My daughter portages a canoe for Kirk
I was so proud of my daughter this weekend. She won “the youngest portager” award during the Portage for the Kirk Wipper Memorial event held at the Canadian Canoe Museum Wipper Portage Neil Sorbie and a bunch of other very enthusiastic volunteers decided it would be a fitting tribute to Kirk Wipper, the founder of the Canadian Canoe Museum, to organize teams to portage a canoe from Hart House at U of T to the Canoe Museum in Peterborough. The distance of 130 kilometres was completed in 4 days.
Unfortunately I couldn’t make the event due to my presentation tour. But my wife, Alana, and 6 year old daughter, Kyla, jumped in and joined the fun. Colin Jagoe, a Twitter friend of Alana’s, took some amazing photos of the event on his blog. Check it out.
The amazing part of the day for me was to see my daughter, dressed in her Princess pyjamas, sitting on the back porch patiently waiting for me to get home, so she can tell me the good news. “I portaged today, dad” she screamed out. I gave her a congratulatory hug and let her know how proud of her I was…then said “So this means you’re carrying the canoe on this year’s summer trip.” She looked at me and said “Ya right, I doubt it Dad.” My hopes of having my child carry gear for me across the portage was crushed for yet another season. Well, one can only dream I guess. Maybe next year.
