The Happy Camper: My Worst of Worst of Worst Canoe Trips
After writing several bestselling canoe guidebooks over several decades, it’s no surprise that a common question asked by the media is, “What’s your favourite route?”
It’s a good question, but not an easy one to answer.
There are so many joyful places I’ve spent canoe tripping in the wilderness, but I usually ramble on about places like Killarney, Algonquin and Temagami. I doubt, however, that there’s one specific place that is my all-time favourite, so I bail out with a regular reply saying that it’s the “next one.” That’s always been a good answer, and a true one, but there are times when saying such a reply feels kind of like being a weathered stand-up comedian on stage saying the same joke over and over again. It’s a good joke… but yeah, we’ve heard it before.
Recently, however, I was asked during a popular podcast show a totally different and welcoming question. The interviewer asked me what my worst ever canoe trip was. How refreshing… and how easy it was to respond. In half a second, I spewed out the answer: Northern Ontario’s Opasquia Provincial Park.
You’d think I would have had a longer list of troubling times out there. Nope! There’s nothing like the Opasquia misadventure. It was the worst!
I’ve definitely had some challenging moments in wild places, like the Steel River’s Diablo Portage or Algonquin’s insane Meanest Link with its 110 portages adding up to 68 kilometres. But my experience during the Opasquia route was different. It wasn’t the physical drawback, even though there was plenty of those moments on that trip. And it wasn’t personal issues dealing with my genetically induced high anxiety. That character ailment certainly played a part but wasn’t the main demon I was battling with. It was much deeper than that.
You’d just think that I was smart enough not to be there in the first place, and that thought brewed and boiled in my head the entire time.
The trip itself started as a lark. It was Andy’s idea. He is one of my regular canoe buddies who I have explored countless canoe routes with. The difference here, however, is that all the other ones, I had planned and organized. It had been the norm for many years, basically because it was me who was writing up the canoe guides, so it was me to figure out where we would paddle. Planning things just made sense, and Andy just agreed to come along for the ride.
However, there came a time when Andy wanted to change it up a bit and plan the next trip. I threw him a bone and agreed. After all, change is always good; it’s like wearing the extra pair of socks on Day 7 of a 20 day canoe trip; it’s not entirely necessary but it’s certainly a welcomed change.
But Andy added a twist, one that would eat away at my anxiety issues beyond imagination. My canoe buddy wouldn’t tell me where we were going; it was all a big secret. He thought it would be a fun gimmick to a story but it actually became the beginning of a severe mental breakdown for me.
When we loaded our gear into the bush plane at the Red Lake docks, Andy 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.
Flying north into a remote wilderness area wasn’t a new thing for me. I usually welcome it. The issues at hand, however, was that the entire north was consumed in massive forest fires. The Indigenous peoples that lived in this roadless territory were now being evacuated—and yet Andy and I were flying directly into the flames and smoke for an extensive canoe trip. Why?
I remember that moment in flight, when my gut wrenched and my intestines puckered. I was sitting in the passenger seat and the pilot pointed to a wall of blackened smoke in the horizon. He asked me if there was any other place where we should be dropped off. I shrugged my shoulders and told him that it was my buddy Andy, sitting in the back seat, that has all the details. I had no clue.
Andy wasn’t wearing a headset though, so he also shrugged his shoulders and then handed me the topographical maps. He had jotted down some ancient portages scribbled in an old book titled Canoe Atlas of the Little North that link a series of small lakes that would connect us to the original route.
The pilot landed on some unnamed lake (not many lakes up there have any names). He then helped us load up our canoe with gear and said, “Good luck boys, I’ll see you in a couple of weeks.”
At first glance, the landscape seemed mystical. This was not the tamed interior of Algonquin or the semi-wilds of Temagami. This was “pure” wilderness. The only way out was to push an SOS button on our satellite communication system and have our pilot come back and get us.
We had two weeks, three packs, a barrel full of dehydrated food and two litres of whisky. Andy had a fake hip and a bummed knee. I was drugged up with arthritis and anxiety meds… and these two old guys that just turned 60 paddled off on some unknown lake in one of the most remote places in Canada.
The first day paddling was quite quaint. We drifted over big water, pushed over a few beaver dams, checked out cliff faces for ancient pictographs, watched bald eagles soar above and spotted a mink the size of a wolverine. It was an interesting place, all new to Andy and I. But little did I know, the land was about to teach me something deep and never-forgetting.
We made camp early on a nob of rock. We learned quickly that no “true” campsites exist here. You have to make one, and we did. Life was good. I caught two walleyes and a pike offshore, we dined on our first homemade dehydrated meal (spaghetti and veg) and poured our first dram of whisky. The sun set over the tips of black spruces and a pair of loons serenaded us to sleep.
Come morning, we packed our canoe and paddled over to the first portage of the trip. I spotted the beginning of the first noted trail—a 230 metre portage. Andy paddled the canoe up to the shoreline and I stepped out to check it out. A few metres in, the trail completely disappeared. The way was clogged by thick alder, a carpet of sphagnum moss and Labrador tea and hundreds of downed and burnt jack pines, which looked as if a giant had spilled his box of toothpicks over the forest floor.
We made it across to a small pond and paddled over to check out the next portage—a 600 metre. The same thing. No trail, just brush and downed trees. By the time we scouted, marked and cleared our way across, it was late in the day and we pitched our camp at the far end of the trail and filtered our tea water from a mucky pond.
The same conditions remained for the other three portages that linked more small ponds to a much larger lake. We figured things would improve once we reached the larger lakes, but for now, we had our work cut out for us as we made our own trails between the ponds. A 600 metre, 400 metre and another 600 metre portage took us six full days to scout, tag, clear and carry over!
I could go on about the difficulties Andy and I endured for the six days to travel only four kilometres, scouting, tagging and cutting our way through the thick brush. The full story is truly book-worthy. But for now, I just want to go back to why this was my worst trip ever. It wasn’t because we were confused of our whereabouts a lot of the time, it wasn’t the ordeal of locating and cutting a way through the entangled tundra. It was none of that. I’ve done all that before. It was because my fate was placed on a platter for someone else. That really ate away at my conscious like no other. If I did die in the wilderness, I would consider it a good place to die. But I wish it to be on my own accord. Period!
Imagine being a passenger in a vehicle on a busy highway where the driver was, what you thought, driving erratically and foolishly. Imagine you put your foot down on the floor mat as if you’ve got a brake pedal there, but not. Imagine going into the fetal position each and every time the driver passes dangerously close by a transport truck. Now, imagine the wilderness canoe tripping version of that nightmare. How about being flown by a bush plane into smoke and fire in a far northern environment that you’re not at all familiar with, a place where a skilled bush pilot second guesses your decision before he flies away and leaves you alone and vulnerable? Or a portage route that not only doesn’t exists but has no need to exist?
That’s a far more than anxious moment in my life that I never again want to endure. To die on my watch in the wilderness is one thing. It’s tragic but memorable and something I would welcome and cherish. To die on someone else’s watch is absolutely unacceptable to me. Hence, Opasquia was my worst trip EVER! Why? It wasn’t my chosen place to die.
It would be too easy to say just trust Andy, he is your best friend. But when neither of you know what to expect next and the portages are not what was expected, that can be be tad difficult. Sometimes, though, the worst trips are also the most memorable. (maybe for the wrong reasons!)
my worst-trip-ever was the time we got lost like idiots because neither of us were paying attention properly
we survived lol
Kevin… I feel your pain… i’m sure that almost everyone has a story to share like this…. or not!
Got turned around on a grown over portage in the rain coming back from Atikaki Park in MB.. Rain,cold, snakes…no shit, and mud. The best part was I had cleverly stashed a bicycle in the bush at the takeout. The plan was to ride 20km to the put in and retrieve our truck…in the rain, on gravel, in the wind, mostly uphill. After battling all day to get out. Had what looked a lot like a heart attack on the way home. As you said Kevin….not the hill I wanted to die on that day.