One of the recreational activities I started to participate in about six years ago is long distance voyageur canoe paddling.

In 2008 I was a member of a crew that paddled from Rocky Mountain House, Alberta, to Thunder Bay, Ontario as part of the David Thompson Brigade.  It was a ten week trip down the North Saskatchewan River, the Manitoba lakes, the Winnipeg River and into the boundary waters down to Lake Superior - some 3600 kilometres.  The trip commemorated a similar trip made 200 years earlier by David Thompson, in his capacity as an explorer, trader, and mapmaker for the North West Company.  Anywhere from 12 to 15 voyageur canoe crews participated at any given time - a flotilla making its way east along the historic waterways of the fur trade in its heyday.

That trip changed my life, because it took me out of my busy but comfortable professional life and inserted me into an environment to which I was entirely unaccustomed.  At the beginning of the trip I was worried that I might not be up to it, but with the support of my crew-mates, and the many new friends developed along the way, I made it, and I was a better person for it.

By the time I reached Thunder Bay, I had lost 15 pounds, and grown a beard that was surprisingly grey.

At left is a photo of me when I arrived home.  As you can see, I was a bit weather-beaten, but on the inside I was entirely alive.

The beard soon disappeared, and I slipped back into my normal routine.  I had contracted the bug, however.  Some veterans of the 2008 trip and I purchased a 25' voyageur canoe (the "Red Rogue") from Western Canoeing and Kayaking in Abbotsford, BC, which we used for some short excursions in and around the Okanagan Valley.

In 2011 we signed on for the David Thompson Columbia River Brigade, a six week paddle of another dozen voyageur canoe crews from Invermere, BC, then south along the Kootenay River into Montana, down the Clark Fork and Pend d'Oreille Rivers, over to Kettle Falls, Washington, and then down the Columbia River to Astoria, Oregon, where we arrived two hundred years to the day after David Thompson made a similar appearance there in 1811.  It was another opportunity to meet old friends from 2008, and introduce new enthusiasts to the pleasure, and adventure, of voyageur canoe paddling.

On each of the 2008 and 2011 trips, the brigade organizers engaged Jay Macmillan, a documentary film maker to record the journey.  Jay has produced award-winning films of each trip.  Below you'll find a link to the trailer for the film he produced which documents the 2011 trip.  It's called Tracing the Columbia.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7f9v1mbppM

For the future, plans are underway to stage a series of major canoe brigade events leading up to 2017, the 150th anniversary year of the beginning of Canada as a nation.

There are but a few symbols that people recognize as emblematic of Canada - the maple leaf, the beaver, Mounties - but I'm one of those who think that there is another symbol we should take time to remember - the voyageur canoe.