The Happy Camper: Canoe Trip in Opasquia, Part One
The canoe trip to Ontario’s remote Opasquia Provincial Park started as a lark. When my regular canoe buddy, Andy Baxter, and I turned 50 years old, I planned an epic canoe trip around Algonquin Park, titled The Meanest Link. Andy, not the biggest fan of that trip, cursed each and every one of the 93 portages, adding up to 68 kilometres in total. While we ended up completing the infamous trip, he vowed to seek retribution when we turn 60 and plan an epic trip to blindside me with. This year, we turned 60 and he did just that. I knew nothing about our destination up until the bitter end.
When we loaded our gear onto the bush plane at the Red Lake docks, he pointed to the map to let me know our destination for two weeks: Opasquia. The Provincial Park hugs the Manitoba border and measures approximately 473,000 hectares in size. It’s also darn remote—it took our bush plane two and a half hours to fly the 245 kilometres north and flying is the only way to get there.
Andy had organized the trip through Albert and Kelly Rogalinski of Goldseekers Canoe Outfitting & Wilderness Expeditions in Red Lake. I knew them well and was glad they were the ones who helped form this mystery trip.
Prior to the trip, Andy sent a note to Paul Meekis, Coordinator of the Lands and Resources of the Sandy Lake First Nations. It was their traditional land and water we would be travelling on, and it has always been customary for me to ask permission from the Indigenous group(s) to travel on their sacred land. Andy did the same. Thankfully, Paul took our request to the Sandy Lake First Nation Council and got back to us on time.
“The Band has no opposition with your request to do a canoe trip within our cultural territories. The Band stated that your planned canoe trip should start a week early and finish before September. We start our moose harvest and hunting [in] September and into early November, our people will be everywhere in our cultural hunting grounds at that time,” Meekis wrote in his email back to Andy.
We adjusted the timing of our trip and after two full days of driving from our homes near Peterborough, Ontario, Albert set us up in his bunk house and Kelly made us a delicious dinner. We then rolled the topographic maps on the table and looked over Andy’s canoe route around Opasquia.
Revenge is so bittersweet. Andy had initially planned a route that circles the park but things change quickly in the far north. Forest fires were raging across northwestern Ontario, filling the air with toxic smoke. One fire, in particular, was close to the western border of Opasquia. It measured close to 14,000 hectares in size and was growing quickly. With winds coming from the northwest and a good portion of our planned route taking us just a few kilometres away from the flames, we altered our route to the southeast of the park. It was a region that Andy had little info about. A book titled Canoe Atlas of the Little North indicated some Indigenous Peoples’ traditional portages that link a series of small lakes that would connect us to the centre of the original route.
In the morning Andy and Albert gave the pilot the coordinates of a random, unnamed lake in the southeast corner of the park, one the pilot had never landed on before, and we set off to our magical mystery tour of Opasquia Provincial Park.
Stay tuned for part two of the Opasquia canoe trip where we have to cut our portages and travel only four kilometres in the first six days.
Thank you! It looks like this was some wild adventure…Can’t wait to watch the videos! !