Jul. 13, 2011 - Issue #821: The Beer Issue

Paddle ‘till your arms fall off

Traversing the original Trans-Canada Highway by canoe

In 1862, near the historic Victoria Trail—the oldest road still in use in Alberta today—the Reverend George McDougall founded a Methodist mission to the Cree. By 1864, the Hudson's Bay Company moved into the same site, founding Fort Victoria. By the turn of the century, the Victoria Settlement—as it came to be known—was a bustling centre of commercial and missionary activity, and the nucleus of an English-speaking Métis community in the area. It suffered a rapid decline soon after and has all but vanished.

The site lies on the north bank of this country's original Trans-Canada Highway—the North Saskatchewan River—just south of Smoky Lake. Traversed by fur traders on their way to York Factory from Edmonton House or Fort Augustus and farmed by Métis settlers who travelled Victoria Trail into Edmonton House on Red River carts, the historic nature of the settlement is preserved in the buildings that form the provincial historic site, Victoria Settlement: an 1864 HBC clerk's quarters and a 1906 Methodist church.

Setting out from nearby the site of Edmonton House—whose final location was just south of the Legislature up the Old Fort Road until it was dismantled in 1915—myself and six others made the three-day journey by canoe to Victoria Settlement.

The first day was clouded by a curtain of smoke blown in from forest fires raging in British Columbia. After getting our bearings out on the water, it became clear that the first day would be tough paddling—we couldn't see each other at times across the river, much less the upcoming bends or any dangerous rocks or outcrops.

Paddling along a river is a meditative process: the rhythmic strokes, the breathing, the forward motion, the repetitive nature of the movement putting you in tune with your body's strengths and limitations. By the time we stopped for lunch, our group had mastered forward-motion after a number of instances of spinning and flailing. We had figured out when and how best to switch sides with the paddles, how to steer from the back, how hard we could paddle without losing our breaths. It wasn't bad for a pack of city boys.

We stopped for the day only a few hours outside of Fort Saskatchewan. We had gotten a late start, had been hampered by our own incompetence, and the smoke was getting to us. We were hopeful the wind would change, blow the gritty smoke back to the province it had come from, and clear up the rest of our trek by morning. We found a sandy island to pull the canoes into, dug a hole on the beach and set about collecting driftwood for a fire. When it got dark, we let the fire burn low and headed into our tents, arms aching from a half day of paddling.

I once found myself at a major interchange on Highway 1 somewhere in rural Manitoba. It was the middle of the night and I was trying to get to Sault Ste Marie as quickly as possible, but Lake Superior stood in my way. I was struck there, under a wide canopy of stars, by the vastness of the prairies, by the fact that the road I was on stretched from one end of the country to the other, that its length and breadth touched lives so far removed from my own as to be inconceivable. Thieves and murderers, businesswomen and police officers, potato farmers, wheat farmers and plumbers all lived near, drove on and used this road every day, all across the country. Families careened down it on the way to see relatives, the kids screaming and being shushed along the way. I could see the whole of Canada, this impossible dream of a single nation across disparate cultures, landscapes and time zones held together by this ribbon of pavement.

Such was my feeling waking up that second day, on a small island in the river. It was the same river that lazily flowed past my downtown Edmonton  apartment, but it was altogether different. This one was more powerful; this one wasn't simply the river that I had to cross to get to Whyte Ave, this was the one that stretched from Rocky Mountain House to Hudson's Bay, that carried fur traders and missionaries and helped birth a nation. Looking east to west would bring you through three provinces, through countless generations of explorers, through decades of Canada Day fireworks shimmering on its surface.

The morning was misty, a combination of lingering smoke and morning fog, and the sun rose in the east a hazy orange orb. As we drank chewy coffee and collected beer cans off of the beach, crushing them and lining canoe bottoms with them, we reflected that it'd be another tough day of paddling.
At least we had the whole day. After the first day's lazy meandering and steep learning curve, the second was a race. My canoe, packed mostly with tents and backpacks and three people, remained firmly in the middle while the one with the heavy cooking gear languished in the back. The one with all the beer only got faster, losing ballast as the day went on.

Around noon we learned that we could lash the three canoes together with our emergency ropes, forming a behemoth we christened "megaboat," which was able to float down the river in a straight line as long as someone ruddered it with a paddle. It was a perfect platform to drink beer, eat trail mix, listen to tinny reggae from an iPod connected to speakers and take pictures of peregrine falcons swooping amongst the riverbank's trees. Unlashing the boats, we decided we'd paddle another hour before stopping at an island for lunch.

Spotting the island in the distance, we maneuvered the canoe toward its banks. Where the river split around the island's jutting face it swirled ominously, sucking leaves and grasses, dragonflys and mosquitoes into its dark depths. We headed for the left side of the outcrop, but were pulled toward the right by the current. At the last moment, we realized we wouldn't make the landing—and now an outgrowth of tree roots threatened to decapitate us.

Instead of ducking, we grabbed on, our legs remaining in the boat, pulling it downward until it started to fill with water. The canoe capsized and we were left waist-deep in the river, clinging to tree roots.

We sprang from our positions, grasping the boat and flipping it. Most of the gear remained and was kept safe in dry bags. Some was floating away and we set out to retrieve it, soggy running shoes slipping on the river's rocky bottom. After grabbing the coats and empty beer cans that threatened to float away, we emerged from the river cold and covered in dirt.

Luckily our clean clothes remained unsoiled inside the dry bags, so we quickly changed into them before gathering sticks to plant in the sand near the fire to hang our sodden gear. After an hour of eating, attempting to dry the clothes without burning them and taking good-natured abuse, the clothes remained damp but it was time to go.

After paddling until my shoulders felt loose in their sockets, we began to search for a suitable place to stop for the night. With no islands nearby, we figured we'd have to stop on the riverbank, and searched for some flat land. On the north shore there was a suitable location and we pulled in, got a quick fire going near the bank and climbed a steep incline to a plateau where we could set up our tents.

When it began to get dark—and once the fire had finally dried all the clothes that we had wet earlier in the day—we noticed on the south bank an enormous house constructed of rough-hewn logs, large windows making up its north face, a warm glow emanating through the fog. That's when it started to rain.

It was only a drizzle, but after a cold, wet day spent paddling, staring up at the shelter of the house before turning back to see our anemic fire and skeletal tents being rinsed in rain was maddening. We also worried that what we were doing was illegal, that we were camped out on somebody else's land, that the people in the log house would call the RCMP—or worse, their neighbours—who would come find us with shotguns under their arms, "Get off my land," dripping venomously from their lips. After a quick dinner, we tucked into our sleeping bags, the golf claps of drizzle hitting the nylon roofs of the tents above us.

The next morning the sky had cleared considerably and all of us looked forward to our final day of paddling and first in the sun. The beer canoe was almost empty, but with little more than half a day to go before we reached Victoria Settlement, we'd be able to pick up more soon.

Making breakfast proved to be difficult: though the sun was out, the ground remained soggy and there was no dry kindling to be found in the area. We also wanted to keep a low profile, so we couldn't go searching too far for any wood that might have been sheltered from the downpour. After gathering together the damp twigs and sodden logs we had nearby and trying to get them to light, I—in a fit of pique, and without thinking clearly—used a slosh of cooking fuel and a carefully-dropped match to get the fire to go.

After a breakfast of oatmeal and berries, it was time to hit the river once again. One of the more interesting aspects of canoeing is that you can't stop doing it. Once you're out there on the water, once you've escaped the bonds of the city and are a few days into your trek, there's no calling it off. Short of helicopter rescue, hitchhiking or a sheepish phone call—if you can find reception—you must continue to your destination. Turning back isn't an option—the river only flows one way.

By noon we were only kilometres away but so famished we had to stop. Finding a grassy island whose banks looked easy to alight upon, we settled in and, working against the wind, managed to get a camp stove going to make a large pot of soup and potatoes. Lunch finished, we pressed on to our destination, fingers raw and shoulders aching.

We crept toward a barge someone had tied near the settlement and saw a sign hanging out over the bank directing us in. We set our canoes in that direction and rode the momentum of the river up the sandy bank. We took a look at where we'd come: the settlement is much as it must have been at the turn of the century, except not very full. Wooden buildings—some of the oldest in Alberta—dominate the area, a teepee was set up in a field and everywhere were felt the competing ghosts of commerce and religion, the two forces that shaped Western Canada.
After a quick look around, we collapsed in a heap.

Canada was built on the canoe: without it and without this country's vast system of rivers stretching from Hudson Bay to the West Coast, there would be no continent-spanning country. Even if you're more accustomed to city life, there's no more elegant way to get back to nature and back to this country's roots than by hopping into a canoe and paddling until your arms fall off. Surviving the exhaustive amount of work it takes to maneuver the thing is worth it in terms of scenery, accomplishment and reconnecting with what made this country great in the first place.
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