Into the Canadian wilds

Can J Rural Med 1996; 1(1): 38

Being in the bow, I was supposed to view calmly the boiling mess of white water with jagged rocks like sharks' teeth creaming the surface ahead of us, then sedately pick the proper route through the mess by drawing with my trusty paddle on either side of the bow, depending on which side was bearing down on something sharp and deadly, all the while keeping a level head in a furiously bucking canoe. Of course, we'd surveyed the rapids from shore and picked the best route, but it looked a lot different in the driver's seat.

It was a fairly easy ride until we were nearly through. Too late, I saw with horror the hidden boulder ahead of us, the water stretching over it like cellophane. I frantically drew left, and we missed the boulder only to slide, ME FIRST, into a gigantic hole that tipped us sideways like a bike in a velodrome. At this point I think I was supposed to do what they call a "high brace" by bravely leaning up and over the heaving high side of the canoe, serenely allowing my weight to bring the canoe back down again and then slamming my paddle face first onto the rushing water while leaning on it briefly to regain the canoe's equilibrium as John, in the stern, did something equally athletic. Instead we both froze, our paddles high in the air as far away from the water as was physically possible. Meanwhile the bottom seemed to fall out of the canoe. We went into freefall for one suspended second, the canoe on a crazy tilt, before the bow of the canoe slammed down into the water and, as far as I was concerned, never came up again. As if a rug had been pulled out from under our feet, we were suddenly without a canoe, bouncing furiously through the rapids, the raw, wild power of the water tumbling us down through the rocky mess like feathers in a hurricane.

We were fished out of the water once we'd hit calmer climes. Our canoe was pried off a rock. We headed on, looking for a quiet place to camp for the night and to dry out. It was not to be. An entire scouting party of 15 rowdy teenage boys in full hormone mode had pitched camp on the only site for miles. We had to ask them to make room for us on that bug-infested speck of land.

We were supposed to be getting away from it all, but this felt remarkably like the vacation equivalent of a rural roller-coaster ride for a country doctor covering ER on a night with a multiple-trauma highway accident, no back-up and bad weather moving in. Or maybe it was just too much whitewater too soon and too many docs on that particular trip.

We scaled down some of our future trips and weathered the whitecaps of huge northern lakes with walloping head winds, tail winds being as rare as orchids in winter. We added a couple of kids to our family of two. Our friends said it was just to give us more muscle power to carry all our equipment. But since we had to portage the kids too, until they could walk, we couldn't be accused of such callous foresight.

We've battled more than just the elements to get away from it all. Once, on the Spanish River we came barrelling around a corner in a series of tame rapids. We hadn't seen a soul in 4 days. I was in the bow as usual, my heart finally slowing down from the excitement of the last rapids. I found myself frantically drawing over the left bow to pull the canoe away in order to avoid the airplane we were about to hit. It sat like a wounded goose, its pontoons wedged into the rocks, the water sluicing through the cab. Standing on its back, wildly gesticulating, was a man in the throes of what looked like full scale panic.

Every doctor knows the lurch of the heart when arriving first at the scene of a highway accident. The look on John's face said it all as he eyed the man, and I wondered about getting away from it all only to find "it" on the river. But as we approached at breakneck speed, it became obvious that the man wasn't interested in us; he was looking behind us. As we followed his gaze, we saw a helicopter hovering overhead, a rope dangling like an umbilicus from its belly. As the current dragged us swiftly by we learned that he had run out of gas and had had to make an emergency landing the evening before. He had returned to salvage the plane. No injuries.

As Canada's wilderness shrinks, it has become harder to get away from it all. We've camped on a deserted pristine lake, our privacy well earned after a 2-mile portage, only to have a group of fishermen land in a float plane, haul out their stashed boats and troll back and forth in front of our island, ostensibly looking for fish but more interested in what the hell we were doing there with kids. I've known more privacy at the corner of Toronto's Bloor and Yonge.

Once, at 6 pm in the middle of a rainstorm, we were paddling with five sodden children and four adults across a lake to a possible campsite, only to be told that, even though it was Crown land, we couldn't camp there and must paddle five miles to the next lake. His nibs circled us, like a vulture, in his motorboat for half a silent hour as we ignored the order and continued to paddle to the closest piece of land -- a sloping hill of 30ƒ. It made for an interesting night of vertical camping, with our youngest son migrating out of the tent in the middle of the night. We had to pin his sleeping bag to the bottom of the tent and woke to the incessant buzz of the motor of our self-appointed landlord.

So why do we keep trying to get away from it all if "it" seems to follow us like a magnet? Because on every canoe trip the good times far outweigh the people-crowded times, portage back-breaking times, bug-infested times, rapids-dumping times, and the good times are made better for having conquered the rest as a family team. The quiet, gentle things that happen, which make up the bulk of most canoe trips, are not as easily told because they are often just warm feelings or disjointed images: the spectacular leap of a gigantic woman-sized sturgeon ("It's a dinosaur, Dad!"); the colours of the setting sun reflecting from its prehistoric skin; an osprey diving feet first for a fish and struggling to rise, the fish jerking in its talons ("It's got a fish, Mum! No! Wait! The fish has got it!"); a beaver surfacing so close to the canoe that when it frantically dived and slapped its tail in alarm we all got wet; a young bear cub visiting our tent at dawn ("Will he hurt us, Mum?"); a bald eagle taking flight from beneath our noses as we tied the canoe five feet away ("Hey! It's head isn't bald! It's got feathers!"); swimming from a sun-soaked rock and cooling down under a northern waterfall; watching as a dozen 3-lb pickerel circle a hook baited only with a raisin and laughing as the kids struggle to land one just as the hook comes out; talking endlessly by the light of a campfire; lying on our backs at midnight and watching the northern lights; playing bridge on rainy, windbound days in our tent -- making memories that will last a lifetime. No phones, no fax, no email, no tv, no beepers, no on-call, no cars, no computers, no doorbells, no radios, no demands on anyone's time; nothing but the rising sun, the water, the rhythm of the paddles and your friends. Now that's getting away from it all.