Kim’s mother Marilyn was from Trinidad and was fearful of the Canadian wilderness. The two canoe trips I took her on did little to alleviate her fears.
The first trip was with a couple I had met at the University of Alberta. I had driven his car from U of A to Ottawa at the end of 3rd year as a favour (and to save the cost of taking the train). That in itself was a fiasco. I was supposed to share the driving with another student – but he kept falling asleep – so I did all the driving myself – non-stop from Edmonton to Ottawa. Somewhere in northern Ontario, about 3 in the morning I hit a fox. I remember backing up to see if the fox was OK – but I backed up too far and backed up over the fox. After that I realized there was no longer any point in getting out to check to see if the fox was OK.
When I did get to Ottawa the couple whose car I had driven needed a place to stay for a few days – so I talked my Dad into letting them stay. However, they didn’t seem to be in a hurry to leave, so after about five days and a bit of prompting from my Dad, I had to ask them to go.
We were still on speaking terms though when I came back to Ottawa with Marilyn a few years later. They suggested a canoe trip in La Vérendre Wildlife Reserve in Quebec – a park with beautiful lakes, rivers and sandy beaches. However, the beautiful lakes, rivers and sandy beaches, were accompanied by a significant number of black flies. Marilyn managed to get bitten on both eyelids and her eyes and face puffed up and stayed that way for about 4 days.
After she got over that trauma, another couple that I knew invited us on a canoe trip to Algonquin Park in the fall. After canoeing the first day, we set up camp.
In the middle of the night, Marilyn woke me up to tell me that there were animals scurrying about outside and that I should go out and check. I tried to ignore her and go back to sleep but she kept bugging me so I finally got my flashlight and went outside.
We had tied our food pack to a line and had hung it up over the branch of a tree – about 20 feet off the ground and five feet below the branch. I pointed my flashlight towards the pack and sure enough there was a raccoon sitting in the pack eating away. Three other racoons were lined up on the tree branch waiting their turn. I untied the other end of the line and dropped the pack down so that it was about 5 feet off the ground to allow the racoon in the pack to get away. The racoon just looked at me, and continued eating, apparently unperturbed. I grabbed a large stick and took a swing at the racoon. That finally caused him to get out of the pack.
I decided to drop the pack to the ground while I decided what to do next. With the pack on the ground and me standing beside it, the three racoons that had been in the tree came down and all four racoons started walking towards the pack as if I wasn’t even there.
I was dead tired and just wanted to go back to sleep. This particular campsite had an outhouse so I took the pack, closed it up, stuck it in the outhouse and locked the door.
I could hear the racoons jumping against the side of the outhouse as I went back to the tent and tried to go back to sleep.
The next morning I went over to the outhouse to check. The door was still locked but when I went inside, I found the pack open and all the food gone. A further examination of the outside of the outhouse revealed that the racoons had dug under the outhouse and taken a flying leap to get to the hole so they could get into the outhouse and eat all the food. How they got back out again without falling in the pit is not clear (of course maybe they did fall in the pit – who knows). In any case it shows how ingenious a hungry racoon can be when winter is just around the corner.
I didn’t bother trying to convince Marilyn to go on any more canoe trips after that.
WR Foster 