by Iori Miller
I recently found an article on GREENGLOBALTRAVEL.COM titled, the ’10 Best Canoe Trips [For Your World Travel Bucket List]’. I was not impressed. Read onward and be prepared. The author, John Geary ‘began a life-long love affair with outdoor adventure at Southern Ontario’s Camp Richildaca.’ Today he lives in Vancouver. His list is as follows: Bowron Lakes (British Columbia), Everglades National Park (Florida), Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge (Georgia, USA), Belize Barrier Reef (Belize), The Amazon (South America), Boundary Waters Canoe Area (Minnesota), Okavango Delta (Botswana), Mekong River (Southeast Asia), Vava’U Islands (Tonga), Kerala (India). I get it that a lot of these places are exotic, and as such if you paddle these locales, you might see some incredible flora and fauna. And I don’t expect a Canadian to be biased … we’re too polite for that. But really?! The most noteworthy Canadian paddling destination he could come up with was Bowron Lakes? (the author admits he hasn’t yet paddled it so he talked to a friend who had). But note that the only country with TWO destinations is the USA. Once again, really?! No thought to include The Nahanni, or any of the tributaries of the PEEL river in the Yukon?
I will sum up my disdain for John Geary’s list by quoting Bill Mason: “First God created a canoe; then he created a country in which it could flourish”.
The year of 2025 is drawing to a close – another paddling season is ending. In this year, post-Covid, we fortunately had another ‘live’ Wilderness Canoe Symposium. Again, this year the Paddler Coop hosted our annual Fall Gathering on the October 4/5th weekend (Palmer Rapids, Lower Madawaska River), thus strengthening the new connection between the organizations. Most of the 2025 posted Outings are now completed, and some new postings for 2026 are already showing on the recently revamped website.
The year will conclude with the annual Mike Wevrick Lecture and Wine and Cheese Social. It will be held, from 7-10 pm Nov 1, at the Toronto Sailing & Canoe Club (1391 Lakeshore Blvd. West, Toronto).
This year our speaker will be Al Pace. Al grew up in a family of canoe-trippers, who explored a great number of southern Ontario’s lakes and rivers. Later Al attended Lakefield College on the edge of the Canadian Shield just north of Peterborough. In his final year as a student he was a member of the school’s 3 week post-graduation canoe trip on the Coppermine River. Al parlayed this experience into a life-long pursuit guiding trips all over Canada’s rugged north. Today he is the owner-operator of Canoe North Adventures and runs his family’s operation out of an award-winning Lodge and Outfitting Centre in Norman Wells, on the Mackenzie River, NWT.
A final word needs to be said to explain why this issue is called the Fall/Winter 2025 issue and not the Fall 2025 issue. For reasons not known to this editor, in recent years the issues slipped backwards in the schedule. The Winter issue has not actually been produced in the same year as the Spring, Summer and Fall issues. So, to get back on track, this issue will finish the 2025 year, and the Spring 2026 issue should appear in January. This will enable all four of the 2026 issues to come out IN that calendar year.
It is important that you understand that this is the fourth issue to be produced this year. The reader has NOT lost one of its issues.