Alluvial sands and gravel with outcroppings of Shield granite lined the river, with frequent large homes, mostly Canadian. There were Swallows and Ducks, and lots of Woodpeckers. As the day went on the air got steadily darker and the temperature dropped. By noon a few drops of cold rain were falling. Our water container was leaking. Those five gallons were all we had except for what we might beg on shore. No one but a fool would try to drink the chemical soup over which we paddled. The river stank, and so did everything its water touched.

We met several fishermen where the Little and Big Fork Rivers flowed into the Rainy River who warned us of some upcoming ferocious rapids called The Manitou. The fishing was poor; they had only a few Suckers. A large fish came thrashing to the surface beside us. He did a frantic backstroke in a three meter circle and then vanished. If there were live fish in the Rainy River they surely ought not to be eaten. We asked an American farmer, Mark Zypkea, if he had any suggestions about where we might camp that night. He wanted to help, but the best he could suggest was sixteen kilometers on at a picnic site, where camping was prohibited but where he believed that we would be undisturbed that early in the season. Instead we quit earlier at a crash campsite on the Canadian side by Conmee Island. While I was re-reading the camera manual after supper a Beaver landed five meters from me, collected a branch, and splashed back into the river.

After a cool night (the temperature had dropped to two degrees Celsius) we rose anticipating an exciting day. The spray cover was fitted for the ferocious Manitou Rapids, but we seemed to take forever to get there. When we did, they turned out to be a disappointingly simple curving drop over a small ledge. Afterwards Es'toy Perdido was rigged for sail; we wanted the practice. By dint of much hauling and thrashing about with my rudder-paddle we managed to progress at half the speed we might otherwise have made paddling. Beve had no work, but she was uncomfortably squashed under the lateen boom.

We ran the Long Sault Rapids about 3:00 p.m. On the Canadian side militant local natives aggressively guarded some eight-thousand-year-old burial mounds of the Shield Archaic culture. Despite their large NO TRESPASSING signs every ten meters or so along the shore-line we landed to check out the rapid before running it, then camped on the American side in the Franz Jevne St. Park. It had fire grates, wood, flat ground, and a large sign: No Overnight Camping.

The next day the River began widening and slowing. We were becoming depressed; the scenery was dull, the river dirty and flaccid, and there were too many people and too much environmental degradation. That evening we managed to miss the campground in the town of Rainy River. While searching we had landed at a picnic area and beach, where Beve asked some children where the campground was. Though they were playing beside it, they had no Idea. Eventually we camped below the International Bridge by the public dock on land belonging to Bernie Jenson, a welder who was selling a new design of wood stoves and working for the Federal government in some tourist capacity. His wife was a full-time beautician, and they were raising six children. Bernie came down to chat after we were settled in, together with his daughter Brandy, who kept him supplied with fresh cups of coffee. The working men in this area were scratching for a living: Bernie had had half a dozen careers, and though he was a hard worker and a good provider, he was always on the verge of economic disaster.

Cross-border shopping was preoccupying the local radio commentators. Canadians were spending billions in border American towns, which upset Canadian merchants and threatened the Canadian economy. Bernie said that he had been born in the USA in the American hospital because his mother needed special care: it had been expensive, but did give him dual citizenship. He bought all his gas in the States. I don't care about politics, he said, I can't afford Canadian gas. It costs me $65.00 to gas up my big truck here, and only $25.00 in the USA. Bernie said what we had often heard before, that Canadians were getting more useless and unwanted services from government, (such as travelling Constitutional committees and bilingual road signs) and fewer useful services, (like road maintenance and health care.)

One of the two Custom's officials was bored and sullenly suspicious of us, the other was interested and helpful. Even the latter said: "Be sure and don't land anywhere in the USA without clearing with me first!" By international agreement citizens of both nations travelling along the border waters may camp where they chose, except in parks, but there was no point in arguing. Instead, I went off into town to get salt, and came back laden down with good things, none of which, Beve pointed out, were salt. I was supposed to cut down on salt anyway.

A small airplane landed and four heroic-looking young men clambered out. After they had checked through customs and had returned, they stopped to chat. Hearing where we were going, they all shook their heads firmly and dismissivly, the senior hero grating: "Real rough out there on the big lake, guys, not for canoes!" and they roared up and away. Americans, off to fish in the far northern waters of The Lake Of The Woods.

Friday we were off by 7:40 a.m.. Sweet lightly damp airs and temperatures of twenty-two degrees Celsius cast a spell that broke whenever the water moved and released pulp effluent stench. We burst out into The Lake Of The Woods in a cloud of Swallows pushed by a huge following breeze and in company with many rumbling big motor-cruisers. Later our camp was at the end of the protective island screen, ten kilometers northeast of the lake entrance. The strong north wind had tempted us to stay close in among the reeds, and once we became entangled in them, which cost an hour of dragging and wading.

Saturday we were driven early out of our tent by a demented crow who screamed horrifyingly from a branch just over the ridgepole. A light mist curtained calm water; an Otter swam around a point into our bay and straight towards a swimming Gull who warily moved sideways a few meters. We crossed Windy Bay to Bigsby Island, then rested in a small bay where cormorants were drying their wings in their strange angular pose. A professional fisherman outside the bay moved between nets. As he chugged slowly across the bay a mixed gaggle of cormorants, gulls and pelicans trailed behind.

About 4:00 p.m. we landed on a sand spit between Bigsby Island and Gooseneck Island and I settled down for a snooze. I woke to hear Beve chatting with a passing paddler, David Brewster from Minneapolis, who was on a journey from International Falls to The Pas. David's dream was to go from Lake Superior to Fort McMurray over four summers, of which this was the second. He was thirty-one, short, fit, and active; his beard was reddish brown, and it clashed horribly with his red-orange ear and neck-flapped ball cap. He was shy, but superbly competent and confident in his very modern American canoe, a Mad River Monarch that resembled a kayak with an over-sized cockpit and had a small foot-controlled rudder at the stern. He paddled with a bent paddle, shaped like a light shovel used backwards. With this canoe, paddle, and his very light load, he could go nearly twice as fast as we could, but he chose to stay with us for the two weeks between Gooseneck Island and Pine Falls.

Sunday morning humid air and a hot sun heralded a scorcher. Despite our extra rest the day before, we began tired. The Coast Guard had been planting marker buoys near us, but their tug engine began to belch and miss, and in the heat the crew was growing exasperated. The air was turning blue. As the day wore on I pushed hard chasing David and my shoulders rejoiced. We made forty-four kilometers over flat water in seven hours. Hot and humid, thunderstorms flirted all around us throughout the afternoon. After we had set up camp a thunderstorm did catch us, and its winds split the tent zipper.

Monday's start was delayed while Beve made pancakes and I repaired the tent. Later we were again delayed when we became separated from David. We had ducked through a small gap where we found marker buoys; we called for David, but he was off exploring another (more logical) choice. He caught up after two hours, at the end of French Portage Narrows. That whole area was confined and full of gorgeous low islands. There were many cottages and the water level was controlled, but even so the country must appear much as the voyageurs knew it. That afternoon David ranged way ahead, smarting from his earlier navigational error. About 3:00 p.m. he sat resting in a bay as we approached. Above him only twenty meters away a small black bear was foraging about. I shouted Bear! and began fumbling for the camera and long lens. The cub vanished, instantly replaced by a huge fluffed out Momma, bristling with health, vitality, and purpose, who reared up on her back legs to better inspect us. In my excitement I blew the picture completely. She left, presumably unaware that David was tucked into the shore downwind, only fifteen meters away.

We camped between Big Narrows and Crow Rock, thirty-four kilometers from Kenora, on a glorious little island overrun by wood ticks. The whole site was low, with a good fireplace, lots of wood and superb swimming. I read into Annie Dillard's Teaching A Stone to Talk.

Tuesday we launched about 9:00 a.m., the temperature seventeen degrees Celsius, headed for thirty-two. Midmorning there was a great commotion in the water by the shoreline, and we turned in to investigate. Hundreds of suckers were spawning in the shallows. A man and his son were building a cottage only a few meters above all this. They told us that land was only available from previous owners; no crown land was for sale. They had destroyed a derelict cottage and were building a new one. As we talked a fat beaver swam idly y, ignoring both us and the suckers.

In Kenora we over-shot the campground and wound up over a mile downwind of it, where we landed and went shopping, then crossed to Conee Island opposite the town. There a young man was reeling in a fat Pike near where his wife and three overdressed little girls were slouching about a picnic table reading movie magazines. Hoisting the Pike on high, he shouted "Jesus Christ! He bent my hook all to hell and gone Roxanne! He's huge, Roxanne! He took the very first cast, Roxanne! Look at this monster! First fish of the year, and ten pounds at least, Roxanne! Look at him, girls, damn it, isn't he gorgeous"? Mom and the little girls at the littered picnic table could not be bothered to even glance up from their movie magazines.

Mid-afternoon the next day we were camped on historic Rat Portage, at the end of a beautiful curving passage cut through the granite ridge between The Lake of the Woods and the Winnipeg River. Power cruisers were here lifted on a huge frame, rolled forward sixty meters, and lowered down into the Winnipeg.

Thursday's route began tortuously. We had to paddle eight kilometers straight east, then two north, then six west before we could finally turn due north as we wanted. The wood ticks seemed to like us, especially me, and there was more every day. Ten of those anti-clerical beasts were removed from me on our first break, one deeply embedded in my elbow socket. Unattended, they swell and burrow. They kill moose, getting into their eyes and ears, blinding them and driving them mad. Moose have no means of removing them, but we did.

We paddled up and through the Dalles Narrows to camp on the north side of the river opposite the reservation, completing thirty tough kilometers into a strong north wind. The rain, which had been forecast for early afternoon, fell after we had set up our tents, had supper, and retired.

Friday we made a slow start, with everything damp, the rain still falling, and a strong northwest wind blustering in our faces. Our goal was Boundary Falls Dam, seventeen kilometers off, right in the teeth of the wind. Midmorning the rain had stopped but the wind had risen to a gale. My map blew off the deck into the water twice in an hour, even though it was weighted down with the binoculars and the spare paddle. Our maps were protected with plastic, but retrieving them after they had gone swimming was pesky.

The wind continued to rise, but shifted gradually to northeast as we slowly changed course to the west. Now nearly behind us, the wind drove us on to Minaki over uncluttered and broad water. We had an excellent lunch at Minaki Lodge. Nice to see how the other half was living. If we had money we might really have enjoyed ourselves, though listening to the vacuous conversation between the tiddly bored middle-aged women and the handsome young bartender made me glad to be headed back out to the river.

Mid-afternoon the river swung back north-west and the wind blew again in our faces. Working so hard was especially tough after so fine a lunch! It took until 8:00 p.m. to reach Boundary Falls. The dam squatted on a steep drop, with rapid water below it. There was no portage, but there was a very primitive campground without services below the dam along the river. A path thirty meters along the access road to the campground dropped steeply to a small bay halfway down the rapid. From there the rapid was runnable.

That long weekend was also the opening of the Pickerel season, so the campground was jammed. We camped at the top beside the log boom, away from the eighteen tents down on the sands at the foot of the rapid with their twenty-two tape players turned at high volume, each with different music. Away from that row and lounging about, supper and chores done, we listened to two loons calling in the fading light. We marveled at the variety of subtle shades of dark green: in the water, the coniferous trees, deciduous trees, the rocks, and even the dam walls, all changing with the fading light.

Friday dawned clear and cold, after a frosty night. Breakfast and the portage both done by 9:30 a.m., we drifted down into the rapid, surveying as we went. David waited above to watch us, and then descended on our line. It was just a long curving drop with some easily avoidable standing waves at the bottom. The worst problem was that Beve detected another wood tick on her arm at a critical moment, but the tick went swimming, not us.

On towards Islington Indian Reservation No. 29 at Whitedog Narrows. Pickerel fishermen were everywhere. We talked with Larry, Dennis, and Doug, who gave us four Pickerel and a large Sager for our lunch. At lunch David filleted the fish expertly, I made the fire, and our lunch was better than the one at Minaki. Ernie, George, and Tom, three natives from the Whitedog Narrows Reserve joined us for a chat as we were finishing the last of the fish. Tom was drunk and unconscious, George was taciturn, and Ernie was humorously garrulous. They had been fishing, and showed us twenty fish. George was scandalized when I complimented him on a great catch, and Ernie exploded "We haven't even started to try, yet, man!" I asked Ernie how they would cook their fish, thinking that they might want our as yet unextiguished campfire, and Ernie replied "In the microwave, man, back in my own kitchen, man, when we get tired screwing around out here. We're gonna catch a few fish, drink a few beers. Tomorrow we'll be guiding some fucking rich white man - no offence - and he'll maybe give us an American hundred dollar bill as a tip. That's worth a hundred and thirty dollars! The fucking Americans are rich, like those silly buggers who built the dam. Course we don't care - that dam is worth a thousand a year to each of us. But the fish have never come back. Man, you watch that rapid around the north side of Boundary Island. It has swallowed boats bigger than ours, but the south side's OK. Later it turned out that the north side of Boundary Island was a riffle in an especially tranquil section of the river (before the dam was built Boundary Falls was quite another matter), so I guess the last bit was native humor.

That same evening we met another native. We had landed on a point and set up camp. Suddenly a shout "Halloo! I am here! I am hunting bear!" In the cove formed by our point stood a native with a rifle. I shouted back "Good luck! We are not bears!" He stood there with his rifle for three hours. Eventually a boat arrived to pick him up, and after many loud comments and much laughter, they all left.

Sunday morning the cold drove me out of the tent early to make breakfast, which then got cold because Beve and David were reluctant to leave warm sleeping bags for the five degrees Celsius temperature outside.

We entered Manitoba and Whiteshell Provincial Park mid-morning, greeted by a huge sign announcing that open fires were prohibited except where fire pits were provided. We had been warned about this in the Park literature, but we had expected to find some of the fire pits provided. With one exception, we saw none. In Whiteshell we either ate uncooked food or depended on David's stove, which was a nuisance. Thankfully we were able to buy some jam from Pine Island Lodge just inside the park.

Lots of canoes and motorboats were about; a major canoe group from Candle Point Camp was getting mountains of gear and at least fifteen canoes sorted out as we passed their dock. Lampray Rapids were just fast water with some modest standing waves, at a place where the river was impressively wide. There was a campsite with a fire pit provided, but it was occupied by twenty or so young drunks lolling about in a litter of garbage, hacked trees and tottering tents. We pushed on.

The alternative down river was not much better. We wound up on a triangle four meters by four meters by three meters, up over a three-meter vertical bank at the tree-less tip of a rapidly eroding peninsula. Es'toy Perdido spent the night swimming, most of our packs in and his spray skirt on. Our two tents, Dave's canoe, and a huge Dangerous Waters sign snugly filled all the available space above. We had come forty-four kilometers that day, landing just at dark.

We woke under solid cloud cover. We packed quickly, as this was no place to get caught in a downpour. An hour before noon we were over what we named The Portage of the Thirty-nine Ticks around Point du Bois Dam. Beve and I removed the pests from each other at the end of the trail over the extreme left of the dike, which had seemed preferable to the longer portage down the town Main Street, despite the ticks. Tracks from deer and a bear showed how the old portage was being kept open.

By suppertime we were in to Slave Falls and over the portage. The dam network there is confusing. One dam joins a large central island to the west bank. A second dam joins that island to another island south of it, where the power plant is. A third shorter dam joins the second island to the east bank. The portage is just west of this last dam on the middle island, about eight hundred meters long and mostly on a road. At the end there was a lot of garbage and the remains of about six open (presumably prohibited) fires. I lit a tiny guilty supper fire, and was immediately overflown as if on a bombing run by seven consecutive yellow government bush planes. None paid any attention to us and supper was delicious. The parade of ticks had continued; I had collected eight on the last portage. We had come only twenty-two kilometers, but we had crossed two major portages, and the initial loading had been a time-consuming muddy horror.

Tuesday morning we ran the Scots Rapids easily, then crossed Namao Lake, and descended the Sturgeon Falls (labeled dangerous waters, but pussycat) into Nutimik Lake, which was surrounded by small cottages. We had lunch at the La Barrière, also labeled dangerous water, and also pussycat. The cottages in Dorothy Lake that followed were even smaller and more closely crowded together than those on Nutimik Lake. Their boathouses were tiny and their docks were few and flimsy. The people hauled their boats out when they were not in use; consequently they seldom used them. There was road access all along the shoreline. We were told that the nearest campground was a thousand meters ahead, on our left immediately after the dangerous Otter Falls, which last we never did find. At the campground a Yellowbellied Sapsucker drilled his neat rows of holes and posed for pictures. That night our neighbors on the campsite to the south got into a long conversation with a local jerk who owned a truck with no muffler, and who left his engine idling for two hours. The conversation ended just after midnight at Beve's request. The jerk popped and banged away, only to return again an hour later. He left his truck running for twenty minutes and was lucky to escape with his life. I was surging out of our tent to deal with him just as he roared off. We finally got to sleep about 2:00 a.m., only to be wakened by a 3:00 a.m. thunderstorm and then by our neighbors to the north who went fishing at 5:00 a.m., preceded by much vehicle door slamming. We left at 6:30 a.m. not having paid for our site and without a twinge of remorse.

Late in the morning we passed the entrance to the Pinewa Channel and headed down the voyageur's Rivière Blanche. This main channel today carries the main water flow, but because of its many dams is no longer accurately named. We raced into Lake du Bonnet about 7:00 p.m. pursued by dark clouds and whipped water. There was no campground, the riverbanks were cottaged, and the two motels were full, but a last-minute cancellation got David’s canoe and us into the last motel room. Es'toy Perdido spent the night lashed to the cement decorative wall outside our motel door. David got a minuscule hotel room. It was a busy brassy operation with an excellent restaurant, lounge, and off-track horse race betting room. The buildings were old and not over-maintained nor over-clean (there was a bag of chips and an empty vodka bottle under our bed), but everything worked, the price was cheap, and we were in out of the rain. The proprietor's son got our gear up from the river in a half-ton in between transferring tons of empty beer bottles from the hotel basement into a semi-trailer. I offered him ten dollars for his trouble, but he cheerfully but firmly refused. "My Dad says bring you up from the river, I bring you," he said. "No problem."

Next morning we portaged everything the four blocks back to the river. As we loaded up a small round woman approached us and demanded to know what we were doing. Beve and I explained our cross-Canada trip. She claimed to be a reporter for the Lake Du Bonnet paper, but she had no pencil. "Will you wait while I went up to her car to get a pencil?" Off she went. She returned, asked one question, and in the middle of Beve's answer announced that she had left her camera in the car; would we wait while she got that? We agreed, and off she went. Twenty minutes later she returned, munching a hot dog and complaining the bun was cold. By now David had arrived, and she asked him what he was doing. "That sounds like a much more interesting story!" says she, taking David off over to his canoe for a picture. Later, Dave, mused: "I'd sure like to read that story, if she ever gets it done - and see that picture, if it ever is developed!" He had asked for a clip of the story, but she refused because: "My publishers are so cheap they won't give me stamp money." David offered her a loonie for the postage, which she pretended not to see.

We camped at a lovely but filthy campsite just above Great Falls Dam. After we burned the garbage and collected the bottles we cooked supper and settled in for a delightful night.

Up Friday and off by 7:30 a.m. so David could get to the Pine Falls Post Office before it closed. By 9:30 we were over the Grand Falls Portage and paddling strongly. The wind continued to rise. The radio was chatting cheerfully about light breezes out of the south, but we were bucking into a strong northwest wind and blowsy whitecaps. By Silver Falls we had had enough. I hitchhiked the four kilometers into Pine Falls and returned with a vehicle to carry us in.

Sunday David left Pine Falls to paddle north up Lake Winnipeg, while we drove to The Pas to paddle south from there to Pine Falls, paddling the section ice had forced us to postpone. We looked forward to meeting David somewhere along the inhospitable shores of Lake Winnipeg.

BACK

Tuesday May 28th found us camped in The Pas close by the Saskatchewan River, right where we had quit for the winter the previous summer. The evening air was lovely but rain threatened, and that night the seam-sealing job I had done on the new tent was well tested. Next morning an audience of three stone-faced natives watched us launch into strong southeast winds, which with the several severe thunderstorms they brought limited us to sixteen kilometers that first day. During the tumult of the second thunderstorm we met a solo upstream paddler whose name we could not hear through the thunder. He was a Breton; young, blond curly hair, powerfully built, and ecstatically happy. He called to us, through the near-continuous roar and flashes of lightning that the previous summer he had paddled through the Boundary Waters from Montreal; this year he had begun at Grand Rapids and was headed for Athabasca. We hoped he meant Fort McMurray at the Athabasca River, for if he meant the town of Athabasca he was facing an interesting paddle upstream from Fort McMurray! But oh, how his exuberant joy lifted us up!

Later we camped in a pasture. We dragged Es'toy Perdido through a foul cattle wallow and up a six-meter mud bank for unloading. Getting water was difficult.

Tuesday we tried for a fast launch, rushed by the bawl of approaching steers, but it seemed to take forever to get back over that mud morass and then scrape the sticky mud off our feet. Three hours later we were running through fast shallow glossy water over a ledge and into a mass of irritated Pelicans. A curious Otter swam up to look us over, rising high out of the water less than four meters away to stare impudently. Further on we came upon three Common Mergansers determinedly driving a Great Blue Heron away from their nest where it had been suspected of thieving eggs or nestlings. A hundred meters past a bald Eagle landed on a log on the shore very close to us, in the process chasing off another Bald Eagle, while a flock of Cliff Swallows gathered insects close by. Another Great Blue Heron was hunting frogs on the opposite bank. All about us the bird population was struggling, wrangling, and pulsating.

About 2:00 p.m. we stopped to investigate some curious structures which seemed to be part of some flood control system. Five hundred-meter channels had been dredged back into the marsh at right angles to the river. There were water level control gates at the river entrance, although the channel in front and behind the gates had been bulldozed in. There was a Ducks Unlimited sign by one of the gates, with bear droppings and moose tracks on the ground in front of it. Just beyond was a sign: Summer Berry Marsh Moose Habitat Protection Area.

At 5:00 p.m. we stopped at another bulldozed habitat area where a vibrant colony of Black Terns saluted us. The heat was intense, we were worn out, and thunderstorms threatened, so we put up the tent and called it a day. A roaring swell and pulse from birds, insects, and frogs exhilarated that night, but we slept well. In the morning the mosquitoes blackened the tent door and, out over the river, fed the Black Terns.

We were off by 8:30 a.m. in increasingly strong southeast breezes. The current was firm, but we were lazy. By 11:00 a.m. the breeze had become wind, and by 1:00 p.m. the wind was producing big waves which rolled effortlessly upstream against the firm current. We lunched at an abandoned ten-meter square icehouse of vertical poles, which had a meter or so of sawdust on the floor. Inside was a colony of Cliff Swallows, a pair of ice tongs and a heavy ice chisel. A number of long-abandoned and unidentifiable buildings were collapsed inland of the icehouse. After lunch the wind had grown to a full gale and the waves were high and fast. We settled in by the icehouse, reading and resting for the remainder of the afternoon. By 6:00 p.m. there were two-foot swells rolling up the river driven by a powerful southeast gale, and we camped.

Saturday we launched at 6:30 a.m., after a 5:00 a.m. rise. Half an hour later we were at a native community, but the fishermen were gone and no one else was up. The wind was still southeast, breezy but rising fast; we used our break to snap up Es'toy Perdido's spray cover.

About 1:00 p.m., in strong winds, we were approaching what we thought was the outlet of the Saskatchewan River into Cedar Lake. Here we met two natives who told us that there was another paddler on the other side of the island. One inquired mildly: Where are all you guys going, anyway? We went north round the island but found no paddler, only an enormous body of shallow water with erratic currents. We attempted to continue right round the island but found this difficult, as powerful currents yanked us here and there amidst shallows and a wild whistling cross wind. We deliberately ran ourselves up on one of the shallows to consult map and compass, and eventually decided (wrongly, as it turned out) that we were at the outlet of the Saskatchewan River into Cedar lake. We set off straight southeast over shallow open waters that would in a few weeks become impassable reed beds.

We had headed out into the Lake well short of the true river exit, and we were then blown much more off course than we had allowed for. The next five hours was spent blundering about in shallows and cursing the wind, ending up on the south shore more than six kilometers south-west from where we ought to have been, beside a small river, in a large marsh, in the middle of twenty-five rough goose blinds. The turf was spongy and wet, and heaved under us, but this was our night camp. The shoreline of Cedar Lake for kilometers in either direction was a devastation of quaking dark peat and tangled storm-blown sticks and logs. Night was upon us. The water was clear and good, and the land was brush-free and flat. We had the tent up by 9:30 p.m., after a most frustrating day's paddle. The worst of it was that we would have to return about ten kilometers the next day just to get back on course, assuming we knew where we were, which we did not. Our navigational problems were partly caused by having to navigate with a road map. I had carelessly left the topographic map for this section with the previous year's maps, and all we had was a road map until Grand Rapids. This was not good, though where we were bound seemed generally clear.

The wind was blowing hard at launch time Sunday, still trying to keep us on shore. By 10:00 a.m. we had dodged through the shoals and worked our way back to what we assumed was the channel. In the summer we would not have been able to get over the reed beds and shallows to get back on course, but in the summer we would not have had to try. We thought we were in the channel because there were channel markers, a piece of orange garbage bag tied on top of a pole with the bottom jabbed into the mud. Until lunchtime we were still moving well into those accursed southeast winds. Sand and peat had become limestone rock, wonderful stuff that we could actually paddle up to and get out and walk around on. As the scenery improved, so did our dispositions.

By 2:30 p.m. we were rounding a corner into the second half of Cedar Lake. Heavy cloud was moving in, and the wind continued, but we were moving steadily towards the Kawupawik Narrows off Kokookuhoo Island. Yesterday's effort was catching up to us and we had come twenty kilometers against strong winds, so we began searching for the first available campsite. An hour later we were still looking. Limestone may look flat, but it is usually harder to pitch on than it appears. About 7:00 p.m. we finally were in at a white hunter's campsite unused since the previous fall. There were the usual products of boredom and ingenuity: tables, chairs, shelves, and drying lines, as well as high poles to hang trophies. There was lots of wood, a fireplace, and a super place to bath, as well as a level sheltered tent site. Yellows, soft greens and airy blues enveloped us; Common Terns sifted through the evening light. Within the hour the wind rose strongly and shifted to the east, to blow hard all night.

Late the next morning we launched and fought our way for a few kilometers, but we were soon wind bound on Kokookuhoo Island. The wind shifted back to southeast and filled our bay with whitecaps. We packed and made ready to launch when the wind dropped. Beve did some washing and baked bannock while I got some wild rice started. Wild rice, incidentally, does not require cooking. It requires opening, which is simple. Four well-spaced soakings in boiling water causes the "grain" to unfold and expand wonderfully. The infusion water makes a delicious tea.

By noon the wind had dropped considerably and we tried again. An hour later we were at the five-meter channel of Upasick Narrows, which pierces a long narrow barrier between two landmasses. We tucked out of the wind, yawning and helplessly exhausted. I tottered out of the canoe, put a clove hitch in the end of the stern rope around my ankle, lay down on the rock and passed out. Beve threw a cloth over my face to prevent sunburn and collapsed under a tarp.

A demonic wail wakened us. The five-kilometer jump after the narrows and across which we might have continued was foaming chaotically from end to end, completely impassable, lashed by a southeast gale. The wind increased and increased. If we had gone on, we would most certainly have returned, right side up or upside down. We made a crash campsite in the lea of some trees and erected the tent.

At dark the roar and spray still filled the air. Waves leapt over the shore rocks and were blown into spray far downwind. We went to bed damp but happy. There would be big jumps to make the next day; we would rise early in hope of a calm. For the time being, though, there was a storm, and we were out of it, safe and snug.

Tuesday dawned cloudy, with southeast breezes and flat calm water. We began the big jump across the Asoowunan Channel towards Paul Harbour. The crossing over the main channel should have taken three quarters of an hour; in fact the wind rose to a gale half way across and we pulled like maniacs for nearly two hours into big multi-directional waves. If we had yielded to the gale we would have been blown north up the lake for sixty kilometers over shallows. We were strong enough to prevent that, but the threat was constant. For the rest of that day the winds tempted us to make jumps, then punished us when we did. We pulled and pulled for little gain. When we tried to pass between islands to avoid the wind, we became enmeshed in shallows and shoals. We landed in Paul Harbour, thoroughly wind bound, late in the afternoon. That evening the wind dropped, but the tent was up and we were not tempted into trying again. Only thirteen difficult kilometers, at least as the crow flew. At least we caught up on our reading. Beve read Robbins' outrageous novel Skinny Legs And All, while I soberly re-read some of John Henry Newman. From time to time we compared and contrasted.

Wednesday began with a flat calm, but soon southeast winds rose again, and steadily increased. We were wind bound by noon, once again reading through the afternoon and setting the alarm for 5:00 a.m. the next day. Whatever had happened to those prevailing westerlies?

Thursday we launched into a windless glassy calm, under solid cloud. We pulled hard, expecting the wind to rise later in the morning. Nothing developed except for a few light rain sprinkles. The cloud cover remained total, and the air darkened. After six tough fast hours we stopped for lunch and a short snooze. This was interrupted by geese; a tremendous gabble, gabble, gabble punctuated by honk blasts. I levered myself up on my elbow to see a densely packed line of over a hundred Canada Geese paddling slowly in line abreast past us, the nearest perhaps fifteen meters away from where we lay. The line was as well dressed as a regiment of British Guards. Whatever was going on was of extraordinary ritual significance. Every goose was excited; dipping and weaving and chattering. Though they must have seen us, we were completely ignored. It took twenty minutes for the whole line to pass out of sight, much longer before the gabbling and honking died away.

By 4:00 p.m. we thought we were just off the large island which blocks Cross Bay, only some forty kilometers from Grand Rapids and on the north side of Cross Bay Channel. With hind-sight, however, we had gotten ahead of ourselves again (fortis imaginato generat casum), and had jumped across the six kilometer bay too soon, winding up considerably to the south of the island and the channel. That had sad consequences the next day. There did seem to be rather more islands than there ought to have been, but the highway map was imprecise.

We pitched the tent on loose small gravel in the shade and turned in early. About 1:00 a.m. a continuous violent whacking out on the water wakened me. Wondering groggily what was so upsetting the beaver, I levered myself up and peered out into the moonlight. Five meters from my nose a Black Bear was carefully sniffing the ground. I shook Beve awake. The Bear looked up and stared at us. He probably could not see us behind the mesh in the dark tent; he kept tilting his head to get a better angle. He knew we were there, and he was curious. He moved towards us. Although he must have weighed four hundred pounds, he moved noiselessly over the loose gravel. He circled the tent once, then again. The second time he nuzzled the fabric that was all that separated us from him. He moved off, then turned. Beve's teeth were by now chattering noisily, and I clutched damply at my .22 carbine - perfectly useless except as a potential noisemaker.

Enough was enough. In my firmest schoolmaster's voice, I said loudly: Bear, go away! He jerked back, then lunged a few steps forward, and then froze, irresolute. A few heart-stopping seconds later he turned and did leave, though not without three times turning back as if longing to investigate us more closely.

Two days later we told the story to Brenda Still, an artist and the wife of Murray Still, the Rector of Grand Rapids. She told us that the local Cree were members of the Bear Clan, and would not hunt Bear. Should a Bear approach, they simply say firmly (but in Cree) exactly what I had said, and the Bear invariably leaves. Sometimes it is better to be lucky than correct; we were not sure which we had been.

Our food had been tarped and piled forty meters away, the lunch pack there contained peanut butter and honey and jam, and the Bear had touched none of it. The trees thereabouts were too low to swing the food so we had regarded the lunch pack as expendable. The rest of the food was in an A.B.S. wannigon which the manufacturer claimed was Bear-proof.

We got little sleep the rest of the night. I must have looked pretty silly when (after the needs of nature drove me out of the tent about 3:00 a.m.) I stood by a bush, one hand holding both my .22 carbine and my trousers, my eyes anxiously searching the shadows into which that Bear had vanished.

The next day we jumped from our small island over to what we thought was the small island guarding Cross Bay, and then attempted to go south around its base to the east, but the land kept trending off to the south. It finally dawned on us that the mainland to the south was too near, and sloping north and east instead of north and west as it ought. We concluded tentatively that we must be on the mainland of the south peninsula approaching a deep bay, so we turned around and headed back north.

By now the wind had picked up, this time from the northeast. As we jumped from point to point we had the choice of getting well out from shore and fighting wind and waves trying to blow us back out into the open water we had crossed the day before, or of staying tight into shore and entangling ourselves among the shallows. It took most of the day to crawl up to the top of the southerly peninsula, where we had a fine view out across the channel we had believed we had crossed the previous day, now white with rolling waves driven at us by a howling wind. There we camped, still not sure that we were on Cross Bay Channel.

An hour before camping we had a second Bear encounter. We had stopped for a break immediately before the ugly wind- whipped point where we eventually camped. A huge Black Bear ambled down the beach towards us. Her coat was scruffy and molting; she had a black head and shoulders, but the rest was a tattered reddish brown, festooned with big tufts of ratty red hair. It became clear that though she had seen us, she had no intention of avoiding us. We made an undignified scramble for the canoe and briskly paddled about twenty meters off shore. She ambled by, only acknowledging our existence with one low and level stare as she passed. Then she stopped to scratch blowsily, making it abundantly clear exactly whose beach this was. Later, our camp less than a kilometer north featured a huge pile of fresh bear dung just in front of our tent. That was unsettling, even though she was unlikely to explore that way again for a week or so.

Saturday we rose to greet the usual southeast wind shrieking through the trees. We got across Cross Bay Channel, hairily. The wind soon shifted more to the east, so we were pulling with the wind coming at us over the right bow. That damn island seemed to go on forever, but by 11:00 a.m. we were around the south side, through the shoals, and poised to cross Cross Bay to enter the Grand Rapids Dam approaches twenty-five kilometers beyond. The far shore was barely visible, and we would certainly need the compass to find the opening. There was no question of trying to cross that day. Two-foot waves were crashing down on our beach, and it would be impossible to launch, let alone cross, in the teeth of that easterly gale. We had to wait a day, perhaps a week. Our lunches were gone, but we had lots of rice, oatmeal, and pasta.

Sunday dawned clear, with a gentle westerly breeze drifting over us towards the dam. We launched before 5:00 a.m. Out from the protection of the shore the wind and waves quickly grew monstrous, every wave breaking over the deck and Es'toy Perdido behaving like a belly dancer doing snake hips. We did not care. We were surging along in the right direction and, without having to do anything but brace and steer, we crossed those first twelve kilometers to the Grand Rapids Bay in an hour. There things got more complicated.

The waves had grown even bigger and I was too busy to consult a map, even if we had a decent one. There were many projections and shallows from the north side of the Grand Rapids approaches, though of course we were not aware of them until we were upon them. It was necessary to keep moving south to avoid them even though the eventual take-out would be on the north, so we quartered continuously through the waves, east south. Twice Es'toy Perdido decided to surf; he gets violently squiggly when he comes off the end of a wave. The last fifteen kilometers took seventy minutes; in two hours and ten minutes we had come twenty-five kilometers to the take-out by the dam.

There we met some bored Minnesota fishermen, who had decided that the water was too rough for motorboats and had resigned themselves to a day on land. They gave us hot coffee and a drive over the couple of kilometers to the Grand Rapids Lodge. There Terri the owner drove us back in his half-ton to bring up Es'toy Perdido and the gear. Terri and Marie found out what we were doing, tactfully checked with Beve about whether we were sponsored, and gave us our room for free! When I protested: "You'll never get rich doing things like that," he replied simply "We don't meet many people doing what you are. We'd like to help." Marie let Beve use their washing machine, while Terri found cordage I needed, and steered me to the Co-op on the Reserve.

Later we explored the town, collected our re-supply boxes from the R.C.M.P., and visited with The Reverend Murray Still and his wife Brenda. They came originally from Selkirk, had been in Grand Rapids for two years, and were finding the ministry difficult but rewarding. Brenda told us a story about a former rector's wife, a Health Care Worker appalled by the sexual abuse and alcoholism devastating the local Métis and Native community. She shocked Grand Rapids with a paper arguing that local health problems were insoluble. She and her husband were quickly frozen out of the community. However, she had named the problems, and once named, the people began to try to deal with them. New programs were begun, and much was achieved. Ten years later and a few months before we arrived a community celebration was held to mark the progress made. Brenda said she kept meaning to write the woman who had started all this to tell her of the community's achievement. I suggested she use airmail.

Murray told us that the people still deeply resented the Hydro Dam in part because none of the power generated was used in Grand Rapids or even in Manitoba, but was given away to Americans. Everyone we met echoed this save Terri, who was the only one who had been employed at the dam.

On Monday June 10th about noon we put into Lake Winnipeg. Terri helped us load, then called after us "Send us a postcard if you get to Saint Johns - I mean, send us a post card when you get to Saint Johns!" Just over a year later, we did.

We went some seventeen kilometers to a protected bay, where we cowered under a series of thunderstorms that dumped sheets of frigid rain and hail. The storms came at us from the west, short intervals between our old nemesis, strong southeast winds. From our campsite we could see the smoke of a large forest fire north of Grand Rapids, probably started by lightning.

Tuesday was spent wind bound. Powerful southeast winds drove fast four-foot waves with a fetch of over a hundred miles charging past our bay's mouth. With nothing to do but read, I got into Rad's Hunt For The Red October, and worked up a technical headache. Just before 1:00 p.m. we had a bash at paddling into the wind, but we returned after less than a kilometer in an hour and a half. We turned after a rogue wave broke right in front of Beve, completely burying her! Soaked, frozen, frightened and angry, she missed several strokes as the very next wave swung Es'toy Perdido broadside. Back to Hunt For The Red October.

Wednesday we remained wind-bound until mid-afternoon, when we had another bash. We made a few kilometers to a five-meter wide gravel bar projecting straight north out into the lake for over a kilometer. The lake bottom there must have been odd, for big waves dashed into this projection from both the east-northeast and the west-north-west! Infrequent fast rogue north waves were lightly transposed over these, sent on by some major disturbance a long way off. We stopped and waited the wind's pleasure.

Beve was reading by the shore and tossing cracker crumbs to a nervy Bonaparte Gull when a gray wolf trotted lightly down the beach to pause three meters from her. The wolf ran off only when I appeared in reply to Beve's gentle call.

By 6:30 p.m. the wind was slackening, and we pulled grimly off into it. We kept that up until 10:00 p.m. while the wind steadily dropped, making nine kilometers to land in flat calm and the half-light just after sunset. Our camp was stunning; creamy limestone and soft shades of gray and blue, pale in the evening light.

Thursday we ate a cold breakfast and were on the water early. The sky was completely overcast, with strong easterly breezes. By noon the wind was up and we were forced off. The Pelicans seemed more tolerant of us getting close to them. Four Loons faced into a tight circle and were communicating on important matters as they drifted by.

Early afternoon Beve saw Sandhill Cranes doing their courtship dance. It was more of an impression of huge gray leaping forms than a true sighting, but when we paddled into the beach the tracks were unmistakable. The shore was a sand beach backed by a line of dunes, which protected a reedy large lake into which the Cranes had retreated.

Early Friday morning a huge raft of Mergansers drifted repeatedly down on our beach campsite; each time they got close they spooked away upwind, only to drift down again. There had been fresh moose tracks near our tent. Hours later we met a Native fisherman whose name was Al and who had two small boys with him, operating a big wooden boat with a fifty-horse motor. His first question was the usual "Seen any moose?"

By noon we were at last rounding Long Point (the voyageur's Le Dètour) in hot sun and blowsy sky, weaving among many commercial fishing nets. At 3:30 p.m. we passed the southerly facing radar fixture, home to a huge colony of Caspian Terns. In ten kilometers we had seen Common, Caspian, Forester's and Black Terns, as well as Bonaparte, Franklin, and Ring-billed Gulls.

At our night camp we could face out into the lake anywhere over a two hundred and fifty-degree arc and see no land. Heavy thunderstorms that night from the southeast turned into intermittent gales and heavy downpour rain by morning. The rain never let up all day. We got colder and wetter, until mid- afternoon we had finally had enough, and landed to huddle under a tarp. The wind was still southeast and still rising.

In the end it rose so much that we could not get off that beach Saturday, Sunday, or Monday. Steep rapid waves heaped up on the shingle and piled into the protective granite boulders. There were two terraces of loose rounded gravel higher up, on which we pitched the tent. Above the gravel was a steep desolate impenetrable tangle of black spruce, roots in wet muck. The tent nearly blew away Saturday night, and it rolled over and collapsed the next morning, every peg uprooted, despite forty pound of gear scattered about inside. We piled rocks on the wreckage and left it until evening. Even the Pelicans made no headway in that wind, many blown off the lake inland over our heads.

The wind continued to rise. Clouds flashed overhead so quickly that the sunlight flicked off and on as if controlled by a light switch. Small fast waves drove into the granite boulders as if impelled by a tack hammer.

The gale continued all Monday. We could only walk into the wind bent double and pushing hard. Even talking was difficult, so we spent the day reading and dozing, huddled behind a downed tree. Tuesday we woke to find that the wind had dropped overnight and fishing boats were working calm waters right beside us.

We had been twenty-five days on that section, totally wind bound for five days and partially wind bound another eleven. We had had enough. At that rate we would need another full month or more to get to Pine Falls. Besides, we had come to paddle. We decided that if we could exit up the twenty-one kilometer road our map showed from the shore to the highway up ahead, we would abandon Lake Winnipeg. We had paddled over three hundred kilometers of that blowy shallow water, including the sixty kilometers around the Le Dètour so hated by the Voyageurs, and enough was enough.

Later we met some native fishermen who agreed to take us out to the highway where I hitched a ride to get the car from The Pas. We were back in Pine Falls that evening. Waiting for us was this note "To John and Beve. Thanks for making it possible for me to get to Lake Winnipeg. Your company helped me to keep going. I made sixty miles across Lake Winnipeg before quitting at Seymourville. The boxes contain gifts of thanks. Yours in canoeing, Dave. May 31st. He had left us thirty-eight freeze-dried meals and his MSR stove, which we had much admired.

BACK

We had gone backwards from Fort Frances to Pine Falls, and forwards from The Pas to Pine Falls; now we were to return to Fort Frances and head straight for the Atlantic, starting a section which would include the most famous and well-travelled recreational canoeing in Canada, - Quetico Park and the boundary waters between Canada and the United States of America. Well-travelled by Americans, that is; there were a thousand paddlers from the USA for every Canadian. We were the first Canadians through the International Waters that year, following a vast army of Americans from as far away as Atlanta and Houston who tramped the portages into mire before us.

We launched from Fort Frances on June 24th, after a visit with Archdeacon Garth Clifford and his wife Dianne. Garth had had a serious heart attack six months before, and was still struggling with the emotional impact. He told us that a week before that attack he had been hunting and had seen a moose. He heard a voice: Shoot that moose!, and he did. A week later he heard a voice saying Go to the hospital! Not sure whether he was being sent to get medical advice or to do his regular hospital visiting, he went. There he promptly had a massive heart attack.

Our launch was also delayed by Quetico Provincial Park's reservation's system. The Park requires paddlers to appear on the exact day of a reservation, and to enter only through the chosen entrance. We were not sure when we would get to the Park border, and although we knew where we wanted to enter we could not convey that to Park Officials on the telephone. Only two or three canoes were allowed in at any given entry each day, so a reservation was essential. Actually, we did not want to enter Quetico Park at all, but just to canoe along the international border, camping and using the portages. However, since the campsites and portages were often in Quetico Park, we needed that reservation.

We would find that the entry system is grossly abused. An American outfitter brought three groups to Bottle Portage by livery motorboat in the twenty minutes while we were crossing, and there were other groups on the portage ahead of us. Only two groups are supposed to be allowed to enter on any given day. The groups brought in by the motorboat livery included one foursome, one film crew with twelve people and six canoes, and a third group of eight. The last group crossed over a second Bottle Portage blasted and cut years ago by that outfitter so that their clients might not be too crowded on the historic portage.

Knowing nothing of this, we had phoned for a reservation from Fort Frances on June 23rd and had been told that Bottle Portage was booked until July 5th. We would have to paddle to the Ranger station, then return some fifteen kilometers to enter through the Maligne River entrance, and then paddle a circular route over an extra seventy kilometers and a half dozen portages to get back onto our route. The woman who took our reservation was polite and well intentioned, but the best she could offer was to put our name down for the first cancellation for Bottle Portage. We took that reservation, but hedged our bets by phoning for an American National Forests Permit, which would allow us to claim we were actually canoeing on the American side of the boundary. We would have to paddle an extra twenty kilometers to pick the permit up at the American outfitter's main center, but at least the Americans do not care where you enter or where you go once you have their interior permit. Things had changed since 1967, when Eric Morse had written: By treaty all these portages along the border lakes route were internationalized, so that today, without hindrance or formality, anyone can camp or lunch in either country as he paddles the international boundary.

Our launch onto Rainy Lake was into calm icy water and cool and cloudy air. The further down the lake we went the fewer boats and people we saw. We rounded one point to find two Merganser mothers each with about ten chicks quacking frantically at a Bald Eagle skulking off over the trees.

We camped Monday night at a wonderful and flat well-used campsite on the American side. Beve went swimming though the lake was still bitterly cold. The usual southeast winds had blown all day, and we had gone only twenty-six kilometers into them, to finish just south of Dryweed Island.

Tuesday we made an early start, in high humidity with thunderstorms predicted. By 11:00 a.m. we were looking across Brulé Narrows towards Rampion Channel on the American side. We skipped lunch and headed straight across the open lake and up the channel as the sky darkened and the wind rose, to tuck behind a point just as a powerful norwester hit. The wind screamed past, hurling branches and heaping up waves. Trees crashed down, some snapped off half way up their trunks. Rain fell in sideslipping sheets. Thunder was deafening and almost continuous, and the lightning dropped like bombs. The storm climaxed with a simultaneous crash of thunder and a vivid red lash of lightning. Beve screamed as our left legs gave way together and we toppled forward over the spray cover. The canoe had been leaning left, actually pressing on the riverbed, and we had been kneeling, clutching shore bushes. A shock wave had traveled through the rock and Es'toy Perdido's skin, and had jarred our left knees into temporary paralysis. Beve's left ear rang for hours, and we both were badly shaken.

Afterwards the wind reversed, and waves rolled at us from the southeast. By 6:30 we were out of the protecting channel and back in the lake, exhausted and trembly. We could not find a campsite that was clearly marked on our American map and should have been obvious; our attempts to do so were wandering and confused. After an hour we settled on a barely satisfactory island, the kitchen below but the tent high up and deep among the trees.

The night was quiet until 3:30 a.m., when another storm blasted over us, again from the northwest. That time there was no rain, thunder, or lightning, only wind. Even though we were deep among the trees the force of that wind, despite ten tent pegs, two over-ropes, seventy pounds of gear, and our two bodies, pulled out every tent peg and steadily pushed tent and contents several meters downwind up against a large boulder. In the morning the radio told us the wind had reached one hundred and fifteen kilometers an hour. Lightning had killed two people, both in houses, one while cooking in the kitchen. Three miles from us four inches of egg-sized hail were reported. More storms were expected.

Launch Wednesday was slow; we were punchy and apprehensive. Half an hour later another storm blackened the sky, and we took refuge in a long-abandoned summer home. Es'toy Perdido nearly sank. We had left him tied to the dock out of the wind. Despite his spray cover, and with the cockpits done up, some twenty liters of water had entered, reduced his freeboard to less than three centimeters.

By 8:00 p.m. we were in at Kettle Falls and camped below the lodge, after more than forty kilometers, all in the afternoon, all in rain and facing firm adverse southeast winds. When the rain would let up for a bit swarms of tough biting flies would attack. Fifteen, which had been trapped when the tent had been struck, and which had spent the day rolled up and crushed in the sleeping pack flew out in fighting fettle when the tent was re-erected twelve hours later. Despite the wet and those flies, the paddle had been good. Six Ospreys had fished together close beside us for an hour, and rhythmic paddling had restored our emotional equilibrium.

We had not originally planned to go by way of Kettle Falls, but we wanted a room with a dry bed. Unfortunately Becky Williams and her husband (whose family had run a hotel off the portage for the last two generations) had just quit in some dispute with the National Forest Service, and because of some changes in Canadian Custom's Regulations which had drastically hurt their trade. From Lake of the Woods through Quetico, but most especially around Kettle Falls, petty border friction was doing nobody any good. Clifford Stevens, the Ranger, gave us permission to camp.

Next day we intended to return to our planned route, the Bear River, Namakan Lake, and the Namakan River, shorter and wilder than the more normal alternatives. The Bear River was an alternative to Kettle Falls and Squirrel Narrows between Rainy Lake and Namakan Lake. It was shallow and impossible for motorboats. The Namakan River was a much shorter alternative route between Namakan Lake and Lake La Croix, though the International Boundary followed the original NorthWest Company route via the Loon River. The river was rough and flowed towards us with many falls and rapids, but was wilder and more beautiful.

Storms blew all night, but Thursday dawned clear and bright. A nearby Canadian Lodge had been hit in the night by lightning and had burnt. We counted over three hundred trees blown down or snapped off and lying across the Kettle Falls Portage. A six-man work crew with chain saws was expected to take two days to clean up the mess.

We were by now a day behind schedule, so we radio-telephoned Quetico Park to change our reservation. We might still have got there, but we had no information on the Namakan River or its portages, and the effects of the storm (not to mention the possibility of others) might further delay us. There would be no more telephones before the Park.

The Bear River was a delight. Confined and rocky, it became narrower and shallower as we ascended through two broad marshes, then up over two tiny falls and the portage around the main drop at the outlet of Namakan Lake. The portage there was river left, but we mistakenly took another trail to river right. It proved to be heavily overgrown and littered with downed trees. We followed it a kilometer to the back of a fishing camp on the lake where we popped out of the bush and startled the proprietor's wife.

Lunch was on a lovely tiny island that had lost two of its ten trees to the storms. We swam and relaxed for an hour, then set off straight into the southeast wind for the Namakan River outlet. By 6:30 p.m. we were camped at the Lady Rapids on the Namakan River, after about thirty kilometers and four portages. The last portage was a lulu. We had the choice of a trail or a road. The trail appeared to be more direct but infrequently used and rough, so we explored up it without loads, to flounder through a tangled mess of downed trees and undergrowth a few kilometers until it petered out in the dense brush. After bushwhacking through to the road we followed that for three kilometers to the road bridge at the top of the rapid. From what we could see of that rapid from the bridge it seemed possible to ascend, so we returned to Es'toy Perdido by road to try that. There were two channels, and the river right one was easy to paddle up to thirty meters below the bridge. There a short tough ferry got us across to the mid-channel island that supported the road bridge, on which we camped. Friday morning we would portage up the island and over half the bridge to the north shore, where we could line the remainder of the rapid. Just before dark a man whose truck and boat trailer had been left by the downstream end of the road, and who had evidently seen our tracks, drove his motorboat up into the rapid to our camp to see that we were safe. He waved cheerily as he turned back.

Ahead of us were Hay rapids, High Falls, Quetico Rapids, Ivy Falls, Myrtle Falls, and Snake Falls. We had two days to ascend the river through them and then to paddle the length of Lac La Croix. By Friday noon we were over the Hay Rapids Portage, a dog, which took a miserable hour in the rain and the bugs clambering over fallen trees and skating about on the mud. There we met the Border Water's Canoe Club, a dozen young people and their leaders sponsored by a mid-western American Methodist church. The leader I spoke with was in sad shape; he did not know where the group had started from, or where they were to end up, or indeed where he was. All he knew was that he was very tired, wet, and muddy, and that the whole horror would end the next day when they were to be met in Namakan Lake. The group was entirely male. Beve asked: "Aren't there any girls"? A tall lanky youth allowed "No." "Wouldn't you prefer having some girls along?" " Yeah ... ah" was the speculative response. In the Border area we met in all thirty-four groups of young people canoeing. All but one was entirely male. The exception included three short, fat, and ugly Girl Scouts at least three years younger than the youngest male, who carried nothing on the portage, but teased and persecuted the boys mercilessly.

At the end of the Hay Rapids portage a local outfitter had blocked the entire launch area with two huge inverted aluminum boats. The Methodists had somehow landed there and moved on. I wanted to chuck one of the boats off into the bushes, but Beve talked me out of it. They were too heavy anyway.

Lunch was at High Falls, in alternating intermittent rain and bugs. The Falls were lovely, cupped in a graceful amphitheater, their top drop slick green, the bottom airy white. Later we ran the Quetico Rapids upstream. They were for us merely fast water either side of a large rock in the channel. We intended to line them along the bank, but at the last minute we charged straight up, jumped out on the rock to line its length, then back into Es'toy Perdido to pull madly up through the remaining fast water.

By 9:00 p.m. we were, we thought, at Myrtle Falls, and none too happy. It had poured for hours, and we were wet and cold. There was no tent site on the portage,- or at least there was none until we roughed one out of the bushes behind the short portage. We could not make fire in that downpour. The stove had died that morning. I cleaned it by flashlight, but it still would not work, so we ate cold and drank river water.

Saturday we might have gotten to the Quetico Ranger station, but our entry reservation to Quetico Park was for Sunday, and we were wet and disgusted. Rain continued Saturday morning and our gear stank horribly. We lazed about, launched late, and paddled leisurely. It turned out that we had not in fact been at Myrtle Falls Friday night, though we never did find out where we had been. Some two miles upstream we came upon a set of falls which should have been Snake, but the portage was too long and on the wrong side. Further upstream, in pouring rain, we found Snake Falls, a huge long twisting chute. The portage there was several kilometers, though we shortened it somewhat by launching into the fast water above the chute and paddling through that upstream. By noon we were out in Lac La Croix among many small fishing boats with native guides and their clients. We asked if lodgings were available nearby and were directed us to Campbell's Cabins five kilometers west, opposite to the direction we were headed but altogether too tempting to resist. Campbell's was a huge impressive fly-in fishing operation, which employed the Native guides we had met. As we paddled up five floatplanes were landed at one-minute intervals. For a hundred dollars we got a whole "A" frame building completely equipped with kitchen and two bedrooms, an excellent steak dinner, and a good buffet breakfast. The cabin was heated, so we also got our gear dried out.  

Sunday morning we headed off down Lac La Croix into a stiff southeast breeze. Using the island screen we expected to have no trouble reaching the Ranger station by noon, but it took until 3:00 p.m. to get there. High contrary winds, ‚pouring rain, and stopping to help out two groups of lost canoeists delayed us. The fact that the Ranger station was not on Hills Island (as our Reservations Officer had said), but on the mainland opposite, did not help.

While I was studying the Ranger Station through my binoculars, trying to decide if it could possibly be the place we were searching for, Joe Meany the Ranger was studying us through his powerful telescope, wondering why we did not come in for a beer. Joe is unique. He has a superb record as a racing canoeist. The interior of the Ranger Office was crowded with bent paddles with little brass plates attesting to his prowess. He knew all the great canoe racers; they knew him as Le Sauvage. A long Quetico portage has been named after him, which he had once cut to win a race. The false branch trails cut to confuse his competition have been eliminated. In 1964 Joe and Gene Tetreault had won the International Canoe Derby from Aticokan to Ely over an incredibly difficult course. In 1967 he had paddled a kayak from Rocky Mountain House to Montreal in thirty-nine days. He held the record for a complete circuit of Quetico; in 1988 when he was fifty-eight he and his partner Keith Burand had paddled a kayak a hundred and forty-four miles over thirty-six portages in thirty-three hours and thirty-eight minutes. Now sixty-two, he and his partner intended to return to try to better that time; he thought they could cut two hours from their record. Joe seemed to regard Quetico Park as a giant playground created for his personal enjoyment. A great Canadian, he was a man with an enormous zest for living, a tremendous sense of humor, and a huge capacity for beer.

Joe had made a cabin into a Ranger Museum of photographs and curios where we slept that night. Rain was forecast for the next four days. The Ranger station was two-thirds of the way down Lac La Croix, and on Monday we paddled the rest, crossed Bottle and Curtain Portages, and went two-thirds of the way down Crooked Lake through continuous rain and strong southeast winds. We had no trouble finding the portage, as canoe livery motorboats were coming and going as if at a major marina.

At Curtain Falls the portage was steep at each end, about a kilometer-and-a-half long, and crowded. One young couple was on their honeymoon, and their marriage may just possibly not last. The husband was right out of his element and utterly terrified. He wore a bug-proof head-net over a safari hat, behind which his wide eyes rolled like those of a horse in a burning barn. He marched about in the pouring rain making loud rapid speeches, telling everyone in earshot how expert he was, and ordering his seemingly experienced but increasingly exasperated bride about as if she was mentally deficient. She smiled and smiled, increasingly grimly.

Tuesday morning it was still bloody pouring. The forecast was now for a week more of rain and southeast winds. We stopped for lunch at noon in light drizzle, but no sooner was the lunch spread than the rain came. At 2:30 p.m. we were hungry enough to try again even in even heavier rain, under a tarp. There were lots of canoeists, mostly spending the day in their tents, with either Grumman aluminum or Old Town Penobscots upside down beside them.

Lower Basswood falls was delightful, partly because we got there in a brief burst of sunshine. The water dove over the top through a whole series of cascades down an increasingly constricted channel for about half a kilometer. The view from the portage was magnificent. There we met an engaging pair of Detroit University lecturers (Chemistry and History) who every year spent part of their summer paddling the area together. The tall, lean and quiet Chemistry lecturer had a wonderfully ugly laugh-lined face. He paddled happily along in the bow while his massive buddy in the stern chattered about the history and legends of the area.

The second of the series of four portages was long and difficult, no easier in the downpour. The next two were simpler, but wet and slippery. We tried a short cut on the last portage and ended up at the foot of Upper Basswood Falls unable to find the connection back to the main portage. The rain grew heavier, so we put up the tent where we were, intending to find Basswood Lake the next day.

Wednesday the rain let up about noon. We bushwhacked about until we found the portage, which turned out, disgustingly, to be five meters behind our tent site. We launched half an hour later into Basswood Lake, and twenty minutes later the rain started again. Later still several storms blew over us. We quit at 6:00 p.m. at an obvious campsite on the end of a peninsula and made supper between storms.

First thing next morning a couple of officious fishermen paddled up to tell us that we were not camped on a designated campsite, and if we were caught the fine would be fifty dollars, but that the Rangers almost never checked up so we would probably get away with it. We thanked them politely.

We got to the Ranger station at Prairie Portage minutes before it closed for lunch. There was a Canadian Customs Station. That was the busiest portage in Quetico Park, and there were hundreds of Americans milling about. We met John Ball, a Scout leader and seventy-two year old retired professor from Auburn University who had devoted his restless energy to publicizing The Crimson Tide, Auburn's football team. There were several parties of older and competent-appearing Americans as well as twenty large Scout groups and about a dozen splashy duos. Underfoot were a mother and six teenage Black Ducks. I found the crowds and questions trying, my excuse for getting us lost and wasting an hour immediately after we had left Prairie Portage. We then went over five portages on the Melon Lake series with a combined length of about two kilometers. Rain poured throughout, and everything got thoroughly soaked. Two men from Chicago gave us apples, a Granny Smith (Beve's favorite) and a Red Delicious (mine).

 Friday we got off to a slow start while the sun peeped fitfully through the clouds. Five Loons passed by us in a tight line, shoulder-to-shoulder, apparently fishing, stabbing their heads under the water anxiously, whipping down to dive, then returning to the surface at once, shaking their heads, and making strange whimpering noises.

The sun continued to glow feebly throughout the day, but by supper time rain was falling again. The night was wild and stormy. Sheet lightning was so continuous and so bright that we read by its light for an hour.

Saturday the wind began from the southeast, which for once was helpful, as it blew us up Knife Lake to the portage into Cyprus Lake. The air was cool and breezy, and the rain had stopped! By noon we were over Monument and Swamp Portages and had eaten lunch. The wind shifted westerly. Two elderly couples crossed Monument Portage ahead of us, painstakingly but efficiently.

By 9:30 p.m. we were in at Saganaga Falls. We were exhausted, especially me, though Beve had done most of the heavy portaging work. I felt like someone had been pounding at my mid-section with a two-by-four. We had gotten to Customs at 4:00 p.m. and spent an hour there and at the store next door. The proprietor of the store was a well-known local who had lived there year-round all her life. She was in a foul mood, grousing about the GST, the high cost and low quality of the maps she sold, and full of excuses why she did not have for sale any of the things we wanted. Afterward I got lost trying to find the channel out of Saganaga Lake and wasted another hour. We finally settled on a fine American campsite beside what seemed like a motorboat speedway. Saganaga Lake was another major entry point for canoeists, who mostly motored in by livery boat to the first portage.

Es'toy Perdido's spray cover was badly torn, and the stitching around my nylon cockpit was going. I repaired both, but we were concerned that the spray cover might not last to Saint John. We turned in early hoping to be well rested for the next day's ten portages but though we slept for twelve hours we still woke exhausted. At least our packs were light; we were nearly out of food and fuel, which we would replenish in Gunflint.

On the Gneiss Lake Portage we met two couples in their eighties with a handsome young guide descending the river from Gunflint Lodge. The guide did all the carrying. All the heavy gear had been brought in separately by another guide over a trail from south Saganaga Lake into Maraboeuf Lake. The two couples would sleep that night in a large wall tent, in cots. The next night would be at a second lodge, where their trip would end. All this, the guide told us, was expensive. Three of the group seemed very happy, but one woman seemed in shock. "Be very careful here, she cried", pointing a shaky finger at a small mud puddle no different from a hundred others on that swampy trail," it can be very dangerous."

We later lined up several sets of rapids rather than portage. There were more rapids than on the map or in the descriptive booklet, and we were frequently confused. We camped at the portage above Blueberry, not on a campsite, risking another fifty-dollar fine. A thunderstorm had caught us in the middle of the carry, so we huddled under a tarp for an hour, and when the storm ended put up the tent at the far end. The lift was described as easy, but for us it was not. The entrance had taken an hour to find, and the trail was extremely steep and awkwardly slippery.

Monday dawned cool and dry, though rain had fallen most of the night. The river was narrow and slow, with many ducks and turtles. During breakfast a vole darted about my shoe. By 5:30 p.m. we were camped beside Gunflint Lodge. Supplies replenished, we ate a fine dinner at the Lodge restaurant, celebrating the first full day since June 23rd, sixteen days previously, that rain had not fallen.

Tuesday we got off to a slow but dry start. Half an hour later a huge storm was blowing over us and torrents of rain were falling. We were unable to find the exit out of Gunflint Lake. Only five meters wide, it flowed parallel to a large sand beach at the south end, screened by a small peninsula. Our American map showed it to be much larger and flowing at right angles to what it did. We had paddled straight up to the right place, but seeing people apparently walking where the channel would be we assumed that we were mistaken, and that the channel must be further south, around and behind the long point. We spent the next hour exploring the east end of the lake.

The long narrow passage from Little Gunflint into North Lake was enjoyable, but once in North Gunflint yet another massive thunderstorm lashed into us. We tucked behind a point on an island out of the wind. A motorboat came roaring out around the point to rescue us (which was quite unnecessary) and very nearly overturned trying to turn back in the lashing gusts and sudden big waves.

The storm passed, we crossed the Height-of-Land Portage between North and South Lakes, taking our picture in front of the Height-of-Land sign. There the drainage waters divided, flowing west to Hudson Bay and east to the Atlantic Ocean through the Great Lakes. The portage was swimming in mud, and I went ass-over-tea-kettle splat into it while hurrying to pose in front of the "height of land" sign with Beve before the camera timer fired.

Our American map showed every American campsite, but Canada was just a featureless outline. We were told that Scout groups from the United States entered on the American side in groups of ten (the maximum permitted on American sites) and then came together in groups of sixty or more to camp on the Canadian side, where there were few rules and no enforcement. Our camp was on a lovely site on the Canadian side well down South Lake, which had obviously hosted some very large groups. There was no garbage, though, and no hatchet-hacked trees.

Wednesday we rose and launched in dense fog. No rain had come in the night, but raccoons had visited us for the first time. They did no damage, but were probably very annoyed at our ABS wannigon.

At the tiny Rat Portage a teenage youth group from a Covenant Bible Camp were anxious to be helpful. One young fellow, about fifteen, conspicuous with a black cowboy hat and a single gold cross earring, told me that their Bible study for the morning had been Isaiah chapter fifty-three" ...which has a whole lot of good stuff for finding your way in today's world. Have you ever looked at it?" I said I was familiar with the passage and curious how he, an American, would apply the Suffering Servant image in today's world, but by then we were over the portage and I never did find out. Curiously, the staff ignored us, though they were standing by their tents only a few meters away. Maybe they were evaluating the young people's evangelism technique.

By noon we were facing the three-kilometer Long Portage. We took four hours and twelve posés for it, which was not bad, though the booklet suggested that we should have been through in three hours or more. Part of the portage was also part of a hiking trail, some of the signs were confusing, and the last part of the portage was unexpectedly rough and hilly. A large Bull Moose heard us launching into Rove Lake and came out of the woods to examine us more closely. He posed regally for his photograph.

The tiny narrows between Rove and Watap Lakes were supposed to be difficult to find, but were not, for the Beaver that had once dammed the narrows were gone. Wonderful two-hundred-meter cliffs overhung Watap Lake. We camped under one on a rock shelf near the portage into Mountain Lake.

Thursday we rose late to celebrate the second complete day that month without rain. Over the Watap five hundred meter portage, a difficult and taxing carry, and into Mountain Lake, five kilometers long, and glorious. Steep oddly shaped hills rose straight up out of the water. Lesser Cherry, five hundred meters, followed, then Vasseau, a hundred and eight meters, and Greater Cherry, seven hundred meters. That last was described as steep, and would be much worse if traveled east to west, but for us it was downhill and no problem. The Lesser Cherry by contrast was a slippery, rough, stony, boggy morass which the booklet described as really a delight ... a weird fairyland effect. Portaging soaking wet through steady rain (which had begun again), a cedar swamp is a cedar swamp. We camped on Moose Lake on a dark buggy site anticipating another downpour. Moose was the only lake on the whole section where we saw no people.

Friday we rose late to launch in rain. We made an easy day paddling down Moose Lake, clambering over the one-kilometer Moose Portage into North Fowl Lake and then on to camp in South Fowl Lake just above the Dam at Goose Rock.

Saturday dawned sunny, and we were soon over the two-kilometer Fowl Portage into the Pigeon River. There we met some young American long-distance canoeists who had spent the summer leading canoe trips, and who, as a final reward, had been allowed to get together for a really tough six hundred kilometer trip at their employer's expense. They told us of Shawn and Jill Feely, two young Winnipegers on their way to Grand Portage from Edmonton, who were only a few hours behind us. The rest of the day was a gentle paddle down the Pigeon River, with only Partridge Falls to portage. The international boundary followed the Pigeon River all the way to Lake Superior, but from where the Grand Portage began the river degenerated into a shallow impassable stream plunging over cataracts or trickling through deep canyons.

By 5:00 p.m. we were camped at the start of Grand Portage. There were only two tent sites, seldom used. Eventually the sixteen young American canoeists arrived and set up on one of them. Shortly after the Feelys arrived and set up with us on the other.

Grand Portage was the most difficult carry on the whole Northwest Company route between Fort McMurray and Montreal. The Methye Portage in Saskatchewan was, at twenty kilometers, longer than the thirteen kilometer Grand Portage, but it was flatter, over a better trail, and was broken by Rendezvous Lake, where there was water and a campsite. We had arranged for Brother Bill's portage vehicle to be concealed in the bushes by Partridge Falls, and had picked it up as we passed by. We had hoped that it would help us get over the Grand Portage quickly, but the trail was rooty and wet, and the low plank bridges braced on logs every few hundred meters could only take one of the two portage vehicles wheels. The other wheel dragged through the bushes. We still got through in one go, which none of the other could.

After a great party Saturday night, we started Sunday about 10:30 a.m. and were in to Lake Superior by 5:00 p.m., after a backbreaking pull. We must have sweated ten pounds each over those thirteen kilometers. The group of eight Americans was through first, then us, then the Feelys (who had to make two trips, and left their canoe a mile back at a road crossing), and finally the second group of Americans. The Feelys were fit, both short and lightly built. Shawn was powerful, but the young Americans were truly amazing. They went through carrying hundred pound wood-and-canvas Peterborough Prospectors on top of twenty-pound packs!

We much looked forward to Lake Superior and Georgian Bay; with no more portages until the French River, more than a thousand kilometers ahead.

BACK

Friday night July 19th we camped at Guerney by-the-Sea, at the base of McInnes Point in Cypress Bay. Guerney was an interesting aggregation of old comfortable cabins, calm and very beautiful, run by a teacher and his wife. He was bright, reflective, and gentle; she was energetic, outspoken, and practical. He attended the Anglican church in Terrace Bay. She had been unhappy with her United Church Confirmation class of thirty years before because some questions she had asked her teacher were not answered. Also the congregation had many gossipy hypocrites. She had had nothing to do with any church since, and asserted that with all the contemptuous assurance of Pierre Burton refusing a comfortable pew. At thirteen she demanded certainty, security, and perfection from her church and, not finding them, had ever since dismissed her church as dishonest and hypocritical. She dismissed her husband's religious practices as an example of his impractical and generally hopeless nature, also illustrated by his failure that day, as promised, to put a new roll of toilet paper in the women's outhouse. He gently observed that she might do better to listen more and condemn less, but admitted that he had forgotten the toilet paper. We sat up and talked far into the night.

Saturday morning we headed round Grant Point to Nuttal Point on sullen gray water under ominous skies. The forecast was for ten-percent possibility of showers later in the afternoon, but rain was falling by midmorning and continued for the rest of the day. The stench of mould and mildew rose depressingly whenever we opened Es'toy Perdido's spray cover. But the country was imposing; we crept through a land of giants where it took forever to get anywhere. Rocks and trees were immense, weather changed in a flash, and we were diminished and insecure. The day ended in Cavers Bay where the highway left the shore and rose into the mountains.

Saturday we made only twenty-seven kilometers, but we worked hard for it. Whitecaps rolled in late afternoon trapping us on a beach of huge fifteen-centimeter egg-shaped boulders. The whole beach was perhaps twenty meters wide, rising steeply from the water, and a testimony to what must be some extraordinarily violent storms. We were about ten kilometers south and in behind St. Ignace and Simpson Islands.

At 2:30 a.m. we rolled out to watch a spectacular display of Northern Lights. White and shimmering, they cloaked the whole sky, brighter than the brilliant stars, satellites, and planets beyond their fluttering and flickering. With the fragile filmy northern lights came the rumble and squeal of trains. There was a siding nearby, and for two hours dozens of trains ground slowly past. The rail line and the highway here ascended into the mountains.

Sunday we were up early and off. Cloud and mist soon vanished, but our gear still dripped and stank. Mid-morning we reached the end of Crown Point. The weather was hot and sunny, with puffy clouds, and, for the moment, a southerly breeze. The wind changes were capricious, but Es'toy Perdido moved well. From Cavers Bay we crossed to Crow Point, jumped to the Powder Islands and then Westport Point. A strong southwest wind blew up out of the Simpson Channel. We fitted the spray cover while the wind rose; the last few snaps were tricky.

Lunch was on a rocky point where we lazed and watched a sailboat frisking about. As we loaded to go, a low cloud bank began advancing fast towards us from the east, and the sailboat suddenly darted for shelter. We chased the sailboat round Rossport Point through whitecaps that grew and grew, pulling into Rossport Harbor after a thorough tossing about. There we met many recreational boaters, all loudly proclaiming their past exploits on the lake, and explaining why they happened not to be out on the water just then. We found one young couple especially irritating. They had seen Es'toy Perdido drawn up on the sand and insisted on telling us at length about their wonderful canoe (which was a beauty; a three thousand dollar confection of wood and brass and kevlar glowing virginally on the roof-racks of their BMW) which, of course, they would have been out paddling if they only had a spray cover, as Es'toy Perdido fortuitously happened to have.

At least the pop was cold. The marina assured us that what they were charging for Canadian topographic maps was exactly what the Federal Government was charging them. Why a blueprint photocopy of an outdated topographic map should cost three times what a waterproofed, up-to-date, five-color American map of the same Canadian area cost was a mystery. We escaped and fled to a crash campsite beside the highway. It was for picnic use only, but just beyond and outside it were a few meters of the old highway on which we pitched. The bay was much warmer than the main lake, and we swam.

Monday we were up and through breakfast by 7:00 a.m. We had slept poorly, in part because of a steady procession of visitors turning around in the parking lot. Some were doing repairs; others came late to stay the night. The wind was blowing straight on shore, and we were at the centre of a ring of distant cloud. We were exhausted and depressed for no good reason, though fear was part of it.

By 3:30 p.m. we were wind-bound at Rossport Provincial Campground. Heavy rain fell steadily after noon, and strong winds drove it through every seam in our raingear. We landed gratefully, and lucked into a lovely campsite. Cecile McGuire, a bright and personable park official, gave us an extra day free, so we stayed Tuesday. I loaned my axe for a few minutes to a person who assured me that he knew axes and how to care for them, and who promptly put two nicks in the blade. We were at the Whitesand River, once known as the Maggot River. A North West Company post at the river mouth was once attacked by Hudson Bay Company personnel dressed as Indians, a common occurrence in the years before the 1821 amalgamation. The factor and his wife were found murdered, their bodies pulsing with maggots.

Wednesday we were off early, refreshed and happy. The rain had ended, and what breeze there was followed us. We jumped out to Winston Point. Five kilometers on, off Schreiber Point, we ran into our first heavy rollers. We had just been laughing at Eric Morse's description of riding six and seven foot Lake Superior waves (we usually have our hands full with three footers) when we were suddenly in westerly seven footers rolling down the Schreiber Channel to dash up against the vertical cliffs beside us. Their pattern was complicated by two other wave systems from the south and the northwest superimposed on the larger swell. Oddly, Es'toy Perdido rode all this nonchalantly, though at first we were terrified. The smaller waves broke continuously over his deck, and the effect was like riding a camel.

Three boats struggled ahead of us, two solo kayaks and a motor sailor, all making heavy weather of the crossing. The motor sailor escaped into Collingwood Bay, but we three canoes had to go with the wind and waves for another six kilometers into shelter at the Petits Ecrits. There we chatted with the two kyakers, a couple of Toronto high school teachers. Not knowing of spray covers they had sold their open Canadian canoe and had bought two sea kayaks so they could enjoy the pleasures of canoeing Lake Superior in greater safety. Mary-Joe was less sure that had been a good idea, possibly because her husband was tough, competitive, and disgustingly fit, and they no longer paddled in the same boat. They had an ongoing debate about which color of hull, white (hers) or yellow (his), was more visible. Actually their orange life vests were their most visible mark, especially in those high waves where they continually vanished and reappeared.

Serious canoeists are often compulsives. Mary-Joe was a nut about rocks: shapes, colors and textures. She had loaded her boat with about thirty pounds of pebbles that would be dropped off in Terrace Bay. Her husband was a flour nut. He carried an incredible variety, including Arab, Afghan, and African varieties, chickpea, rye, ground nut, and potato. He cooked on an ancient and noisy but highly efficient Optimus stove.

After lunch we started to cross Terrace Bay in a near flat calm. Half way across the four-kilometer jump the waves rose up again, and the wind drove us firmly the whole eight kilometers into Terrace Bay. Three times that wind suddenly and violently changed direction. Twice rain unexpectedly poured down. Nothing came close to testing our limits, but we were constantly tense and edgy. In Terrace Bay we climbed the mountain road for an overpriced but good meal, then descended back to the canoe and paddled off to a nearby bay to camp. The beach was sand backed by outcroppings of soft black rock interlayered with pink granite. The sand grains were black and pink.

The night was cold, damp, and made noisy until after 2:00 a.m. by local yahoos squealing their tires on the paved beach road opposite. In the morning the north wind enveloped us with pulp mill stench. The skies stayed dark all morning, and thunderstorms kept just missing us. The rocks were rounded, cracked and fluted, transformed in a million ways. Gravel and sand lay about in piles on rock of every shape, size and color.

Lunch was in Jackfish Bay, following ten kilometers in three hours over difficult water. The waves were not a particular problem, but the wind veered about continually, and the water was constantly unsettled and unpredictable. The water surface became oily, shimmering with a myriad of small depressions collecting light and color. Cold forced me into shirt, heavy sweater, and raingear, which I seldom wore when the temperature was above freezing. We were mentally slowed and depressed, from the constant effort of trying to predict the unpredictable.

Thursday night was spent with the Nobles: Tom, Mary, Todd, and Tammy with Crystal and Pepper the dogs, at a rough but wonderful cottage at the mouth of the Steel river opposite Lawson Island. The Nobles were kind. They fed us supper and breakfast. Tom was a medical salesperson, Mary was a library circulation manager, and they were from London. Here also we met the Hahns, Paul and Gail, who had a magnificent summer home on Lawson Island opposite. He seemed upset with Bill Mason, canoeist, filmmaker, and painter, who had died in 1988, depriving them of his genius. Bill was a creative Canadian and a fanatical canoeist. A superb painter, he had an ongoing love affair with God's mysterious ways with color. He made the best of the available canoe instruction films, as well as many other National Film Board productions on the Canadian wilderness. He wrote several books, mostly about canoeing and Canadian identity. A deeply committed Christian, his Waterwalker video testified to his faith and intense love of creation, and points gently at where true and authentic Canadian religious experience should go in the next half-century. The title Waterwalker comes from Matthew's Gospel, from the story of how Jesus walked by trust on the lake in the storm, and how Peter tried to join him there.

Friday morning we entered and explored Bottle Cove. All the beauty which had been overwhelming us for days was here miniaturized and on display in a manner emotionally easier to cope with. Cork Cove, which followed, was much bigger and more open. Both had cliffs that were incredible both for their varied colors and for the wide wild variety of their rock forms.

Lunch was near Ripple Beach, just before the turn and long run into Neys Provincial Park. The wind was still swinging wildly, the rain was back with us, and the temperature was still falling. Beve was unwell; dizzy, tired, and nauseous. She lost her lunch halfway up Ashburton Bay. The paddle afterwards was cold, gloomy, and interminable. We landed at 4:30 p.m. at Neys campground, where we decided to stay until Beve felt better.

I walked out to the highway and met Lucien A Mitchell (locally known as "Al") and his wife Lucille. They ran Neyes Lunch, a private campground, restaurant and store above the Park. They had been everywhere and done everything, and should have been retired, but they had too much energy and curiosity. Al was trying out a new recipe for Lake Trout, which locally was considered too fat and strongly flavored to be palatable. He was handing platefuls of fish to everyone who came in "just to taste". Mine was overcooked but delicious.

Saturday Beve felt well enough to travel, and the wind was right, so we pushed on to Marathon. Before we launched we heard the story of a young man who two years before had come there on a surfboard towed behind a balloon kite-sail on a long rope. He spent three weeks wind-bound in the Park before he gave up.

Sunday the twenty-eighth we went to church at Trinity Anglican Church, Marathon. There were twenty-two in the congregation, counting the two children who spent the service in the parish hall below unattended, and Sarah, the Rector's year-old daughter, who played on the floor at the back. The average age, including those, was about seventy. A Lay Reader, Brian Bell, wandered into church about five minutes after the service was to have begun, lit the altar candles, gave a few announcements, and explained that as the rector was in White River that Sunday, he would do his best, which would probably be pretty bad, to take the service to God's glory. Unfortunately, he said, he could not sing, and as there was no organ or choir, he hoped someone would start the first hymn, which was Jesus Loves Me. Someone did, and we were off to a shaky, lugubrious, and incredibly dragged out version, mercifully mostly on pitch. I have never understood the popularity of that horrid little piece of Victorian morbidity. To the Nineteenth Century consciousness, preoccupied with death and virginal innocence, those improbable tacky sentiments of a dying child somehow testified to the benevolent purposes of a loving God. In Trinity Church, Marathon, at that time and sung by those people, they were merely bizarre. The service was Morning Prayer, emasculated medieval monastic worship, popular with Anglican worshippers because it requires no effort on the part of the worshippers. The lessons were well read by two women of the congregation. The first lesson told of the prophet Nathan taking King David to task for letting himself be seduced by Bathsheba, and then for murdering her husband Urriah to keep her for himself. Together with Psalm 32, Ephesians 3:14 and John 6, the sermon practically wrote itself. Or would have, if Brian had trusted himself. Instead he gave us a large number of extended quotes about John 6 straight from what sounded like The Interpreters Bible. He read his sermon as he had done the service, as if he had never seen the words before, pausing after every five words regardless of the sense. The prayers were read in the usual Anglican fashion, as a means of teaching the congregation, rather than as community requests addressed to God. And they were interminable. By the end of the service I was in a foul temper and determined to sing the last hymn (Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee, to Beethoven’s Hymn To Joy) with gusto. I lit into it firmly, and to my astonishment found everyone following. Afterwards a nice lady tried to recruit me into the choir!

Worship over, everyone visited cheerfully. Anglican congregations include some of the kindest and most wonderful people anywhere. Unfortunately many neither know nor seem to care that worship can have quality, that it can be done well or poorly. Later, Sunday evening, we visited with Jim and Vera Henry (Vera was one of the two Lay Readers who had read so well). Brian was a good friend of theirs, so all were satisfied that he had acquitted himself worthily. The worship had been satisfactory for those people, who all knew each other intimately, and were far more concerned with community than with standards of liturgy, which was only right. What they did not comprehend was that their worship was impenetrable and wholly irrelevant to anyone outside their shrinking community, including their own children. Attempts of the wider church, including their clergy, to make what was done in their church more penetrable were fiercely resisted and resented. Jim refused to attend church any more because he said he disliked the 1982 Book of Alternative Services, even though the morning's worship was nearly identical with what might have been done in England four hundred years previously.

They were watching their church dying, and that made them bewildered and unhappy. Between the windows around the walls of the church hung flip-chart sheets with the goals and objectives of the parish and diocese written in felt-tipped pen. The words had no contact whatever with the realities of anyone's life, and were no more than a reflection of the training and the hard, unappreciated efforts of their rector. The glass of the windows between the sheets was thick with dust and grime, as if to force attention back to the dying faithful community inside, and to block out the unpleasant and rapidly changing world outside.

We spent Monday relaxing in Marathon, though as it turned out we might better have gone paddling. We launched on Tuesday, but were forced ashore three kilometers past Marathon, where we remained wind-bound until Friday, August 2nd. On Thursday we got so bored that we bushwhacked out to the train tracks and walked back to Marathon. There we met a fellow who, on hearing what we were doing, launched without preamble in a stentorian voice: "They are laying him out this minute on a table in the funeral parlor at Heron Bay,- a good man who leaves behind a wife and two small helpless children, now to suffer because he challenged OUR LAKE. Tending his nets from his canoe, without a life jacket, only thirty-four years of age, and taken from among us!" Startled, I could say only: "Was he native?", and he, wrongly assuming that I had meant: "Was he drunk?", replied indignantly "He was a FINE man who worked twelve years under me at the Mill without any problems!" I said "I merely meant that because he was fishing with nets he must have been native." Certainty, security, and perfection: the three illusory temptations of Satan, which the locals on Lake Superior retreat to, as we all do. The Lake neither offered nor withheld them; no less God.

Friday we paddled through heavy waves to the Pic River at the entrance to Puckaskwa Provincial Park. The Guide ordered us to register our entrance at the outlet of the Pic River. We paddled up into it looking for a registration booth. There was a group of teenage natives swimming by the shore, who had been skinny-dipping, but were clothed by the time we paddled up. One rather plump young man saw us coming, and at once dropped his shorts and elaborately mooned us. We decided to ask for directions elsewhere.

A couple in a Sportspal canoe fitted with a small motor chugged up. Sportspals are short, beamy, low canoes, made from welded aluminum painted to simulate birch-bark. The couple inquired how the lake was, and without thinking I said it was delightful. There were two-foot waves out there, no problem for us with our spray cover, but heavy stuff for a Sportspal. The couple soon returned, and told us where to find the registration booth. There the forms asked us a lot of peculiar questions that made no sense for persons paddling along the shore past the park. We picked up a Pukaskwa pamphlet which said "Wilderness management is both a delicate art and a difficult science - one that must balance the desires of man with the needs of wildlife." What self-serving rubbish! Wilderness is land unaffected by human technology, and in an age where high school students tour Tibet and Grizzly Bears high in the Rockies sport radio collars, wilderness no longer exists. Parks are places where money is made from the users' nostalgic self-perception of themselves as lovers of the wild. Wilderness management is the occupation of those who study and plan in an attempt to organize, comprehend, and profit from the remaining remnants of less polluted land. Pukaskwa Park, billed as a Wilderness Park, featured Hattie Cove with sixty-seven semi-serviced campsites, twenty-nine with electricity, central showers, washrooms, many parking areas, a motorboat launching site, a picnic area, several hiking trails to sandy Lake Superior beaches, and a Visitor Centre. There were two developed canoeing rivers, and a hiking trail along the length of the Lake Superior coastline. Everything was accessible to the physically disabled. Wilderness indeed!

I was getting grouchy again. Probably running a park area is like politics, doing the art of the possible. The land would no doubt be much more damaged were it not for parks, though that argument is the same excuse my church has been using for centuries to justify its more dubious actions.

Near the Pic River outlet a small cove enclosed what appeared to be an impromptu shrine: a small pile of rocks headed by a neat wooden cross, with some designs traced in the sand. We thought this might be in memory of the young native who had drowned from his canoe while tending his nets, and who had drowned in that bay.

We spent the night on the White River outlet, at a campsite for those who had descended the White River. There we met a group of eight proficient young male canoeists. Although they all were strong-minded and fit individualists with highly-developed skills in open Canadian canoes, they were all still speaking to each other and still having a wonderful time. They had traveled light and fast; they pushed through our campsite at 6:00 p.m. and headed out into the strong wind, bound for Hattie Cove.

We had time for a chat. One fellow interested me particularly. He was blond, strong, and self-conscious, smoked pencil thin cigars, and was a graduate of the now defunct Saint John's School in Selkirk, Manitoba. He had hated his time there. "Religion and education don't mix!" he proclaimed. Saint John's had been a tough Anglican Christian School which emphasized the use of the mind, drawing conclusions from the reasoning process and acting on them, the importance of making moral choices, and the value of strenuous physical effort on paddle, skis, and snowshoes. The original school in Selkirk had closed; others had been established in Ontario and Alberta, but had also since closed. The original founder had been the western journalist, publisher and gadfly redneck, Ted Byfield. I had mixed feelings about Saint John's. Every graduate of the school I had ever met (about thirty) had told me that they had hated the place, usually because of its drab religious practices or because of its extremely demanding physical exercise program. On the other hand, I knew that many of the boys sent there had been expelled from their original schools as unmanageable. The blond young man was at least a superb canoeist, which if nothing else he owed to Saint John's. He was not popular, especially with the more technically expert fellow who leapt into a canoe and sat firmly on the seat caning into which the blond had hooked two ulti-barbed fishing plugs for safekeeping. Surgery was not necessary, but strong expressions of feeling were ventilated.

Up early Saturday we pressed on down the coast, the wind behind us, exploring lots of little islands and an incredible variety of minerals. We stopped for lunch on rock where spider's webs of milky quartz had extruded through bright pink granite, and thicker intrusions of some black softer rock had meandered through the whole higgledy-piggledy and riotously unpredictably. That day continued joyous, urged on by a bright sky and water in every possible shade of green, shimmering in constant gentle unpredictable motion. The air was icy and bright nearby, hazy from humidity far off in the blue.

Saturday's paddle ended at the White Spruce River. We would have stopped at the White Gravel River just above except that already camped there was a young man with a chrome-tanned leather chocolate-brown wide-brimmed hat, who was curt, self-confident and anxious to preserve his privacy with his much more relaxed lady. She had been sleeping; before she came down to greet us he told us that they had just descended the Pukaskwa River to Lake Superior, and were headed for Hattie Cove. That was unlikely. The Pukaskwa River had not been navigable for nearly two months, and their canoe, an expensive ribless clear-fiberglass cedar stripper which dislikes close encounters with rocks, was gleamingly unscratched.

We paddled on to the White Spruce River outlet and made camp. During the night Geese wakened us with their honking for the first time that year. Next morning a flight over-flew us; rather inexpertly, practicing. The leaves were changing to gold. The year previously we had been surprised by leaf color; but that was near Flin Flon, two hundred kilometers north. Although our evenings had been cold (down to four degrees Celsius just before dawn), there had yet been no frost. The Great Blue Herons, though, were still very much with us. We annoyed many of them; they lived off toads in the sand and on the edges of the gravel, and where we camped they would not come. They would sit on the fringes of the beach and wait for twenty minutes or so for us to move on; when we did not, they left.

All day Sunday the waves were strong and conflicting. An easterly swell contrasted with a northwesterly chop, and medium-sized southeast crossing waves rose up periodically. Paddling was not difficult, but torn and fragmented shore rock occasionally punctuated by huge-pebbled beaches made us anxious. The jumps across Simon's Harbor, English Fisheries Harbor and Newman's Bay were all considerable. As we were crossing the last the waves rose again. I wanted the camera, but, happily, chose not to risk it. The binoculars on the spray cover in front of me were washed overboard, but I caught them before they sank. Seconds later the tape recorder went swimming, and that time I was not fast enough.

We tucked behind a little island at the end of Newman's Bay to have lunch where we met a couple out fishing with their son. The woman had been the receptionist at our Marathon motel. As we chatted, four kayaks passed us out in the bay; yellow, red, blue, and white. The wind was still up after lunch, but we continued on some twenty kilometers until we were blown into Trappers Bay to stay. The harbor was tiny and shallow, unsuitable for anything but canoes. Many people had camped there. A pile of ancient rusty cans (including several lard pails) was nearby. There was a perfect tent site, but years before a tree had dropped across it. I spent twenty happy minutes cutting through it in two places and rolling the cut log out of the way. We made an illegal campfire in a well-used fire-pit, and were immediately overflown by a park bush plane.

Monday August 5th dawned clear and bitterly cold. The temperature had dropped to minus four Celsius in the night, giving us our first frost, as the wind shifted to the north. By suppertime that day we were in the mouth of the Pukaskwa River, thoroughly bemused. From Otter Island on, the landforms had reduplicated in miniature the major features that we had already seen on Lake Superior. Veined granite, black, pink, and clear quartz intrusions, shattered beaches with their big pebble, small pebble, shattered and flat rocks, beaches with pink, black and yellow sands, solid rock ejaculations straight out into the lake, vertical cliffs, shimmering multicolored water in every shade of green,- all were here recapitulated in miniature. Troll's faces leered out from among the rock formations, above water that was too bright and sparkly. Things moved about on the peripheries of vision. The landforms had enchanted us; along that coast our sanity reeled.

As we paddled into the Pukaskwa River entrance a tiny ground squirrel swam the ten-meter wide river across Es' toy Perdido's bow. His cheeks were widely extended, either with food to be stored or with air for an impromptu life jacket. He churned for shore, attempting to cheep his warning cry as best he could with his mouth firmly clamped shut.

The kayakers whom we had seen off Newman's Bay the previous day while we were having lunch were camped there. They paddled river kayaks, with a peculiar upward extension over bow and stern, and wide. I asked if they could right their kayaks should they roll. One responded: Sure we can; another at the same time started: Well, Bill did it once with a regular kayak in a swimming pool, but none of the rest of us have tried. We just better not tip. They also told us that park officials had expelled two motorboats full of people just before we arrived. We had seen three large motorboats jinxing about; one going more quickly and another delaying, with the third patiently shepherding. We had taken them for fishing boats. They might have been camped where we were, just at the river outlet, where the site was filthy and littered with garbage. We cleaned up and burnt pieces of the provincial campground sign, which had already been chopped up for firewood. Just before we turned in we waved goodnight to a motorboat headed up into the head of the Pukaskwa River outlet. The motorboat was large, festooned with fishing nets and gear, and looked very professional.

We had come that day perhaps forty kilometers in eight hours. We were not sure, because there was a thirteen kilometer gap between topographic maps 42D and 41N, and for some stupid reason I neither had the intervening map nor had noticed when packing the maps that that bit was missing. After Cedar Lake I should have known better.

August 6th was the Feast of the Transfiguration by the old Calendar. Nature co-operated with gentle breezes, wispy Sirius, and haze shrouding everything over a hundred meters away. That light was in old English water-colors; pearly whites, gentle greens and blues blending with hazy clouds and gray-green rocks, all here energized by an eerie water shimmer of a thousand multi-colored little hollows frolicking and glimmering about.

During the morning the wind rose, and an occasional wave washed over our deck. Michipicotin was visible from time to time, shrouded in blue mist. We stopped for lunch in a voluptuous grotto out of the wind, on smooth rounded pink granite veined in white quartz. An hour later the wind changed to the southwest, and the waves began breaking sullenly. Clouds were surging past, and Geese were honking up a storm. I had left my third of the spray cover open. The cover was designed for a larger canoe, and my cockpit opening forced me onto the back bar of the seat, where in those waves my backside was being pounded to Jell-O. Better the odd wave slurping in than that. Besides, something was wrong with my left hip and groin, which ached unpleasantly.

An hour later we were passing a small bay where a man appeared to be exercising two large dogs. He was actually trying to protect his elderly black male Labrador dog from what he thought was an attacking wolf. The "wolf" was a starved gray Malamute bitch desperate for companionship but terrified of people. After we fed her she calmed, and eventually followed the man and his Labrador to their boat, where, if I am any judge, (and if his wife agreed), that lovely Malamute found a new home. The couple's fishing boat was the one to which we had waved to the preceding evening at the mouth of the Puckaskwa River.

We put in for the night just beyond Cairn Point. The waves were so high, though following, that after we had fruitlessly investigated two bays before Cairn Point we had a tough battle getting back out again into the heavy water. Eventually we lurched into a perfect stopping place. The water was calm deep in a tranquil bay, and we set up camp only a few feet from the water. One Blue Heron arrived for his dinner not expecting us, flew over our tent with great croaks of dismay, then flopped dismally down to land at the extreme other end of the beach to glare at us reproachfully. In time, he left.

Wednesday we were up by 6:00 a.m. under cloudy skies suffused with red sunrise. The air was warm and the water flat calm. By 10:00 a.m. Cape Isadore was looming forbiddingly ahead. The cloud was gone, and the water surface remained absolutely flat for the passage around the Cape along the ten kilometers of cliff, which rose vertically a hundred meters straight out of the water. A fellow in Thunder Bay had warned us about the area, only he had estimated it as ten miles. In an on-shore storm it would be lethal for canoeists. By 2:30 p.m. we were around both Cape and cliffs, stopped for lunch.

Our night stop was just beyond False Dog Bay. Here we met Dan and Liz Atherton, in their sloop Breadalbane (named after the sunken Franklin Expedition's supply vessel; the National Geographic's article describing the exploration of the wreck happened to be on board). They were out of Detroit and Belle River. Most interesting people, they handled their sloop with casual competence.

Thursday we were away to Michipicotin early in breezy sunny air and challenging waves. An hour and a half later we were off the University River, recently renamed the Dog River, the place most associated with Bill Mason.

Navigational markers began at the Dog River, together with a long series of beautiful sand beaches. Lunch stop was Dore point, about 2:30 p.m.. Half an hour later the sky was darkening to the north, and the wind was rising. We threw everything into Es'toy Perdido and fled for Michipicotin Harbor, which we entered as the storm hit. There, tucked into the Coast Guard dock, we chatted with the officer. Although we were snug in raingear half under the spray cover amidst rain, thunder and lightning, he crouched relaxed in tee shirt and jeans. When he heard what we were up to, he said "Gee, Kathy is going to freak out when she realizes she missed this!" He and his wife were about to lose dream jobs, because an automatic light was soon to replace him. He spent six months as a Coast Guard Officer while his wife worked as a Ministry of Natural Resources official. He was paid a full year's salary for his six months work, and his wife collected unemployment when she was not working. We were envious.

He told us that the locals in Wawa were so terrified of Lake Superior that even his closest friends could not be persuaded to venture across Michipicoten Bay (which Kathy crossed twice daily) to the lighthouse for a visit. He echoed our belief: ... few recreational canoeists die on Lake Superior. The smaller the boat, the more you see, and the less you are likely to get into serious trouble. He told us of some fishermen who were frozen into the ice in December in Batchewana Bay, and who, unconcerned, brought out a snowmobile for beer and food, and lived on their ship, only to sail off to fish again in February.

We got into the mouth of the Michipicotin River about 5:30 p.m. There was fast water there that the chart noted, and of which Dan Atherton had warned us. No doubt worrying for sailors, it was no problem for canoeists. We simply paddled up the slack side of it by the sandbar and on to Buck's Marina, which we reached about 6:30 p.m. just as they closed. They kindly sold us some pop and chips, and the owner warned us not to try to camp on the river opposite his Marina where "a poor old guy who occasionally used to camp there on his boat was rousted out and sent off at 3:00 a.m. by local officials a few weeks ago." We got the message, and paddled upstream on past the campsite marked on our topo map (now closed by local demand) towards the private campground described by Mr. Buck the Marina owner, as: on the dead river, a little upstream of here. In fact it was over five kilometers upstream, no joke after the day we had had. The river glowed in the last rays of evening, even on the dead arm, and we felt so good to be back on a river we could not get properly indignant. The dead arm was a naturally cut-off meander, closed at its upper end but otherwise still navigable. Mr. Buck said that the voyageurs had dug the cut-off to avoid having to paddle around the dead meander, which seemed unlikely.

Dusk found me and Es'toy Perdido at the bottom of a steep cliff six kilometers up the "dead" arm of the Michipicotin River just below the highway. Beve had climbed the cliff and vanished over the edge twenty minutes before, looking for a campground. There was no way to tell where the campground was as we approached. The cliff was thirty meters high and there were no signs. Beve ascended right by a lovely motel operated by Sui Linn, a gorgeous transplanted Trinidadian who managed the motel, some cabins, three children, and her parents with effortless élan and transparent honesty. She was a total delight. We stayed the night, and wished that we could stay longer. The motel was immaculately clean, and for a ridiculously low charge provided stove and fridge, a king-sized bed, and a path down to the water that we had missed in the dusk. That Thursday we had come sixty-four kilometers in fourteen hours, through a storm and otherwise steady adverse waves, to ending by ascending a firm current for six kilometers.

Saturday, August 10th we launched late and headed south. We got to the river mouth by noon, and entered the Lake into a strong north breeze. We made sail and did well for an hour, but the wind steadily died away. I kept trying to sail (I am nothing if not steadfast) but eventually Beve lost patience, we lowered the sail, and went to work. For hours we passed vertical towering cliffs without exit beaches. We finally realized that the fellow who had warned us about ten miles of vertical cliffs had not been speaking of those that followed Cape Isadore, but of those following Michipicoten! We were past them before the penny dropped and we could become nervous. We quit on a horrible little rocky beach after only about fifteen kilometers, feeling glum. The beauty of the rocks cheered us somewhat; gray granite with pink veined intrusions, the whole splattered here and there with some kind of red encrustation.

By 9:45 a.m. Sunday Brulé Harbor was in sight, masses of gulls screaming off in the haze. We entered Bushy Bay shortly after noon, in sight of Grindstone Point. A gentle swell and oncoming breeze relaxed us, though the haze was mixed with smoke from a huge forest fire near Wawa. By 4:00 p.m. the wind was up again, but quitting below the cliffs was impossible, so we pushed hard and rounded Grindstone. About 9:00 p.m. we landed on a beach just short of Gargantua, exhausted. The beach was heavy pebble dumped over flattish rock, and the cove was sheltered but shallow. Although our cove would have been a nightmare trap for bigger boats, it suited us. The rock had at least five shades of pink, all suffused by the setting sun.

Launch Monday was about 9:45 a.m. I was in a foul mood I tried my best to control. The damn stove had required three cleanings before it would work, and the tent had been pitched too far away from the beach. I was so pooped when I went off to erect it up the previous evening that I had wandered about like a motherless child, carrying the tent like a baby, finally settling on an uncomfortable site in the brush fifty meters above Beve's kitchen. The best site had been right beside the kitchen.

Off Cape Gargantua by midmorning, and much happier that we had stopped where we had been the previous evening. Gargantua was sail and motorboat country. Half a dozen motor sailors were in sight, only one under way. The rock had darkened to chocolate brown flecked with white, unlike anything we had seen before. Es'toy Perdido was moving so leisurely that we felt honour bound to push on until 2:00 p.m. before stopping for lunch, which we eventually enjoyed in an exquisite cove of dark gray rock veined with black. Es'toy Perdido fitted perfectly into the tiny bay, just out of the wind and waves. Much later in the afternoon we were off Beatty Cove, rising and falling in a calm gentle swell, when two hikers popped out of the woods high above to examine us, and an Otter rose way up in the water beside us to do the same. An hour later we were at Bald Head, at the mouth of the Coldwall river, and in a crowd. Three Minnesotan kyakers assured us that "... more and more Minnesotans are discovering the north shore of Lake Superior every year." An alpha male assured us that there are some great campsites WAY down the beach. An attractive woman in a skimpy bikini paddling a beautiful wood and canvas canoe was disposed to chat but Beve was not. We fled down the shore and pitched in privacy, just off the open beach.

Thursday morning we paid the price for having pitched on open beach instead of in the sheltered river entrance. The surf was up, and our launch was exciting. The bow, even protected with the spray cover, shipped a few quarts of water as we entered that surf, and I did not help matters by kicking a full thermos-cup of hot coffee into the stern opening as I clumsily leapt aboard. Beve and I became elaborately polite to each other, each blaming ourselves most sincerely for the disaster. Then after a bit, we both burst out laughing. We turned into the river outlet where the highway touches the lake at the end of the bay after Bald Head. The beach was plastered with signs; No Camping, No Walking On The Dunes, Do Not Remove Vegetation, No Fires, and No Fishing. Masses of people were enjoying the beach ignoring the signs. We rested there for two hours, then pushed off for the Agawa Islands, just short of Agawa Point. Two young blond men in a small motorboat with a large motor and a huge wake, no doubt attracted by Beve's turquoise bikini, passed us closely at speed and nearly sank us. They waved happily as they roared by, ten meters away, but we were too busy trying to keep afloat to wave back. The spray cover was open at bow and stern, and we brought in several liters.

Sinclair Bay, where those blondes had come from, was full of motorboats and motor sailors, and must have had road access. The point featured rock graffiti, which the tourist brochure claim was mostly native work done over the past two hundred years. The waves were up; we had bailed out Es'toy Perdido and done up his spray cover, but even so we were too busy to appreciate the paintings. Lots of people were there to do that, though. Some of them, mostly wearing snow-white shorts or tee shirts (which we were unaccustomed to), seemed to find us more interesting than the pictographs. We rounded the Point in fine style, only to die in the long approach to the Agawa Campground beach. We were by now exhausted, and came ashore leadenly through a heavy swell. Our landing was scrambly and undignified, in part because of some canoeists trying to be helpful but mostly got in the way.

There had not been so many canoes about since the Boundary Waters, and never anywhere such a variety. There were fifteen kinds of wood and canvas, three kinds of aluminum, ten different strippers, Colemans, ABS's, a mad variety of Canadian kevlar mixes, and some eccentric but dreamy antiques. There were dozens of river, sea, and white water kayaks, and other oddities we did not identify. All were expensive, most were new and little paddled, and, curiously, none (save Es'toy Perdido) were simple fiberglass. Es'toy Perdido caused a sensation because he was the only canoe to be on the lake during the three days we were there and was obviously well used, but for the first time we were not anxious to discuss what we were doing. There were too many people trying to one-up each other, and it was all too much of a muchness. Making eye contact with anyone precipitated an immediate description of the merits of his or her canoe, delivered with all the fervent sincerity of a salesperson at a sports show. Canoes were not the only display items. Our next-door neighbor had brought some of his weight lifting equipment along, and worked out at the most public times and places. Joggers strutted their stuff throughout the day in the most incredible costumes; there was specialized clothing for every activity. But these were young, athletic people who were happy, if over-anxious about their possessions. Unlike the elderly recreational vehicle morons who slam their doors, rev their engines, and roar off at 6:00 a.m. to make miles as if pursued by demons, those younger people were interested in staying put and seeing something of the area. We never found out where they went canoeing, but they were forever driving off somewhere with their treasure securely strapped onto the car roof. If they were all variations on Notice me, notice me! it is also true that nobody ever gets enough affirmation.

The next day a heavy storm plodded in with crashes of thunder, unexpected terrifying explosions of lightning, and heavy slow waves. This continued for three days, to end this section for us.

BACK

On Wednesday August 21st we left The Sault in a sixty-five kilometer mad dash to Blind River along the north shore of Georgian Bay. Perhaps we felt guilty about our two-day holiday in The Sault, but mostly we were beginning to anticipate the end of our voyage. We would soon face one of the major costs of our voyage, our attempt to re-enter the job market in the middle of a recession. In my case, while my Bishop had been very supportive, he had made it clear that there might well be no parish for me on our return. Changing dioceses was possible but difficult and time consuming. Many people believe that the Anglican Church of Canada has too few clergy, but it has more clergy and churches than can be sustained.

Thursday morning we left Blind River in a more tranquil frame of mind and paddled happily through the morning. We stopped at 1:00 p.m. for lunch between two illegal No Trespassing signs at the end of a long sand beach. As we ate the waves grew and grew, until we leapt in panic back into the canoe and pushed out to get sea room. Lunch was one thing, to camp for the night would have been quite another!

Paddling soon became impossible and we exited into the bay at Algoma Mills. There we landed on a beach below a lovely home with extensive grounds on which a whole canoe brigade might have pitched. A beautiful canoe was drawn up on the sand. I explained our need for a tent site for the night to the lady of the house, who firmly directed us to the nearby municipal wharf: ... where those damned smelt catchers bring their trailers and half-tons. If no one will take the trouble to throw them off, I expect no one will bother you! There we found a dirt parking lot, well packed down and filthy, but practicable. I walked up to the township offices and got permission to camp there overnight. On my way back I bought the best smoked whitefish I had ever tasted from Clarence's, whose new building, a local confided, replaced one that had burned the previous year. "It's not just fish that smoke there!" He chortled. There were three boats that fished out of that bay, one of which was presumably Clarence's. The young woman who sold me the fish asked if we had seen a blue and white boat fighting its way out over the same waves that had driven us in, and said that was her Dad's.

Beve and I were both sick again; which was a nuisance. Bad water, perhaps; the cause was not Clarence's fish, for Beve did not eat it. We were tired, desperately thirsty, and our digestions hated us. That night we slept poorly. The night had been impossible; warm, trucks roaring close by, people wandering about late into the night, our anxiety about the future, and, towards dawn, a noisy blundering about the tent that we assumed was a skunk. When I went off to get the morning I met the blunderer, a young and vigorous porcupine, who calmly evaded me and headed for the trees, high hips swinging.

An early start put us off Magazine Island by 8:30 a.m. Later we paused at Round Island before the big jump to Pendergast Island. The water was calm and serene. By noon we were in amongst the Godfrey Islands together with flocks of tiny ducks, several Blue Herons, solo Cormorants, Common Terns, and Bald Eagles. Soon afterwards we had lunch in Beardrop Harbour, then paddled along the Whaleback Channel to the end of John Island, to set up our camp facing into Moiles Harbour. Moiles had three commercial fishing vessels, Algoma Mills had three, and Blind River had one. The water was being used by professionals as well as vacationers, though we were told that the fishery was nearly finished. Eight motor-sailors passed us; though the wind was fair and following, none were under sail.

Near Waters Point an adult Porcupine avoided us by scrambled up a tree as we landed. The water of Georgian Bay was warm and blue compared with the cold clear green of Lake Superior.

Saturday we were up early. A curious Raccoon had upset our pots in the middle of the night. When I turned a flashlight on him he had thrashed off into the bushes and then circled noisily around the tent to get our scent. Then he had returned for another try at our food wannigon. When I yelled, he indignantly waddled off down the beach.

We were launched before 8:00 a.m. but found the water on both the north and south sides of John Island chaotic. The wind was strong from the northeast on one side of the island and from the southeast on the other, heaping up powerful waves which swept our spray skirt end to end. We finally took refuge in the north part of the gap between Klotz Island and Aird Island, dispossessing a Great Blue Heron. By 1:00 p.m. the wind had dropped and changed to south, and the temperature had risen from fourteen to twenty degrees Celsius. All afternoon the wind rose and fell and changed direction as we moved down the Whaleback Channel, and there was no shelter. Ten husky motor-sailors passed us heading west, all under power, though their strong following southeast wind should have been ideal for sailing. The crews waved cheerfully. We also passed eleven small motorboats anchored for pickerel fishing, the crews of whom all stoically ignored us except for one fellow who responded to my wave with some remark in French which his mates thought amusing.

In the McBean Channel we heard shouts of Yahoo!, rebel yells, hysterical laughter and the sound of big engines being pushed hard. Two motor Cruisers and a SeaDo rounded the point, all at full throttle. The largest Cruiser was towing a saucer-like object with two people in it. The second cruiser ripped across the bow of the first, and the saucer flipped in the resulting confusion. With great hilarity and much drama the saucer was reeled in and the bodies dragged out. We slipped along the shoreline inconspicuously.

Our night stop was on the limestone shore of Hotham Island, the tent on a bed of shattered rock amongst small oak trees. The mosquitoes were plentiful, tiny, vicious, and starving. By 8:00 p.m. we had bathed despite the bugs and had consumed a glorious feast of the last of Clarence's smoked whitefish, fresh corn-on-the-cob seasoned with a mixture of salt, pepper, mosquitoes and melted butter, a casserole of brown rice, olive oil, canned chicken, cannestrato cheese and rubbed dill, Coke classic with a dash of Ouzo, ginger snaps and strong Earl Grey Tea. We had only come twenty-six kilometers, but that was in eight tough hours, and we needed to celebrate. Our digestions seemed to have returned to normal, and I had a confirmed kill of thirty-nine mosquitoes whilst setting up the tent.

Sunday dawned with light rain and a gentle southeast breeze. We were on the water early but two hours later had been blown off again by a powerful southeast gale. We tried to paddle again in the early afternoon with the wind down but the whitecaps were still rolling in. After an hour we pulled in near Sagomok Point, exhausted. Later the wind and waves died, but by then we only had the strength and time to limp on to the east end of the bay which encloses Fort La Cloche. That was a classic illustration of the futility of trying to dominate wind and wave, illuminated by those immortal words of Mullah Nasrudin: The moon is more useful to us than the sun, because we need the light more when it is dark. We decided to change our ways, and went to bed leaving Es'toy Perdido in the water mostly packed and the alarm set for 3:00 a.m., intending a moonlight flit to Camp Manitou.

We launched at 3:30 a.m. in the orange watery glow of a huge moon. Dampness made visibility more difficult than we had hoped. The compass was useless because there was too much light for the needle and bearing markers to glow, but too little for them to be visible. It really did not matter. We just paddled straight on, keeping the sound of the gentle ebb and flow of the shore swell to our left. When we heard that sound ahead, or saw the faint glimmer of reflected light ‚where wavelets were breaking on shallows, we swung right. When the sounds grew fainter, we swung left. We took breaks at 4:45 a.m., 5:55 a.m., and 7:00 a.m. Sunrise was shortly after 6:00 a.m.. At 7:00 a.m. we raised our Anglican church flag and ran in towards Camp Manitou, a kilometer past Flat Point.

Camp Manitou is the best of a fine group of Canadian Diocesan Anglican Church camps. A first-class creative relationship has always existed between the camp manager, Keith Birkinshaw, and the various program people of Algoma diocese. The camp has always been clear about its purpose, It has been simply a superb Christian camp. Camp Manitou is on a glorious site; on the north shore, facing out into the Bay of Islands, high and lifted up, on multi-colored granite. The buildings are scattered deep among the trees. The chapel opens out to the view, its minimal structure of the local stone, and it is perfect. The camp canoes are dramatic; wood and canvas, painted Holy Spirit blood red, twenty-seven foot North Canoes and sixteen-foot Prospectors, all solidly built by the late lamented Chestnut Canoe company of New Brunswick. Slow and deliberate in the water, but vibrant, they are the center of this wondrous exception to my church's usual boring and indifferent evangelism to young people.

The camp seemed deserted when we arrived. We explored about, then made coffee in the kitchen. At 8:30 a.m. we wrote a Sorry to have missed you note and were going out the door as the camp director, Keith Birkenshaw, walked in Keith, his daughter Lorna, Jennifer (cook's helper all summer), and Mark (Keith's young assistant) had been closing the camp, assisted by Ben, a large Labrador, and a Corgi whose name I did not catch. They had worked very late the previous night, and had been enjoying a lie-in when we arrived.

After a good visit we left late in the morning and angled across inside Wells Island headed for La Cloche Island. Keith caught up to us by motorboat with a gift of a cheese, hamburger, and macaroni casserole, which later turned out to be very useful. The channel behind Wells Island was wild with whitecaps, and the wind was soon howling out of the west. We had never before attempted to execute back wind ferries in steep four-foot waves. The stern would lift up into the wind and be yanked sickeningly sideways, then stop abruptly as it sank back out of the wind. Sometimes the bow would rise as the stern sank, to get the same treatment from the wind, but the waves were so irregular that nothing was predicable.

At least the wind was behind us. When we swung south down the La Cloche Channel and tried to cross Jumbo and Grassy Bays on the La Cloche Channel, the wind quartered across us from the west producing the most difficult water we have ever paddled. Sudden blasts over that shallow water would strike the bow with hammer blows that would suddenly jerk it downwind half a meter without warning. Waves whacked into Beve, and their spray flew over her to drive into me. Wind gusts are usually visible on the water surface and can be anticipated, but not there. The wind was already a full gale, and deep grooves etched the spray-topped short steep waves. Our progress was grimly slow. 

Resting between the two open bays we noticed signs on the west bank proclaiming it a wilderness sanctuary, which we assumed was a local device to prevent natives from the Whitefish Indian Reserve on the other side of the channel from hunting there, and canoeists from camping. We made the bridge by Swift Current with fervent thanksgiving, and decided that enough was quite enough for one day. A huge storm was moving inexorably towards us, and we needed a place to camp. We passed an elderly couple happily hauling out Smallmouth Bass; a hundred yards further on was an artificial spawning station from which the fish had been released. There was another station only two hundred meters beyond that; we camped hurriedly between the two on the south bank. Black cloud overshadowed us as we wolfed down the casserole Keith had given us earlier. In the end only the edge of the storm caught us, enough to cool but not to blow us away.

We spent a quiet night and woke to a serene morning and temperatures of fourteen degrees Celsius, which given what we had gone through the day previous, and what we were to face that day, was perhaps just as well.

The name La Cloche was everywhere. There were La Cloche Reserve, La Cloche Mountains, South La Cloche Mountains, La Cloche Peninsula, Fort La Cloche, Great and Little La Cloche Islands, and we had hurtled down La Cloche Channel the previous day. All those names originated from a large basalt erratic boulder which when struck by a voyageur's axe rang like a deep-toned bell. Eric Morse found what he believed was that rock, and left directions for locating it. Despite recent claims to the contrary, that La Cloche rock is no more. The whole area for hundreds of meters around was strip-mined sometime before 1981, and La Cloche Rock has doubtless been reduced to gravel for use on some local road. No doubt a future tourist board will find another and erect a La Cloche historical marker beside it.

Before noon we were across the eight kilometers of Fraser Bay, which the Voyageur journals frequently described as highly dangerous. Winds were blowing into it both from the southeast and the southwest, producing waves that crossed each other to give the canoe a most peculiar choppy motion. We were across, pushed by the wind, in about an hour and ten minutes.

By noon we were well up the Lansdowne Channel resting at a perfect sand beach on the most northwesterly point of Badgeley Island. Eighteen motor sailors passed us (none with sails set), and twelve large motor cruisers, including one huge wooden one straight out of the 1930's (which we later found docked at its home in Kilarney).

Later we stopped briefly in Kilarney, where the Fish-and-Chip place had no fish, there was only one well-hidden garbage can in town because the lady who looked after the picnic tables in the tiny municipal building park disliked them being used, and a woman wanted eighty dollars a night to rent a shabby housekeeping cabin. We stayed only an hour. On our way out, hugging the shore to avoid the cruisers, we were cannonballed by a moronic young lout and thoroughly soaked. My mood was much improved when we rounded Red Rock Point and met a young fit-looking fellow in a kayak double paddling strongly for Kilarney. His smile lit up as he hailed us in German-accented English. His blond hair was exactly the color of his boat, and he was a delight.

We pushed on to camp on a hiking trail one bay beyond the navigational light at Red Rock Point. We slept open, anticipating another moonlight paddle. The land was pink granite worn by constant waves into fantastic flowing shapes.

Wednesday we went forty-four kilometers before 1:30 p.m. between Red Rock Point and La Prairie on the French River. We had wakened at 4:00 a.m. and were off half an hour later in the dark, the moon once again fitful and dull orange. We steered for a navigational light that I assumed was on Mocking Bird Island, pursued by mournful blasts from the Red Rock foghorn. Though the humidity was one hundred percent, there was no fog and navigational lights were clearly visible. At first light we discovered that the navigational light which had been our aiming point was on One Tree Island, a few kilometers north and west of where we thought we were. By dawn we had reached Mocking Bird Island, where the rock flowed smoothly and gently up to the trees.

Many low islands surrounded by shallows became visible, their limestone rock rounded and flowing like drapery. Scrub conifers clung grimly in the few cracks in the smooth rock. The colors were compelling: pearly grays, gray-blues, gray-greens, and watered chocolate.

In among the Fox Islands a half dozen parties of canoeists were preparing breakfast. All of them seemed well-equipped, serious, and enjoying life. A gentle following breeze nudged us on through those islands, around Hamilton Island, and on towards the Chickens and the Hen beyond Beaverstone Bay. We stopped in the Chickens, a mass of tiny islands, rocks and shallows that made for tricky paddling. A small variant of the Boston Whaler with two fishermen was maneuvering about adroitly; both men were bait casting, one steering the boat with foot controls. Shortly after we saw a group of ten Loons strung out in a long line who appeared to be fishing co-operatively. We were soon in the mouth of the French River, to camp on La Prairie, a large field backed by a massive granite intrusion close to the most westerly of the French River's outlets. Here a whole voyageur brigade would camp before the hundred and ten-kilometer ascent to North Bay. A mass of wild rice filled the shallow bay, which we inadvertently harvested in the traditional way as the grains fell off the stalks into the canoe as we paddled in.

The Great Lakes had been wondrous but trying. The weather had been so variable, the landforms so vast, and we never seemed to get anywhere. Es'toy Perdido's irregular motion had often made us queasy. We had learned a lot and had some unforgettable experiences, but we were ready to get back on a river, particularly the French, which we both knew well. During the eight years between 1973 and 1981 I had led over four hundred teenagers on two or three two-week canoe trips a year, from the Ottawa River up the Mattawa River across Lake Nipissing and down the French River and far out into Georgian Bay.

Thursday promised to be a scorcher. By 8:00 a.m. the open air was already unpleasantly heated, although amongst the trees the air was still cool. The breeze was easterly, but wind would not be a problem in the confined river. By noon we had reached the top of the true voyageur's channel. The voyageurs wanted to enter and leave Georgian Bay by the most westerly outlet possible. They normally used the channel just west of what our topographic map marked as the Voyageur Channel, descending by a route the topographic map shows as blocked. Eric Morse had a clear description of the true route, though we are convinced that he reversed the order of the Petite Faucille (Little Sickle) and the Dalles (eavestrough).

From La Prairie we ran up the Western Channel, east on the Cross Channel past a major channel headed north, then north up the second opening, afterward keeping to the right. The north turn was not obvious, because the correct channel was between two much more likely looking entrances.

Water levels were the lowest we had ever seen. We had to portage three times, once below Petite Faucille, once at it, (where only a tiny trickle of water flowed over the waterfall), and once half way between it and the open part of the river. The voyageurs did not have to portage except at Petite Faucille when they were returning at the same time of year from Grand Portage, because no Public Works Dam at the top of the French, (built to maintain the water level of Lake Nipissing above it), was obstructing the water flow.

A Great Horned Owl flopped mournfully ahead of us as we ascended La Dalle, a great "v" shaped granite-sided notch about ninety meters long. In flood times La Dalle can be run easily, even in Montreal canoes. The narrowness and steepness make the run exciting, but a cushion or pillow of water along the sides keeps the canoe safe from rubbing on the granite. At our water level we simply paddled up a tranquil, enclosed granite ditch.

There were other ways that the voyageurs could descend to Georgian Bay. One was from Ox Bay down the Main French River Channel through the Dalles Rapids, entering Georgian Bay fifteen kilometers east of the more usual channel that we ascended. "Dalles" is one of the most commonly used names for rapids, because it refers to the eavestrough-like narrowing of a river channel that is so common a feature in the Precambrian shield. There is a wonderful tale of those rapids reminiscent of the tale of Peter's waterwalking with Jesus.

In 1794 two huge freight canoes were descending the French River to Georgian Bay. They reached the Dalles, the last Rapids before far-distant Thunder Bay. The Dalles are long and curving, and the bottom can not be seen from the top. Water levels varied greatly; sometimes the big canoes could run them, sometimes not. They could be portaged, but each canoe weighed six hundred pounds and carried three tons of freight. The voyageurs always hoped to run the rapid and save their backs. The crews of the two canoes were quite different. The first were experienced, the second were novices. The Bourgeois said "I will guide the first canoe down through the rapids and see just how bad it is. If afterwards you hear a shot fired, you will know that it will be safe for you to come also. If the rapid is too dangerous, I'll sent a runner back up the portage, and you must land and carry." The rapid turned out to be highly dangerous, and all the skills and experience of the crew were needed. They sighed with relief as they eddied out at the bottom, their limbs shaking from adrenaline, their hearts pumping fast. The Bourgeois wiped his brow and turned to order a runner to trot back up the trail to tell the crew of the second canoe that they must portage, for neither their nerve nor their skills would get them through that rapid alive. Now it was the custom in those huge canoes to carry a loaded musket in the bow at all times, in the hope that the bowman might shoot a duck or goose to add to dinner. Just as the Bourgeois turned to speak to the runner, up flew a fat duck, and the bowman whipped up the musket and shot it. The Bourgeois leapt out of the canoe and ran up the portage as fast as he could go, but he was too late. The crew of the second canoe, hearing the shot, had pushed out into the foam, where they lost their nerve and panicked. The canoe smashed onto the rocks, rolled, and was lost. All twelve of the crew drowned. 

That story is history. Scuba divers still swim about in the turbulence at the foot of the Dalles Rapids in the hope of recovering trade goods left there after the 1794 accident. The story is true in a another sense. The men of the lost canoe drowned because they lacked faith. Their canoe and paddles were identical to those of the first canoe, and they were nearly as skilled paddlers. Their deficiency was faith: the ability to trust in themselves and their God. Lacking trust, they lost hope and sank, as Peter nearly had. Leonard Cohen's Suzanne:

We ascended slowly to Ox Bay, through a huge muddle of motorboats, cottages, and fishing lodges. The country still retained a familiar parched dignity,- dried, crispy lichen over rounded granite, with occasional sand beaches,- but it has had very heavy use. From Ox Bay we ascended the Pickerel River. Both the French and Pickerel Rivers flow in and out of Ox Bay. Above Ox Bay the French flows faster than the Pickerel; we intended to ascend the more sedate Pickerel and then lift up into the French at one of the two points above Highway 69 where the two rivers nearly touch. That would avoid First and Second Rapids and Recollet Falls on the French River.

We stopped at Burling's Lodge just below the railroad bridge, drank some pop, and discussed politics with Ross, whose political creed seemed the same as everyone else from coast to coast: Out with Mulroney! He did have one twist which scared me as much as the prospect of democracy once appalled the Duke of Wellington, that the people ought to be able to decide by plebiscite each and every issue, and to dismiss their politicians instantly when they did not like what they were doing. That was certainly becoming technologically possible, but I found it terrifying. Nobody wants taxes; everyone wants government largess. All of us are happy to vote against government bribery of anyone except ourselves. Many of us, - especially we Westerners,- are happy to be bribed by our local politicians, but want bribery on the Federal level stopped because we enviously believe that Quebec or Ontario are getting more than we are. A better receipt for social paralysis than Ross's would be hard to imagine.

Our discussion took far too long, and by the time we had paddled the seven and a half kilometers to The Twins and had camped, the light was fading. We ate supper in the dark; the moon was not to rise until near 11:00 p.m. As I was finishing my dinner, a disembodied voice out of the blackness hailed "Have you a boat?" I replied "Yes, a canoe." There was a long silence, then a voice called "We have run out of gas." I replied "I will finish my dinner and be right out to you." Before I could wolf down the last few mouthfuls, a motorboat emerged from the gloom, paddled by a tall, strong fellow accompanied by two women. They were Steven Hrenyk, his wife Queenie and his sister. Steve had run out of gas, and he had paddled his heavy boat for a kilometer. He intended to spend the night on the river opposite our bay if he could not get help from someone where we were. All three were well dressed, the ladies in white. None could swim, and the women were extremely unhappy. Beve settled the ladies by the fire, and I fitted Steve out in my lifejacket to take him off for help. I told the ladies that we might be as much as an hour and a half, made sure they had plenty of firewood, and then launched with Steve seated in the middle of Es'toy Perdido and Beve in the bow to fetch gas at the Rail Road bridge. 

Steve sat grimly erect as the canoe plunged into the darkness. Later he told me that he was terrified of canoe travel. The trip was uneventful, and rather fun, at least for Beve and me. We arrived at John's place, and promptly ran up on a rock shelf, nearly capsizing. Steve clung grimly to the gunwales as we backed off to have another bash. John was watching a football game with a glass of rum, and was far too sensible to launch out into the dark hauling gas. His daughter was far too busy controlling a horde of small yapping dogs to be of any help. John offered us his boat and a can of gas. We put Es'toy Perdido crossways over the gunwales, and Steve drove back. Steve was a retired Via train driver. John had said over and over: It's just the same as your boat, no problem, as Steve rather dubiously tried to familiarize himself with the controls in the dark. There were navigational lights, but we never did figure out how to make them work. Steve got Beve to flash our flashlight ahead as a warning as we purred into the darkness. It was my turn to be frightened. Steve drove that boat steadily straight into the black. I had no idea where we were until he swung in to the light of our campfire.

Next day we arrived midmorning at the Pickerel River Marina at Highway 69 and chatted with the owner. Afterwards we decided that we would never again say where we had come from or where we were going. The marina owner did not at first understand us, then he thought we were driving a car coast-to-coast doing little canoe trips on the way, then he decided we were liars, and every effort to explain just made us feel more foolish. In the end, he simply could not cope what it would be to canoe coast- to-coast; he did not have the imagination or the geographic knowledge to understand what was involved. Much better to say, if asked, that we came from just upstream, which we resolved to do in the future.

We decided to cross over to the French River from the Pickerel River at Horseshoe Falls, which we reached by lunch. The portage had seen heavy use. It was about two hundred meters, and steep at the beginning. The passage after the falls was dry for two stretches of thirty meters each which we had to portage, and afterwards I got lost turning north-west into Cantin Island instead of continuing north to the French River. That last was due to carelessness, but I had some excuse; because my compass was in the pocket of my life jacket, and Beve and I had inadvertently exchanged lifejackets at the last portage. We never did get quite to the main channel of the French River that Friday. We landed on an island near Arthur's Point where our tent site was high and lifted up, and the view was spectacular. In the night, so was the wind.

Saturday was my birthday. The wind still howled down on the island out of the northeast, and we both wore every stitch we owned fighting a temperature of four degrees Celsius. The waves ripped past our island; they were small but very fast. Preparing breakfast I failed to notice that the stove's three feet were improperly seated, and a whole pot of freshly brewed coffee was dumped out on the rocks. The tent was struck with some difficulty, and the canoe launched with even more, but we were later able to sort ourselves out in the lee of a small island.

At noon we met three touring canoes, the first two with the usual communicative girls in the bow and uncommunicative males in the stern. The third was a treat; a young woman was expertly powering her canoe from the stern, while her male companion relaxed in the bow. They had a guitar, had been playing with a sail, and seemed very happy. They told us, which we did not need to hear, that we were going the wrong way! Shortly afterward a lodge motorboat passed us with seven people aboard. The four women were wearing parkas, and waved cheerily. The three men wore army-type camouflage, and glowered.

The sky cleared, the wind still blew firmly in our face, but we continued to make good time. At 2:00 p.m. we ascended the Crooked Rapids and had lunch. The last bit was especially windy, but the current was no trouble; though firm, we were able to paddle straight up the rapid.

The ten kilometers between Crooked Rapids and Little Pine Rapids was sacred ground for us. I started to learn white water paddling with Glen Fallis's Voyageur White Water canoe school in the Blue Chute on that section. I have descended this section over twenty times with different groups of friends, and we both know every inch of it.

Up through Devil Chute, a tough short pull, but not as difficult as the pull just below it in that shallow water. The carry over Little Parisiènne Rapid followed. What appeared to be a North Canoe was tied at the foot of the portage. It actually was one of Glen Fallis's Montreal canoes, thirty feet long with seating for sixteen people. It was being used as a sort of vacation tourer for a group of young adults led by a recreation director, who explained his program, and congratulated us on our voyage. His young adults were neither canoeists nor re-enactors. Young and inexperienced, and not very interested in the land about them, they were very involved with each other. We made three attempts to speak to several of them, without much response. They seemed upset that outsiders were passing through their night stop.

On to the Blue Chute, a place of magic memories. I have sat late into the evening high on the granite above that chute with more than half of those persons I count as close friends. The chute comes immediately after a blind bend around a big island. In flood, the water can drop five meters in a slick green downstream-pointing "v" to explode in a three hundred-meter tumult of standing waves below. It is a perfect place to learn and practice white water technique.

Beve and I, coming upstream, got to the Blue Chute at about 5:00 p.m. As we landed, a mother Bear and three cubs scrambled over the island and swam the river through the standing waves. We decided to camp, despite a foul stench like burning garbage. Someone who had camped there the night before had not put out their morning campfire, and it had slowly consumed the sixteen centimeter depth of old packed needles for half a meter around the stone ring. Given time it would have gone down into the cedar roots to later flare up in a nasty fire. Twenty pails of water and some digging did what one pail might better have done much earlier.

A group of four canoeists arrived. Steve and Philip first gave us a hand putting out the fire, and then asked my advice about running the rapid. I made no recommendations, confining myself to "If you run the rapid, you might consider..." and "If you don't, it might be because..." The wives were quietly enjoying themselves, without any intention of running any rapids. Eventually, though, the men did, and in fine style.

That night Beve had a terrible nightmare. She screamed and screamed before she could be calmed. That was her turn; mine had been eight weeks previously, when she had held me through one. Probably she ate or drank something that had disagreed with her; we both again had diarrhea and cramps, bloody stool, and general horrors.

Next morning we demonstrated the dangers of over-confidence. At the Double Rapid we were lining casually up and along the central whale rock when Beve, tending the bow rope, turned her back on Es'toy Perdido and began her pull a bit too late. I pushed him out into the current a bit too soon. The bow whipped out into the flow, the rope went taut, and before Beve reacted we had shipped a couple of liters of water in over the upstream gunwale. If I had bothered to make a proper bridle for Es'toy Perdido, in which the knot and hence the pull was at the water line, the water would not have come in. Instead, the bow rope was attached to the stem thwart; the angle allowed the fast current to push the gunwale down on the upstream side. The only remedy to such a whipping bow is instantly to throw the bow rope well out into the current, allowing the canoe to swing a hundred and eighty degrees and come in to shore held by the stern rope. Beve did that. No harm was done, apart from the need to bail a few liters of water and to chase down a paddle which had gone swimming.

After that nothing went right. We ran up on two rocks, I slipped and fell on slime twice, and below Big Pine Portage my tea went over into the boat, which precipitated an awful row. By 9:40 a.m. we were over Big Pine and Little Pine, and had landed at a Fishing Lodge where we shared four cokes, four chocolate bars and a huge bag of chips. After this we felt much better, and we launched cheerfully into a strong northwest wind. We crept slowly up to the Ducks, where we had lunch about 2:30 p.m.

Later we continued steadily into the stiff headwind. Three Grummans flew past us headed south: "You're going the wrong way, you turkeys!" cried one fellow. For months we had fought southeast winds. Now, when we could have used one, we got northwest! We reached the unnamed rapid below the Lower Chaudière Rapids at 5:30 p.m. The portage was across a peninsula from which the unnamed rapid, one kilometer above and around a bend, was not visible. We chose to ignore the portage and charge up, even though we could hear a rapid's roar. The noise turned out to be the sound of the Lower Chaudière Rapid above; we paddled effortlessly up the unnamed rapid. There the route forked. Left were the Lower Chaudière Rapids and the Chaudière Dam. We went right, up to a one-kilometer portage (on which we camped) around a second dam.

Physically we were whipped. That was understandable; we had come forty tough kilometers. But we were also sluggish mentally and emotionally. We collapsed on the rocks to watch the gulls catching dinner on the water surface. They floated down at the foot of the rapid with the current, moving from side to side like baseball fielders snagging flies. When they reached the foot they would fly back up to the white water edge, and begin all over again. One left his buddies to cast a hopeful eye on us.

Monday we were up and off in temperatures of two degrees Celsius very early. By noon we had passed innumerable stately cottages, been passed by innumerable motor yachts, and were in Lake Nipissing. The wind had shifted to the northeast, and was rising. We stopped for lunch and to watch cruisers and floatplanes go by. Some boats were anchored, Pickerel fishing. There were a few older clutches of Mergansers and a few Loons, but otherwise all was concentrated human frenzied rush. Speedboats of awesome power thundered about, many carrying children seated on the foredeck with their feet dangling over the bow. There were no canoes.

We lazed about there until 4:00 p.m., exhausted and depressed. Then we moved on to Cross Point. Alexander Henry's journal of 1763 off Cross Point reads: I saw graves ... if graves they might be called, where the corpses [were] laid upon the bare rock covered with stones. That has been suggested as the origin of the name Cross Point; because voyageurs who had drowned often had their burials marked by crosses. A more likely suggestion, it seems to me, is that Cross Point was where the canoes would leave the shoreline to cross Lake Nipissing to North Bay and the La Vase River. We intended to cross lower down the peninsula, because the further down the shoreline we went, the shorter and safer the morrow's crossing would be.

There were fewer cottages after Durrell Point. The clutching consumptive fingers of civilization only reached out where road connections and electricity were available. Late in the evening we camped on a gorgeous island in a dead flat calm. The fiery red ball of the sun was sinking into Lake Nipissing as we pitched our tent.

Tuesday we were up at 6:00 a.m. and off to North Bay. Wind and wave were south, but thanks to Beve's expert navigation (in which she had no confidence) we landed right on the Reverend Canon Ken Cleator and his wife Bernice's front lawn in North Bay after three hours of easy paddling. I had been Ken's Assistant Curate at Saint Barnabas (Chester), Toronto, in the mid-sixties.

Thursday September 5th we ran the length of the Mattawa River, fifty kilometers and eleven carries, and all sheer joy! We started at the end of the La Vase (muddy) portage in Dugas Bay on Trout Lake, travelling empty save for lunch, and went quickly. Es'toy Perdido was designed for distance racing, but with the heavy loads we usually carried he could not usually demonstrate his quality.

We descended the Mattawa empty not only for the joy of letting Es'toy Perdido loose, but also because a tendon or muscle in the my groin, injured way back on Lake Superior, was refusing to heal and becoming daily more painful. I wanted to avoid carrying the gear over the many small portages. (It was being sent on by road). Even so the eleven lifts with a total length of over three kilometers were taxing, especially for Beve who carried the canoe. De la Tortue (now flooded out by a dam), de la Mauvaise Musique (with a wicked sideways slope), Pin de Musique, Talon, Des Perches (polled up and run down by the Voyageurs, but often called a dècharge), De la Cave, De la Prarie, Des Paresseux, a shallows near Les Epingles, Des Roches, Campion (dècharge), Des Roses (dècharge, now flooded out), Plain Champ (often Plein Chant, also flooded out), and the modern Hurdman Dam were our eleven lifts which, with the three now vanished historical lifts, made fourteen in all. The Mattawa was extremely shallow. Campion, for example, was normally runnable downstream in small canoes, but not for us. We hoped to meet fellow paddlers, but did not; Labour Day Weekend was past!

Friday we paddled the thirty-five kilometers to Deux Rivieres down a calm, wide section of the Ottawa in perfect weather. Deux Rivières was the launch site for most of the voyages of North Canoe. Those voyages normally had gone up the Ottawa River, up the Mattawa River, across Lake Nipissing, down the French River, and out into Georgian Bay, to end either in Parry Sound or Sault Ste. Marie. Deux Rivières made a logical end to that section of our voyage.

BACK

Saturday September 7th we paddled the forty kilometers along the Ottawa River between Deux Rivières and Driftwood Provincial Park over calm warm water, in cool bright airs, with gentle current. Driftwood Bay was difficult to approach because of shallows.

Sunday began by being lifted by truck around the Des Joachims Power Dam. We arrived in Deep River at 10:25 a.m., just in time to attend worship at Saint Barnabas. The church was packed, buzzing with pre-service excitement. A first-class trumpeter accompanied some of the first hymn's verses. There were only three hymns, each well chosen and strongly sung. The psalm was sung superbly but simply. The children were fully involved in the service, and the congregation were throughout relaxed, smiling, and happy. The liturgy was Baptism and Eucharist. The homily was a terrific teaching exposition of the baptismal promises, well done but long, mostly not comprehended by the congregation, but listened to politely and approvingly. The Reverend John Blakley won my heart when he said he wished that one of the questions asked the candidate for baptism read "treat all creation with dignity and respect" in place of "treat all people…" This was modern Anglican liturgy at its best; the people of God gathered about the font and then around the table, relaxed and comfortable, using vernacular words and ideas, and offering all their talents in worship. There was another side. There was no silence, no sense of the mystery, and little perception of God as transcendent. The worship was of God as mother: immanent, emotional, warm, and accepting, in contrast to the father God of power, risk, and awesome prodigal creativity. Nothing wrong with that, of course. What is done in church must reflect how the people understand their lives offered to God in worship and the God they are worshipping.

At the coffee hour people who learned what we were doing fed us the usual local horror stories; of fierce winds, low water levels, grim weather forecasts, and massive impassable upcoming dams. We listened and cheerfully rejected most of it. Not that we were really feeling very cheerful. Ever since the Mattawa River Beve had been tired, depressed, and irritable. Since Lake Superior the pulled muscle between my left hip and groin had grown steadily worse and worse. Now it ached continuously, and if I spread my legs suddenly the pain was agonizing. Part of Beve's depression was a reaction to mine; she said that my turtle-like attempt to deny my pain called her Father's death from cancer, which had begun as a diagnosis of arthritis precisely where I now ached.

We left Deep River at 2:30 p.m., in a fleet of canoes and small motorboats. There were sixteen canoes in various stages of disrepair drawn up high at the launch site, apparently the property of those who left them there when not in use. Ten or so older couples came down as we were loading and set off into the river in canoes; nine motorboats were launched at the same time. We chatted with one fiftyish couple paddling an immaculate green sixteen-foot Peterborough canvas-covered Prospector fitted out with silver-gray paddles, an oversized English luncheon hamper, and a tiny wine cooler.

The river was wide and steep-banked on the Quebec side. Every six hundred meters or so there were sandy beaches with a party of motor-boaters or canoeists enjoying a lazy Sunday afternoon. The sand beaches had fire pits, grills, primitive toilets, picnic tables, and garbage cans.

Artists, presumably local, had painted a number of designs on the rocks framing the beaches. They were mostly of high quality, anywhere from two to seven meters in length, signed with initials and dates, and inspired by native designs. Cheek-by-jowl with those were spray-can painted slogans including "A. L. Ashcroft was here May 1990" and "John loves Mary trooly". I did not like any of them. At least they were not portable, and so could not be bought and sold. Art ought to evoke or provoke insights into the meaning and significance of life, and neither the rock paintings nor the graffiti did that for me. They did underline how our aboriginal people have subsumed their tribal or geographic identities in a more general aboriginal one, so that local Ojibwas wear Blackfoot feather head-dresses on festive occasions and carve Tinglit totem poles when bored. Also, although tastes change, always the desire to guild the lily by putting a human stamp on nature remains. I doubt whether John Bigsby, who passed by in the 1840's, would have approved of those native designs, (let alone the spray can messages), but he had his own suggestions for improvement. "This defile of steep hills and precipices alternating for thirty-six miles is equal to the best part of the Rhine, apart from its ruins; a thousand pounds spent in erecting on a few commanding points some fragmentary castles would produce a splendid scene".

By 6:00 p.m. we were at Pointe au Bapteme, just below the Chalk River Nuclear Plant, on a huge sandy peninsula on the Ontario side. Here long ago voyageurs on their first trip to the Sault were put through some very rough initiations. A pair of shapely young mothers in bikinis was watching their husbands tearing around the bay in a big motor cruiser dragging a saucer full of small children. The women instructed me firmly that we were not to camp, because the point was owned by the Atomic Energy Commission and used as a recreation area by their employees only. If we would paddle another hour we would find a recreational beach on the Quebec side where camping was permitted. I am for peace, and a feel for history would be hard to evoke in the shadow of that nuclear facility. Also, the beach suggested was tucked under Oiseau Rock, where the voyageurs ascending the Ottawa River in the spring renewed their contact with the granite of the Canadian Shield. A trail to the top of Oiseau began behind the tent site, but by the time we got there we were too tired and sensible to climb it. The campsite had a great tent site and a barbecue, a sand beach out of the wind, a fire pit and plenty of wood.

My hip was still in agony, another reason not to try the Oiseau trail. The pain was ruining my digestion. I no longer could cross my left leg over my right, even at the ankle, without disabling pain.

Monday dawned cloudy and blustery. Though our bay faced east, it was not the sun which waked us, but strong tent-whipping breezes blowing firmly at us out of the southeast. We launched into them for Pembroke and a doctor. I wished I had done more homework on that section. According to Eric Morse, the voyageurs went upstream by the channel south of Cotman Island (just below Pembroke), and returned in the autumn through the Rapides des Allumettes just south of Allumettes Island. John Bigsby used this southern route ascending. By contrast, Clyde C Kennedy in The Upper Ottawa Valley argues that the fur traders used the Chenal de la Culbute around the north shore of Allumettes Island both ascending and descending. All this was no guide for us, as we had not only to get over the modern dams, but also to anticipate how those dams had changed the voyageur's water levels. If there had been no dams, we would certainly have tried the Culbute Channel around the north side of Ile des Allumettes, half the distance but shallow. We did know that the north channel was used by White Water rafters, but their brochure suggested that it was fellowship and not the thrill of deep fast water which was the attraction (come dressed as your favorite super-hero), and anyhow they only operated in the spring high water. We finally elected to try the south (Petawawa-Pembroke) side, mostly because I needed a doctor.

All along the south shore were signs warning people that the Petawawa soldiers might accidentally shoot trespassers. Military exercise were in progress; explosions and machine gun fire ripped into the silence as a helicopter thudded overhead.For the first two hours the cloud cover increased and the air grew darker. The Quebec shore was an endless line of densely packed cottages along a series of sandy beaches. There were tether-ball posts, lawn chairs, volleyball nets, and lots of aluminum boats. It was not canoe country, though it might have been. The Ottawa shelved so gently that most of the motorboats could not get within twenty meters of shore, and were staked and floating. We saw only two canoes, a sixteen foot Scott lying beside a twenty-foot square-stern aluminum.

Rain began at noon. The wind kept rising and swinging more easterly. The explosions continued. Off Petawawa at an odd narrows the landforms had forced the river into a narrow channel where wind-driven waves a meter high and a meter apart drove upstream into strong current. The current swept us forward into the waves, which bounced us about considerably. Eventually we pulled into Pembroke, after thirty-four kilometers, the last of which were agonizing.

The doctor examined me, eliminated male plumbing problems, venereal diseases, and hernia, and told me that excessive paddling was my problem, aggravated by my forcing my knees out into the gunwales for more power in my stroke. "Take two weeks off and go experience some of the delights of our capital city!" the doctor ordered. I once lived nine years in Ottawa, and I don't think of it as a place to experience delight, but we did take five days off at my brother's cottage in Norway Bay, where my problem became manageable again.

We launched early the following Sunday in pouring rain with a good brisk wind blowing straight in our faces from the southeast. We might better have waited, but we were too restless, and had sat aimlessly too long. The day proved taxing but unsatisfactory. The rain poured down and the wind howled, and after we had rounded the Norway Bay point the wind blew in our face straight out of the east. By evening we had paddled twenty kilometers further along our route into that wind, and had added an extra ten wandering about searching for the start of the portage around the Chats Dam. All had gone well until we were allowed ourselves to be enticed midmorning off the river and out of the rain with an offer of hot coffee from John and Jean Dunbar, who lived in a summer home there. They came from Pembroke, knew the area intimately, seemed quite interested in what we were doing, and were in all ways most hospitable. They were so pleasant that we chatted for a whole hour. They asked us to call on some friends downstream who will be most interested in what you are doing. I said that we probably would not, as we were behind time. We had reckoned without the CB. As we passed the cottage of Bill and Donna Mulvahill, Bill waved us in, and also offered coffee, cheese, and biscuits. We accepted, and had a great time talking (Bill was a High School Guidance teacher and a great listener). It was just as well that we had stopped. John had directed us to the south end of the huge Chats Dam for the portage. Bill showed us a 1:50,000 chart of the dam area, and the portage seemed just about as far north of the north end of the dam as it was possible to get. 

The rain having stopped and the wind moderated, we set off once again down the river. About 5:00 p.m. we got to where the portage was supposed to be. For the next three hours we searched up and down through confusing channels exploring possible trail entrances. The last trail took an hour to eliminate, and we set up camp at its entrance. Half an hour later a large motorboat roared up. The driver, his wife and son introduced themselves (over the engine noise I caught only Tom, the name of the son). They were ready to help us in any way they could. They offered to take me in their boat to the start of the portage. "Now we don't KNOW that's the portage, but over the years we've seen a lot of canoes coming down that trail!" That was enough. I accepted, and off we thundered into the twilight. The trail turned out to be at the very first place we had checked, and we had actually landed there later for a second look! Each time a game trail to the left had engaged our attention, and we had missed the portage, a faint trail down tight to the cement groin and then out onto the shattered rock. Our new acquaintances offered us bunks and showers in their home, but we declined, as we needed a fast start the next day. We went to bed, rejoicing that we had been shown the trail but growling about the time we had wasted searching for it. Beavers twice during the night began tail slapping. They must have been upset at us, for there were no tracks save beaver on the bank the next morning.

Monday we were up and away early, in heavy fog and a dead flat calm. We were travelling very lightly, because we were headed over what we had been told was a very rough portage. My brother was to meet us in Ottawa with the camera box, the tripod, the axe, and our extra food, all of which we had left behind in his cottage. I regretted not having the camera; that whole area was stunningly draped in gentle translucent morning mist.

The portage was at the north end of the first groin within the long bay extending to the north above the dam. It ducked down inside the groin and then turned sharply east across crushed rock up over a hill. It ended at the extreme northern end of the last bay to the east below the dam, above the Snye, and was reached by a flight of wooden steps off a minuscule beach. At the top of the stairs the path crossed a crushed and blasted rock pile and the road to dive into the bush for six hundred meters.

We attacked the portage with determination, and were over it and headed down-river by 8:30 a.m. There was a steady breeze upriver, neatly countering a steady downstream current. At Quyon we phoned Bill to tell him of yesterday's delay. We could not now meet him, as planned, at the Champlain Bridge that evening. The best we could arrange was for him to pick us out of the water on the Ontario side at the Ferry. That he did, and we bypassed Ottawa in his truck. We had looked forward to running the Deshenes Rapids, but they were too shallow at this time of year anyway.

Tuesday we made a late launch, delayed waiting for an Ottawa journalist who never came. Bill dropped us off about twenty kilometers south and east of Ottawa. The wind had reversed, and was blowing powerfully from the west. Wind and wave drove us along at a good clip. They grew and grew, blowing us down the river past Montabello and a host of picturesque little towns. Thunderstorms threatened continuously, but none caught us. The afternoon was blowsy fun, fast and breezy, demanding concentration but no effort.

We saw only three boats on the water all day. One was a large sloop handled audaciously by a flushed and deliriously happy young man. He tore about hither, thither and yon; finally he ripped past us missing us only by an alarming four meters, spilled his wind and hailed "We've not had winds like this all year! Isn't this WONDERFUL!" Without waiting for more than the briefest nod in agreement, off he tore.

We came an astonishing thirty-eight kilometers between 11:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m., taking an hour on shore for lunch. Our camp was just short of Hawkesbury, on a shore development that had been surveyed but unimproved. The tent was pitched at the end of a cut trail that had already seen use as a crash camp.

Wednesday morning the wind had reversed and was blowing just as firmly from the east. The sky was cloudless, the air clear and cold. By 11:00 a.m. and after a huge struggle battling from headland to headland we were only in downtown Hawkesbury. Our speed had been one kilometer an hour, and there was just no point in continuing. The next day's forecast was for a return to west winds, so we decided to possess our souls in patience and wait. Were we getting soft, or finally learning an important lesson? Weather forecasts were often wildly off and perhaps we should have pushed on, but we did not. We took a cheap motel room right beside the channel, and, despite the noise of a work crew reconstructing the bridge a few meters away, relaxed for the afternoon. But relaxation wasn't easy. The battle almost won and the end in sight, we were finding ourselves in the doldrums of our voyage. One minute we believed we had succeeded, and wanted only to rest. The next we feared failure, and rushed foolishly into over- exertion.

Stretched out on the bed, I listened to Peter Gzowsky on CBC's Morningside beginning a five-part series on modern spirituality, which radio static and construction noises made frustratingly difficult to follow. My mind wandered to a news story a few years back about a special police task force who had burst into a Hawkesbury motel room in the middle of the night and machine-gunned some sleeping house painters they mistook for drug smugglers. "Was this the motel? Perhaps the very room?"

Thursday we rose very early after a shaky sleep and launched long before dawn in steady, icy, soaking rain. Soon we were off Chute à Blondeau, or Cushing, where the French name is on the Ontario side and the English name on the Quebec side. Before the building of the Carillon Dam, the twelve consecutive miles of the Long Sault Rapids began there. At their foot the Courier-de-Bois Adam Dollard des Ormeaux made his celebrated stand in 1660.

All morning the temperature dropped and the rain continued. I was wearing life jacket over raingear, heavy sweater, light sweater, shirt, and underwear, and I was still cold. Beve, affected by cold so much more than me, stopped communicating about 10:00 a.m., as we shivered slowly down a shoreline jammed with tiny closed cottages. The rain ended eventually, and we could raise our eyes to hawks soaring high above us without our glasses becoming water-streaked and fogged.

We locked through the Carillon Lock, a Public Work's lock used only for recreational boats, and free for canoes. All Federal Public Servants were all out on strike, but these workers had returned the previous day to prepare the lock for winter closing two days later. Our timing was perfect.

After a quick lunch, we were off to Oka. About us motor-cruisers, fishing boats and motor-sailors were enjoying a last outing before winter. Over the next sixty kilometers the wind rose behind us, the current picked up, and we began to fly. The last ten kilometers were hairily wondrous. The river narrowed, the shoreline rose and became heights, and Es'toy Perdido began plunging enthusiastically down upon huge shallows, hard to anticipate in the late afternoon glare.

Thursday night was spent with Ross, Doreen, and Michelle Holden, friends of my sister and brother. Ross drove up from Pointe Claire to pluck us off the water. He could not understand why we had chosen to lift around his beloved Montreal, but from its filthy water Montreal is ugly; ocean-going freighters in the Seaway and thieves on shore.

We launched below Montreal on the south shore of the Saint Lawrence River. Later we stopped to tour Ville de Tracy, with its lovely park. We had a meal and fell asleep. When we woke, we had to drive off a crowd of curious children who were poking about in our gear. We descended past Sorel, through many large islands and huge navigational markers, and out into the vastness of Lac Saint Pierre. The south shore was shallow, windy, and built up.

From there to Rivière de Loup our voyage hit bottom. We could not get water, we could not camp, we could not find lavatories, and after Quebec city we could not always even get to shore. We had not properly planned, and we did not speak the language. Water was hard to get. The Saint Lawrence River was hideously polluted. Andre Picard has done some horrifying pieces on pollution in the Saint Lawrence for the Globe and Mail. He reports that this year almost 620,000 kilograms of suspended solids were being discharged into the St Lawrence River daily by thirty-eight industrial plants, together with thousands of kilograms of heavy metals, much of it seriously hazardous to humans, together with thousands of kilograms of sulfuric acid. Two plants alone were dumping over 400,000 kilos of sulfuric acid in the river daily. Many municipalities dump untreated sewage straight into the river, including the human waste of a million Montreal toilets and those of the entire suburb of Laval. All river beaches downstream of Cap St Jacques were health hazards, and had been closed for years. Doré beach, a seven million dollar artificial creation on Ile Notre Dame on the shores of Expo's man-made Regatta Lake, has had the safety of even its water questioned, and despite prohibitively high admission prices its five thousand person access limit was frequently sold out. We refused to consider cooking with or drinking Saint Lawrence River water, yet the alternative was somehow to land and beg, a time consuming and awkward process, especially given our lack of French.

We found camping next to impossible, because the shoreline for most of the distance had been closely built up for hundreds of years, and the few camping areas were well away from the water. At Quebec City we hired a truck to drive us several miles up from the to a south side KOA campground through huge shopping plazas and sprawling subdivisions.

Even landing was often an ordeal. As we got closer to Rivière de Loup the tides repeatedly left us high and dry far from shore. At Rivière de Loup itself we sat grounded for two hours on stinking mud before we could land at the little marina where the pleasure boats squatted patiently.

Language problems were a nuisance; people were mostly friendly, but our French was too halting for real communication. There were recreational boats about - we shall never forget the clouds of sailboats off Quebec - but they were not on journeys, and communication with them was impossible. Landing places seemed mostly designed for huge working boats. We saw no canoes between Pembroke and Fredericton.

Those sights we had looked forward to for so long (like Ile D'Orleans, and some of the wonderful old south shore churches) were impossible to see because visitors were not expected from off the water, and because we had no way to protect our gear from thieves. We stopped, for example, to see the De Islet de Mer Church, built in 1768. We arrived at half tide, and had to wade and drag to shore through reeds and salt flats for thirty meters, then abandon Es'toy Perdido and plunge on to solid ground near the church, which turned out to be closed for repairs. We took a picture of the facade, and waded back out.

Our voyage between Montreal and Rivière de Loup was an anxious ongoing disaster, a constant ill-planned struggle against strong contrary winds dominated by the ever-pressing need to find water and a way to get to shore to find toilets or some place to camp for the night. There were good times,- we will remember the first sight of those strange pudding-drop mountains rising vertically out of The Saint Lawrence flood plain fifty kilometers west of Rivière de Loup,- but on balance we would as soon forget that whole experience.

BACK

Monday September 23rd began with rain pebbling down and a strong bitter wind out of the northeast. The run down the Madawaska River from Cabano to the confluence with the Saint John River was darkly beautiful, if wet, windy, smelly and noisy. Pulp and paper dominate the area, but the bush and the river were still wild and alive.

The portage to get around Edmunston's gray cement was dirty and dull. Rain continued to fall. Beve's brother Mark and his fiancée Kim had driven up to help us, and their car had broken down. By the time the car had been repaired, we had all become separated in the town center and then lost. Eventually we all got back together and drove to Iroquois, which had the only campground in the area. Mark and Kim left us there and returned to Saint John.

Our camp was by the tiny Iroquois River three kilometers upstream from the Saint John River. We had no idea what the descent of the Iroquois to the Saint John would be like, or even whether it was possible. When we launched early Tuesday we were quickly flushed down a fast, shallow, narrow drainage ditch under a rail culvert and out into the Saint John River. The river was shallow and obstructed with gravel bars. The river course was a series of gentle long curves, the banks graveled and terraced at odd levels. The leaf change had been slow, and colors were less vibrant, mostly in pale shades of yellow and brown. We stopped on the American side midmorning and climbed the high bank for coffee and chocolate bars. Bank Swallows had made many neat holes in the bank, but the birds had gone south. Remaining were Blue Herons and solitary pole-sitting Cormorants, lonesome contrasts to the huge flocks of Saskatchewan. 

Showers continued throughout the day. We landed after twenty-eight kilometers at a launch area and picnic site under construction in the town of St Leonard. Paving was in progress, which we hoped would soon end for the day, but which continued in the rain until 10:30 p.m. After an inspection the foreman was dissatisfied, so at 3:00 a.m. the area was lit by floodlights and a section re-paved, still in pouring rain. When we had landed Beve had gone off to look at the town while I stayed to watch our gear. I was in a foul mood, cold and supper-less, damply huddled on a cement bench in the midst of the noise and confusion of that busy paving project. Two boys arrived, who threw stones at squirrels, tossed small branches under the asphalt rollers, pried off pieces of the fresh asphalt, and generally did any experimental mischief they thought they could get away with. Spying Es'toy Perdido, they began chucking boulders from the footings either side of the launch area into the water, trying to see how close they could come to the canoe without hitting it. One pitched a boulder underhand and missed Es'toy Perdido by a foot, showering water over the spray cover. Then he scooped up my coffee cup off the dock and drained it, no doubt hoping it contained beer, and not considering that it might have held beetles.

I am known far and wide for my equable temper, but this was too much. I roared "PUT THAT DOWN." The lout looked about, confused. His buddy said "That man, up there, wants you to put down his mug." The lout looked up, decided that I might possibly be dangerous, and could cut him off at the top of the path if he ran for it, and nonchalantly replaced the mug. As he straightened up, he lobbed a six-inch boulder towards Es'toy Perdido that grazed his side. I roared and charged. They retreated, warily, just out of reach. A handsome giant materialized out of the rain and the evening gloom. Huge shoulders, tiny waist, six-and-a-half feet tall, thick curly black hair, and rich full beard, Hercules said soothingly to me: "Don't worry, I fix!" then moved over to the bank to tower over the boys and the canoe below. He called:

And off they went. I thanked the giant, who smiled and vanished back into the gloom.

Wednesday began with dense cloud and rain. We had breakfast at the diner, and were off by 8:00 a.m., expecting a tough day. Twelve hours later we were in for the night after having had exactly the kind of day we had anticipated, but feeling oddly content. Icy rain had fallen throughout. Half way between Saint Leonard and Grand Falls we began to be overflown every four minutes for hours by huge four-engine American bombers descending to land somewhere south. Through the steady rain and out of the low cloud those monsters came, flaps down, discharging long greasy trails of filthy exhaust, roaring and screaming. Those horrific giants made reflection and communication impossible. They mocked our puny expedition, reducing human romance to the level of cavalry charges at tanks. Implacably descending through the icy rain and the darkness, they befouled the morning. But in between landings there were flights of Mergasers, in V's, practising flying south. Red-necked Grebes in their winter dress were headed, like us, for the ocean; they seemed larger, darker, less flamboyant but more social than those we had known west of Thunder Bay. Cormorants perched singly on buoys and stumps, near but not among the Red-neck Grebes.

There were no pleasure boats, no paths down to the water, and no docks. Houses resolutely faced the road, their backs to the river. Front doors and picture windows faced front to welcome neighbors coming to visit; family and friends were everything, and the river was nothing. Abandoned cars and tires and bricks and scrap iron were pitched over the banks of the river as if over the edges of the known world into nothingness. An occasional anonymous pipe launched some dubious-looking liquid through the rain out into the river.

We yearned, in the cold rain and grimness, deafened by the bomber thunder, for the Churchill River. Those of us who paddle sea-to-sea mostly go east to west, from civilization towards apparent wilderness. We had chosen the reverse; to re-enter the real world from wild, in the hope that something we could learn from the later might help us survive in the former. But here we swore together that if those obscene bombers did not soon finish we would turn Es'toy Perdido around and head for the Bering Sea.

A high highway bridge loomed up in the pouring rain. It, like most bridges across the Saint John River, had yet to be discovered by the Canadian Topographic Service. Just before that bridge we passed a factory of some sort on the north side which was ejecting a huge quantity of steaming liquid waste out into the river from a meter-wide pipe. Despite the violence of the flow, and its rather intimidating greeny-yellow color and syrupy texture, we were tempted to paddle near to it in hopes of getting warm, but instead avoided it carefully.

At Grand Falls we should have ignored all the Danger signs and gone straight for the Dam administration to ask for help. Instead we landed at the public landing south of the dam, in torrential rain and a temperature of four degrees Celsius. We had only two desires, to get into shelter and to drink something hot, both of which were realized in the Pizza Parlor up the hill.

I called the Cab Company to get us moved to the only motel in town, but they had no vehicle large enough to carry Es'toy Perdido, nor did they know where we might get one. I offered the job to the guy in the booth beside us at the Pizza Parlor, a thoroughly relaxed older French Canadian whose Franglais even I could understand. His truck was his life. An elderly three-quarter ton Ford pickup, baby blue, it had a transmission that used two gear levers and a range change button, and a rear end out of a gravel truck. Seemingly designed for tractor pulling, it effortlessly rumbled us up the hill and over the bridge to the motel with massive grace and insouciance. Only much later did I realize that we might have paddled to the north end of the dam and carried everything for thirty yards, saving time, energy, and twenty dollars. Still, the coffee and pizza had been welcome, and I had never before imagined such a transmission in such a vehicle, or such pride in the owner. Beve had ridden in the truck bed to make sure Es'toy Perdido stayed put while I rode in the cab. She banged on the cab back window to draw my attention to the awesome Grand Falls gorge. Deep, dark, wet, and mysterious, it wending its massive way out into the torrential rain to vanish in the mist. Little feeder streams shot out over the edge into oblivion. The Saint John River seemed to have ended! Later we found that water did get through, but the gorge was so deep and the bottom so tortuous that at first we were concerned that we would be unable to continue.

As soon as we had registered at the motel (which took a while because the proprietor seemed to think we were urban terrorists smuggling cigarettes or worse into Grand Falls from the USA by canoe) I called the local paper and asked for the resident expert on dam avoidance. The paper was The Cateracte, and it was unique, in that pieces were randomly scattered through the paper in French or English. The Cateracte gave us the name and phone number of John Hughes, a local historian who knew all about the dam. He told us that the portage was a quarter kilometer long, and ran across the peninsula and through the town. He recommended that we return upstream after the portage to explore the gorge. Thursday morning I got up early and went to check out that portage. After wandering about for an hour I was beginning to wonder if John had been having me on, so I flagged down a policeman, and he showed me the route. Friendly and helpful, he sported a glorious massive red moustache waxed to perfection. The portage was no quarter-kilometer, it was more like three kilometers, up over high ground and through the centre of town. I hired another French Canadian to truck us to the launch. He was taped up with broken ribs, and could not lift, but he had a truck and he was willing to drive. Anne Mores, The Cateracte reporter, was to follow us to the launch site for her interview. As the Police cruiser , the truck with Es'toy Perdido projecting out off its back, and the press car processed through town, another vehicle tagged on, honking energetically. The driver was Michel Levesque, the local manifestation of Canoe New Brunswick. He was keen and helpful. We talked as we portaged the gear over the last hundred meters through the mud down a faint trail, while Anne interviewed Beve. Our driver had hung about, unable to lift because of his damaged ribs, but enthralled by the occasion. When Anne began taking pictures, he leapt forward to shake Beve's hand and wish her Godspeed, carefully turning his best profile to the camera as he did so.

Michel and a buddy had completed a canoe survey of the Saint John River two years before to guide people like Beve and me, but the paid staff in Fredericton had yet to publish it. That was a pity - the pathetic three paragraphs sent us by Canoe New Brunswick in response to our inquiry letter had been no help at all. In three sentences Michel gave us more.

We took John's advice and explored up into the canyon, which was damp and dark. A Scottish mist drifted clingingly down upon us. The walls rose terrifically hundreds of meters vertically up out of the water in a canyon, which twisted and turned for perhaps three kilometers. Enormous water forces had carved that vast gorge. One pothole alone must have been twenty meters deep and fifteen meters across. We knew nothing about what Grand Rapids had been like before the river was emasculated, but it must have been as spectacular as Whitemud Falls Alberta in brawny muscle-flexing compact splendor.

After an hour exploring we were off downstream, still in gentle rain. There were more Red Necked Grebes in winter plumage as we left the canyon, but they were the last we saw. In the afternoon we spent two hours running one long rapid in the rain, through shallows, ledges, and whirlpools; not taxing, but fun and fast. The country was beautiful but heavily used. Airliners thundered overhead. There were no birds or animals save a few Mergansers. Eventually we found that we had paddled twenty-eight kilometers before camping about 3:00 p.m.

Thursday we rose and were on the water early. Another fast, wet, cold and delightful day followed, which saw us over the forty kilometers to Perth Andover. Es'toy Perdido spent the following night on a dock in downtown Perth Andover, while we were guests of Neville and Louise DeLong, who farmed potatoes and raised beef cattle. Neville and Louise had recently won the most promising area young farmer award and Louise was a special friend of Beve's sister Susan. We stayed up to 1:30 a.m. talking beef, potatoes, and local church politics with Neville and Louise. Neville was short and attractive, self-confident, sensitive, ambitious and a blotter for the feelings and emotions of others. He had been coldly furious when dinner was not hot on the table when he came in, yet he had stood outside to chat with a neighbor for over an hour while it had gotten cold. He told me that as a young man, he wanted to be a clergyman, but he decided he did not then have enough to give up to make it worthwhile. Now he certainly had, but he wasn't. The discussion moved to the deficiencies of the last half-dozen clergy in the area. They seemed normal enough, ignoring a few bizarre innuendoes, but they had never succeeded in living up to their people's expectations. Clergy seem to be much disliked by those who have abandoned their church. We met many people who once had close connection with their church, but no longer had. DeLongs were examples, so was Beve's mother and sister. When asked why they had left, they usually answered that the church was full of hypocrites. This meant that when they had passed through some crisis, church people (especially their clergy) had not measured up to those standards of perfection and helpfulness that the sufferer expected and demanded.

Sunny, misty air was slowly being puffed into life by upstream breezes as we pulled away Friday. Our speed seemed slow, but in six hours we made twenty-six kilometers. The river continued to show signs of heavy use over many years. There were old bridge footings and disused ferry landings, and always the strange feeling that people had turned their backs on their river. The water was filthy and we made no attempt to use it. It almost seemed as if the river was perceived only as a sewer or as a moat to confine cattle on islands. Even so, the changing autumn colors and the light airs were delightful.

Beechwood Dam, Friday's finish, was a canoeist's nightmare. We landed on the south side and crossed the dam easily enough, but the descent from the dam to the river was impossible. The drop was at least fifty meters, twenty down a steep path, fifteen over broken concrete footings, and then fifteen sheer which would have to be lowered by rope. The north side looked no better. We decided to accept an offer of a second night's hospitality from the DeLongs, and Es'toy Perdido spent Friday night behind the tourist information building above Beechwood Dam.

Saturday we travelled light, without packs; just lunch and raingear. Our launch was at Florenceville, down a wooden staircase that led to the river by McCain's french fry Factory. The staircase was some kind of inspector's ladder; it only went a third of the way down to where a pipe jutted out from under the road over some rocks. Beve carried the canoe down the staircase and out on to those rocks. There she slipped and slithered about, in imminent danger of going ass-over-tea-kettle with her neck firmly clamped in the canoe yoke. Her hip moves were spectacular; being a belly dancer had occasional unexpected benefits. Beve screamed: Potato slime! Fucking potato peelings! They've dumped the slop straight into the bloody river! as she skidded and bumped down to the bottom, out over more slimed rocks and on into the river. Afterwards, the anticlimactic paddle itself was short and uneventful, ending at Hartland, the site of the world's longest covered bridge.

We camped Saturday night in Woodstock, with a mob of Beve's family, including her mother Margie, her sister Sue, her brothers Tim, Michael, and Jeff, Tim's fiancee Karen, and friends Richard and Leo. The plan was that we would return Saturday to Hartland, where Es'toy Perdido would once again have spent the night far from us, and paddle down to Woodstock. Sunday we would paddle on downstream towards Fredericton.

By 11:40 a.m. Sunday the Danells' fleet was at last launched. Jeff, Richard and Leo's canoe was a bar. A huge ghetto blaster was driving hard on full volume. They had gotten (on Sunday morning!) an astounding variety and quantity of booze, set out on a plank in mid-canoe. The spare paddler (they took turns) was bartender. They had gotten the liquor by driving early in the morning to the International Border, crossing, buying out the duty-free shop, and returning through Canadian customs, paying the duty on at least some of their purchases, and returning to us for the launch. Or so they said. They claimed that the cost was less than that of the New Brunswick Liquor Commission, even after paying the duty and the exchange on the American money.

The wind was foul but we began well. The floating drinking establishment survived twelve kilometers or so, evading all the gravel bars and shooting minor rapids with superb élan. It became apparent that Jeff had been drinking unwisely. Michael and I volunteered to transport him in our canoe at speed to Woodstock, some eight kilometers on. Jeff had been soaking wet in very low temperatures for some time, and though amiable, (excessively so), he was shaking uncontrollably. Fitted out in fresh clothing, tucked in a sleeping bag, and stretched out in Es'toy Perdido, he passed out at once. Michael and I had a wonderful fast paddle, covering the eight kilometers in an hour and ten minutes (the rest took two hours and twenty minutes). I had a rare chance to paddle bow in a nearly empty canoe, and Mike and I talked up a storm.

Monday Margie, Susan, Beve and I made a fast empty run to Fredericton, blown on by a howling following gale. Fortunately the wind peaked near Fredericton where the river was full of islands, but the holding lake above the Mactequack dam had been vast, open, exciting, and blowing up.

We spent the night with daughter Susan in Fredericton. The next day we launched for a C.B.C. on-water interview with her, then off into mist over flat water. We passed the day drifting along, limp and dreamy. There were sailboats, and cattle, and CBC'S Bob Kerr for once forgoing his usual strictures on those who have given niggardly information on the record and CD jackets and allowing us to listen to some lovely Boccherini quartets instead.

We needed a pit stop, so we drifted ashore close to what turned out to be a courthouse. We could not find the washrooms, so we vanished into the dense nearby bushes, mildly annoyed by a hovering helicopter and curious about the bored-looking police who hovered around the edges of our bushes aimlessly fondling big dogs. Later, CBC news announced that a young tough being transferred to a court appearance had kicked out a cruiser window and had run off into the bushes which we had used as a lavatory. Later still we fell asleep as Es'toy Perdido drifted, and a gust of wind must have carried off our map. No problem; how could we get lost?

Eventually we landed on an island and set up the tent. I fended off two curious horses and a crowd of cattle while Beve cooked down by the canoe. The horses obviously believed they were people, and bossed the cattle firmly about. One of the horses thought our tent was a salt lick, erected just for him. Chasing him off was a full time job. He and his cattle cronies all left at dark, though their smell remained. The night air was dense, thick, and warm. About 3:00 a.m. a curious raccoon fell out of a bushy tree onto the tent. Morning finally came, hot, and wet. I had had no sleep; my back had hated me all night. The left side from shoulder blade to crotch ached; a dull steady pain when I lay still, varied by occasional flashes of pure agony whenever I moved. With one of the Pembroke doctor's super pain pills and the last of his muscle relaxants, and following some vigorous limping about, I was ready to go again.

The forecast was for continuous rain for the next three days, but we refused to believe it. Of our over sixty major canoe trips all but two had ended in sunshine, and this would be no exception. Thursday we were off by 9:00 a.m., hearing the local CBC bird man tell us that the Great Blue Herons had all left on migration, and simultaneously seeing one rise petulantly just in front of us. The bird expert went on to say that the fish-catchers go south first, but we were missing the insect eaters. Bald Eagles were still about.

All morning we sogged along. A brief storm came and went, and the sun came out. Then the wind picked up, and southwest winds finally forced us ashore south of Stirling. Midafternoon we were back on the water, but making slow time. The contrary wind and lack of current was not entirely to blame, we were just reluctant to paddle.

We drifted down to Upper Gagetown, where there was a Ferry. By 5:15 p.m. we were in Gagetown. All along that section were small twelve-foot prams with square bows and small motors. Their solo drivers were dressed in army camouflage, carried shotguns and waved shyly. Not all the guns going off around us were shotguns; heavy military explosions from the military shook the land.

Midafternoon we landed at Camp Medley, the Diocese of Fredericton's camp, which Beve knew and loved. She prowled about, lingeringly, with many reminiscences. It was a firm contrast to Camp Manitou. Medley's buildings were rough and dark, with ponderously humorous nameplates on the buildings. Manitou had been spread out, each building placed in the context of the land immediately about it. Medley buildings surrounded and faced into a huge open field with almost military precision. The tuck shop and the religion destruction center were traditional, and the dull colors, (even with the fall leaves), were uninspiring; yet the camp seemed comfortably aware that it had served young people for many years, and that thousands of former campers remember it fondly.

An hour later we passed a big barge tied by the shore. Two men in camouflage outfits and two high-spirited retrievers seemed extraordinarily cautious of us; perhaps they had no hunting licenses, and thought that the local fish and game inspectors might now be patrolling in canoes.

By 5:50 p.m. we were in Gagetown, which was a happy surprise. I expected a military town, like Wainwright or Petawawa, but Gagetown was a charming village with a flair for tourists. A lovely Anglican Church sat in the midst of a large cemetery. There were two quality guesthouses and about twenty motor sailors tied at moorings. The boats were the first recreational craft (apart from the hunter's skiffs) that we had seen since Fredericton. The liquor store was typical of the town. It was a few shelves at the back of the only grocery store in town, curtained off during the hours when sales were prohibited.

We stayed at the "Loaves And Calico" guest house. They closed at 6:00 p.m., restaurant and all, so Beve hustled up the hill to check us in at 5:55 p.m. while I unloaded. The manager gave her a front door key and promptly left, leaving us the run of the place, but without dinner.

Friday once again our weather sense was right and the CBC forecast wildly wrong. The CBC had predicted heavy overcast with occasional showers, the latter to increase as the day wore on. In fact the day was cloudless, hot and sunny, with a gentle southwesterly following breeze. The south Saint John River was showing off, as rivers normally do for us at the end of canoe trips.

We left breakfast-less about 10:00 a.m. Most of Gagetown's sailors were out, and a dozen of them were in sight as we pulled away. Several Saint John sailors kept their boats there; one had come all the way from Halifax. 

We came close to disaster at the small cable ferry by Scovil Point, at the end of Gagetown Island. The operator was in a great hurry to return across the river after he dropped off the one car he was carrying. He dropped his ramp, the car rushed off, and without a glance behind he slammed his engine into reverse and surged back, the ramp lifting as he accelerated. We were passing his stern in firm current, assuming the operator would stay to pick up a waiting car. His cable whipped up out of the water five meters in front of Es'toy Perdido's advancing bow. We did an emergency back- ferry, and that massive hull missed us by less than a meter. Seconds later I glimpsed the operator, bovinely mystified, staring back at our sudden appearance bobbing about in his ferry's wake. That was may have been the closest call we had between Vancouver and Saint John.

From there we tiptoed down past Upper Musquash Island and inside of Long Island, through stunning country. A group of Holsteins trotted out to examine us, posing before the magnificent backdrop of Donut Hill, covered in glorious frost-nipped leaves of red, gold, and brown. Central Hampstead, Hampstead, and then Evandale - lovely pastoral scenes all, with another ferry which we stayed well clear of. The first canoe we had seen since Pembroke drifted by, the paddlers cautiously waving. Mistake Cove followed, then Oak Point Provincial Park, where we had intended to quit for the day, but did not. On to Brown's Flat, where we ended an unforgettable fifty kilometer day. Just before landing we had run aground on a gravel spit off the south end of Cantin's Island. There was a camp there, which the resident horses believed they were operating. They rushed up to the bank and told us in unmistakable body language that we had no business there and were not to land, but if we did, they would consider negotiating a cautious friendship. We declined to land, and drifted on instead to Collins Point, and Bulah Camp. That last was Baptist-Methodist, and boasted churches, memorial plaques, and dozens of tidy cottages with cute name boards. Most of the summer residents were gone; those left were overwhelmingly in-groupy and curious, extraordinarily anxious to help strangers. I did not get the name of the couple who were most helpful, and with whom we left Es'toy Perdido for the night. They obviously found us a curiosity. The lady grilled Beve about our ages, and whether I was really a pastor, and when had we been married and where, and had we children... Matters got more complicated when Beve's brother Mark and his fiancée Kim burbled up in their dark blue Firebird, both of them smoking, Kim beautifully made up and strikingly dressed, and both behaving rather more Anglican than Baptists generally are used to. Beve was exhausted and had a massive headache. She said shit three times and this fucking thing once, with terrible clarity, just after she had said she was a Church Army Sister. The camp had a sign at the entrance: Let nothing unclean enter here, and another which said This is sacred ground beside a bronze plaque in a little plot memorializing a family of founder Bullocks.

The gentleman who helped us was less curious than his lady, but more helpful. He had, of all possible occupations, the job of Superintendent of Hydro Dams for the Province of New Brunswick! He confirmed what I already was sure of but had not tested; if we had approached management at any of the N.B. Hydro dams we had passed they would cheerfully have laid on a truck to get us around.

Saturday we launched from Camp Beulah at 10:00 a.m. for the last day of serious paddling. CBC's Arthur Black seemed especially funny that euphoric morning - at least, we laughed a lot. Only his special on Cougars irritated us. Those big cats were being run down and treed by dogs, then shot full of drugs so that they could be fitted with radio collars and their activities monitored. The purpose was said to be to study them in order to better manage and protect them. When their radio collar batteries died, the Cougars were hunted down again to have new ones fitted. Some Cougars had new batteries installed four and five times since the project began. No wonder when hunted they sat in a tree just out of the dog's reach, awaiting their fate with apparent equanimity. Do biologists really think that such treatment leaves the animals unaffected? Do Cougars continue to exist in Canada to provide biologists with a paying job? Arthur Black seemed to find the whole affair hilarious. Maybe God created Cougars in order to provide copy for CBC radio.

By 11:20 a.m. we were off Victoria Beach. The CBC had predicted cloudy skies with occasional showers, followed by dangerous easterly winds, but as we expected, the sky was cloudless under a warm autumn sun with a gentle breeze puffing out of the west. Later the CBC even announced a small craft wind warning for the our area! We were hailed by a sailor we had met two days before in Gagetown. I committed a faux pas by identifying the sloop as his. It had the same lines and the same blue-and-white coloring, but belonged to his buddy whose whisky he was drinking. He committed a faux pas by inquiring where Beve had been educated and assuming that she was doubtless a Netherwood grad. She replied coolly that her schools had been Rothesay Junior High and Kennebecasis High. As the wind filled their sails he hailed "I disapprove of that modernist Book Of Alternative Services; I never attend church where it is used!" " Good for you!" I thundered back, "God desires worship that is pure and undefiled!" Whyever do people assume that the choice of liturgy is more important than whether God is worshipped or not?

We landed at Marble Cove, Saint John, just above the Reversing Falls, intending to return the next day to finish our voyage in style by running through the Reversing Falls at slack water. We were to carry Meite Ormaechea from CBC radio in the canoe with us, and she was to record our reactions. I never have been able to give honest reactions under journalistic probing, partly because journalists so obviously are not interested in what you want to say, but rather want quotes to illustrate a story they have already decided to write before they met you. Maite Ormaechea (who Susan said was perhaps over-scrupulous, but very able), and who was lovely, wanted us to fulminate about the polluted state of the Saint John River. That was her focus; journalese meaning that that was the story she had decided on before she had met us. I did not know anything about pollution. I am a priest, not a scientist. I deal in motivation, not molecules. I knew that New Brunswickers did not care much about the Saint John River. They backed their houses on it, drove their junked cars into it, dumped their potato peelings in it, and took their holidays somewhere else. I saw the problem as disrespect, not pollution, but that was because I was a priest, not an ecologist.

I anticipated that Maite would have trouble interviewing Beve. Maite was no New Brunswicker. She was CBC, which wherever she was born, meant that the center of her universe was Toronto. New Brunswickers resent knocking anything local in front of strangers. They know that Westerners (people who live west of Edmunston) regard them with mild contempt. Even when, like Beve, they have not lived down home in years, they become miserable when some outsider encourages them to criticize their home province. And when a New Brunswicker is miserable, (I speak from personal experience), everyone near them will soon be more miserable.

After landing at Marble Cove we took Es'toy Perdido to Beve's family home, varnished the woodwork, and washed and waxed him. A party broke out. It was made clear to us that we were welcome, and as long as Beve and I did our share helping split and bring in the ten cords of winter wood, we could stay until some bishop recognized my merits.

The next day, Sunday, October 6th, our voyage was, inconceivably, over. We had launched before TV cameras with a fleet including all Beve's family and a gaggle of local recreational paddlers out for a good giggle. They were very welcome. Recreational paddlers are highly opinionated and keep a strict pecking order. Some of these could not resist instructing us about exactly what was wrong with our equipment and how we might improve our skills. We laughed and enjoyed their company.

Beve paddled stern. That was the first time either of us had had to paddle downstream against strong current, which, as advertised, reversed itself in a series of twenty-centimeter surges as we descended. The damn rocks kept moving about us; it was not until after we had soggily rammed one that I realized they were not rocks but Harp Seals, swimming in on the tide after fish! If Harp Seals could live in that water I could taste it. It was ocean, the first since Vancouver, and I stuck my finger in. Meite swung round and stuck a mike in my face, as Es'toy Perdido lurched dangerously. "How does the ocean taste?" she cried. "Salty", I snarled, bracing hard to keep Es'toy Perdido upright.

Maite's interview did not go well. She wound up scrapping all the in-canoe material because she could not shove the microphone in our faces and still sit in the center of a seventeen-foot canoe in rapids, and because the wind noise ruined the sound. We finally did the interview in the back of a CBC car in Vito's restaurant parking lot, next door to the Bowlerama Lanes and Restaurant where our celebration was whooping it up. Beve's brother Tim's fiancée Karen's mom cooked there. Unaccountably Maite had never heard of the place. She missed some superb pies and great date squares! Beve snarled politely throughout, the more so when Maite was trying to be soothing because she thought Beve was nervous. I said tirelessly and uselessly that I was a priest, not a scientist from pollution probe. An attempt to float a red herring failed. I observed that otherwise taciturn New Brunswickers had frequently cheered our Anglican Church flag. Could it be that they had mistaken the cross of Saint George for a Core Party symbol? But Maite was not having any. Eventually we all had enough and went home. The story that Maite eventually produced was a delightful surprise; it did include what I had tried to say, though pollution remained the focus.

What we had gained from our voyage was beyond price, and yet in trying to summarize it for Maite it all seemed so bland and inconsequential. All we had found for a solution to those depressing problems, which had seemed so grim and complex, was acting with simplicity, courage, and hope. Jim Wilkes: "The health of a person depends on his or her success in struggling through all the illusions of life, which are so beguiling, into the realities of life, which at times seem so stern and forbidding."

Truth, especially religious truth, is never in the flamboyant and the spectacular, though we insist on looking there for a quick fixes. In this life there is no certainty, security, or perfection, and it is an illusion of Satan to pretend that there can be. We must act, and in acting, live. Pablo Neruda:

For us, (and quite possibly for no one else on earth), our attempt to live an authentic life had required us to canoe ocean-to-ocean. The voyage gave us the truth that living, not religion, nor any other way, is the only response to the gift of life.

The practice of religion as an end in itself is lunacy; religion then is what we do with our internal problems, our will to power, our sexual hang-ups. We are told in the Bible's book of Revelation that there will be no religion in heaven; nor any need for a temple. Indeed, my favorite theologian Robert Fararr Capon interprets Christ's death as the death of religion here on earth.

But the great archetypal stories of religion can nerve us to the courage necessary for living.

In terms of vocational renewal, all I had done was to circle back to the place where I had begun thirty years before. Cosmic questions do not have mortal answers; stories give hope and courage. The story that still speaks to me, as it did thirty years before, is the concluding anecdote of that most wondrous of travel books, Hillaire Belloc's The Path To Rome:

Once, before we humans had become the good and self-respecting people we are, the Padre Eterno was sitting in heaven with St Michael beside him, and he watched the abyss from His great throne, and saw shining in the void one far point of light amid some seventeen million others, and He said: What is that?

And St Michael answered: That is the Earth, for he felt some pride in it.

The Earth? said the Padre Eterno, a little puzzled ... The Earth? ...?... I do not remember very exactly ...

Why, answered St Michael, with as much reverence as his annoyance could command, surely you must recollect the Earth and all the pother there was in heaven when it was first suggested to create it, and all about Lucifer ...

Ah! said the Padre Eterno, thinking twice, yes. It is attached to Sirius, and -

No, no, said St Michael, quite visibly put out. It is the Earth. The Earth which has that changing moon and the thing called the sea.

Of course, of course, answered the Padre Eterno quickly, I said Sirius by a slip of the tongue. Dear me! So that is the Earth! Well, well! It is years ago now... Michael, what are those little things swarming up and down all over it?

Those, said St Michael, are Men.

Men? said the Padre Eterno, Men ... I know the word as well as any one, but somehow the connection escapes me. Men ... and He mused.

St Michael, with perfect self-restraint, said a few things a trifle staccato, defining Man, his dual destiny, his hope of heaven, and all the great business in which he himself had fought hard. But from a fine military tradition, he said nothing of his actions, nor even of his shrine in Normandy, of which he is naturally extremely proud: and well he may be. What a hill!

I really beg your pardon, said the Padre Eterno, when he saw the importance attached to these little creatures. I am sure that they are worthy of the very fullest attention, and (he added, for he was sorry to have offended) how sensible they seem, Michael! There they go, buying and selling, and sailing, driving, and wiving, and riding, and dancing, and singing, and the rest of it; indeed, they are the most practical, business-like, and satisfactory little beings. But I notice one odd thing. Here and there are some not doing as the rest, or attending to their business, but throwing themselves into all manner of attitudes, making the most extraordinary sounds, and clothing themselves in the quaintest of garments. What is the meaning of that?

Sire! cried St Michael, in a voice that shook the architraves of heaven, they are worshipping You!

Oh! they are worshipping me! Well, that is the most sensible thing I have heard of them yet, and I altogether commend them. Continuez, said the Padre Eterno, continuez!

And since then all has been well with the world; at least where ils continuez. 

This story ends with me now Rector of the parish of Saint Michael and All Angels (Regina). The Padre Eterno never could resist a good giggle!

BACK