Canoeing, Episode One

 The earliest paddle I can find in my own records since I've been living in the valley was a trip down the Nottawasaga River east of here in 2011   This was with an organized group, the paddling group from our local Probus Club.  A friend of mine was the leader.  As a new member of the group, I took it as a chance to meet other interested people. 

The Nottawasaga is a slow meandering river, flowing through a landscape of sand deposits at the head of Nottawasaga Bay, the southern part of Georgian Bay.

It was certainly an easy paddle as we drifted down with the current!  I had just picked up my new canoe, a 'pack canoe', designed to be paddled by a single person and extremely light weight!  It has a kayak seat in the centre and you paddle it with a kayak paddle.

There were lots of birds as we paddled along, including Kingfishers and Swallows.  But the highlight of the paddle for me was seeing this juvenile Black-crowned Night Heron just sitting on an old post as we passed by!

Later that summer I joined the group again for a paddle down a nice stretch of the Saugeen River, starting in Walkerton.  The Saugeen is really popular locally and it's a large watershed for southern Ontario.  The Conservation Authority has developed access points at the major bridges and there are one or two camping spots.  The entire route is over 100 km, and would take 3-4 days.

Parts of the river are easy paddling, but in other places there is some gentle white water, often not much more than a visible 'V' in the current (you always aim for the 'V')!  I was paddling my single 'pack' canoe and after three hours I was worn out!

There was one momentary bend of more exciting whitewater; you can see it just beyond that canoe.  This was the first time I'd encountered anything that could be labelled 'whitewater' in my new canoe, and I was a little nervous at the time.  A single canoe handles quite differently than a regular two-person canoe.

But we slid around easily and I could look back on the others following me.  A 'pack' canoe got its name because the original model, built for Teddy Roosevelt who was an avid fly fisherman, was small enough to be packed into the wilderness on the back of a mule!   After two trips I was quite pleased with it, and besides it's light enough to pick up with one hand!

The Noire

The first distant canoe trip I joined my friends for was the Noire (Black) River in Quebec.  We gathered in Pembroke and were flown into the start of the paddling, landing on a small lake to wait for the others.  The tiny float plane could take only one canoe and two people; there were eight of us on the trip.

This was definitely a big step up for me, with class I, class II and even some class III rapids.  I had to learn fast!  I was of course delegated to the bow, and started learning the role of the bow person - to watch out for rocks, deadheads and logs so we could avoid them!  I was taught the bow draw and cross draw, strokes you use to pull the front of the canoe sideways when necessary.  Given the experience of the group I was joining, particularly four friends with decades of paddling experience between them, I was learning fast.

The Noire runs through a sandy landscape, so on the inside of each big bend in the river was a wide sandbar.  That's where we camped each night, though my own recollection is that I seemed to always be rushing, trying to keep up with the others, have time to help out, and be ready on time when we left in the morning.

At any rate the trip was enormous fun and I learned a great deal.  I guess I did well enough, since I was invited back the next year when we paddled the Spanish River in northern Ontario.