Most of the canoe trips were 3-4 days (long weekends). That meant the amount of food and clothes you had to take was limited and you didn’t have to take water (as in the case of sea kayaking).
Everything for two people could be put in a large “moose” pack with a head strap to help carry the load. We had the canoes outfitted with a yoke so that one person could carry the canoe on their shoulders. When you came to a portage, it was understood that one person would take the canoe and the other would take the moose pack with the paddles. Portages of 1800 yards were not uncommon and the term “weekend warrior” was occasionally heard in the context of people like myself. who normally didn’t lift anything heavier than a teacup, suddenly finding themselves carrying a 100 pound canoe on their backs over a mile-long portage.
Most of my trips were with BNR/Nortel employees even long after I had left the company. Those were often well thought out by people who had been canoe-camping for many years.
However, others were either ill-conceived or involved a mismatch of people, some of whom probably should have stayed home (including myself). Such was the case with a trip I did with my next door neighbour in Bells Corners. He was white and British but the name Genghis Khan kept popping into my head whenever I talked to him.
The warning signs were there: during one of the early discussions about the trip the neighbour said he was hoping something interesting would happen such as one of us would break a leg so he could practice his survival skills. Everyone in the trip was gung-ho except myself and the a young friend of theirs that I was paired with. The young man had muscles on his muscles but was apparently preserving his body for some activity other than carrying a canoe or a moose pack.
Another mismatch was a trip in which I had invited my colleague Fred Meyer to come along. Fred was brought up on a farm in the Swiss Alps. He and I were in one canoe and two more “relaxed” canoeists were in another. Luckily I was in the rear so that Fred wasn’t aware that I was dragging by paddle most of the way. Otherwise we would have been so far ahead of the others, we would never have seen them again. Unfortunately Fred passed away with prostate cancer in the summer of 2016 – an excerpt from his obituary, below:
“Fred participated in and actively supported individual as well as community-based sports such as Nakkertok, the Alpine Club of Canada, the Ottawa Section of the Alpine Club, the Ottawa-based Bushwackers club of explorers and paddlers as well as the La Ferme cycling, skiing, hiking and paddling club. He participated in countless backcountry telemarking, cross-country, skating, downhill skiing, snowshoeing and hiking adventures across the country. He kayaked and paddled in white water or sea and packed in countless trips up passes and peaks in Canada, USA and Switzerland on foot, bicycle, motorcycle or skis. He cycled all year round and swam every day. Kind and mindful, Fred supported many charities and cultural endeavours.”
On other trips it wasn’t so much a mismatch of people as a poorly thought-out plan. There was the trip in late October. I didn’t have a tent so I bought a tube tent (cost $12) from Canadian Tire. It consisted of a plastic tube about 4 feet in diameter and ten feet long – open at both ends (no problem because no mosquitoes in late October) – held up by a line between two trees. It seems ingenious at first – easy to put up and take down and kept the rain out. What I didn’t anticipate was the wind and the snow. It snowed throughout the trip and the wind whistling down the tube brought a lot of the snow with it. My sleeping bag was also not designed to keep me warm in that kind of weather.
Another poor choice of time to go canoeing is at the height of the mosquito and black fly season – especially for a park like La Verendrye which has more than its share of both. Early to bed and early to rise as the saying goes – especially if you are trying to limit your exposure to swarms of bugs. Portages would start OK but after a 100 yards, the first few mosquitoes would show up and rapidly become a swarm so that by the end of the portage you were running – and then paddling as fast as you could to get into the open water so as to only be bitten from time to time by the occasional horse or deer fly – until the next portage when it would start all over again.
The end (although my canoeing days ended 30 years ago).
WR Foster 