There was a time when the map of Canada only showed a vague outline of Newfoundland and a bit of the Labrador/Quebec eastern shore. Back then, this new world needed explorers. Today every single kilometer of Canada is mapped, and some might argue there’s no need for more Explorers. Satellites can spill geographic data out of the sky with the flick of a switch, or, at least, a stroke on a keyboard.
So, are explorers on Earth a thing of the past? Elon Musk might argue today’s explorers must go to Mars. And further. So, are today’s explorers only the rich billionaires with awesome space rocket toys, like Elon, or Jeff Bezos?
Adam Shoalts is an explorer, and he pilots a donated red canoe. When he goes exploring, he fills his canoe with enough gear and food to last him a few months, and he explores routes that few would dare to try. In fact, few in the history of Canada have seen as much of the country from the seat of a Canoe, as Adam Shoalts. He embodies the very definition of an explorer spirit.
Adam has written several books … all of which are non-fiction. Personally, I think his best was A History of Canada in Ten Maps. It describes how the modern map of Canada grew from great explorers who undertook epic journeys filled with hardship, all to find new routes across a land spreading endlessly west from today’s Quebec/Labrador shoreline. In this book Adam tells the tales of other explorers with wit and depth, but in his other books he tells the stories of his own epic adventures. Most of which were undertaken from the seat of his red canoe (generously provided by the Nova Craft Canoe Company).
In his most recent book, Adam looked out a window of his house on a fine spring morning and spotted a peregrine falcon flying over his piece of Lake Erie shoreline. It struck him immediately to follow, to make his way across Canada to the Torngat mountains of Labrador, to emulate their great migrations to the rocky ledges where they raise their young. Like a real explorer of a bygone past, Adam didn’t have a safe plan all worked out to explore this route. He did make maps, he had his trusty canoe to begin the journey, but he knew that he’d have to stitch together a lot of the fine details along the way. It was an epic 3,400 km odyssey –easily more that most canoeists accomplish in a lifetime. Three months for Adam. One book to tell the tale.
The recent tale is told in: Where the Falcon Flies. One reviewer summarized it far better than I could: “Along the way, he faces a huge variety of challenges and obstacles, including storms on the Great Lakes, finding campsites in the urban wilderness of Toronto and Montreal, avoiding busy commercial freighter traffic, gale force winds, massive hydro electric dams, bushwhacking without trails, dealing with hunger, multiple bear encounters, and navigating white-water rapids on icy northern rivers far from any help.”
I found Adam’s recent book different. When many wilderness paddlers find a notion to explore a route, they research numerous trip reports, gather as many maps as they can, and then spend countless days planning out the minutiae to ensure all the food, tea, medical materials, repair wire and duct tape that ever could be needed is carefully stowed aboard. Yet in this book it is so very obvious that Adam is traveling spartan. He has a route carefully planned, for sure, but he knows he will have to improvise a LOT along the way. As I have personally traveled a few small portions of the route he took, I had a little understanding of what he went through to undertake this journey. While I appreciated his reflections on the natural environments, the indigenous peoples who lived there past and present, and the recent histories of settlement since European colonisation, he also describes how he copes with all the unforseen challenges he could never have predicted when planning.
Never a dull page, the momentum he maintains to propel himself to his final takeout is so vividly felt in his writing, that the book itself is a real page turner.
Post Script: If you have read one of Adam Shoalts’ books, and better still, this one, then you’ll be pleased to learn that Adam is to be the guest speaker at this year’s WCA Mike Wevrick ‘Wine and Cheese’ on December 7th, at the Toronto Sailing and Canoe Club, in Toronto. He will be speaking about this journey from Lake Erie to Ungava Bay, and maybe sharing about his most recent exploratory adventure.