About Us
So - who are we?
We're Scott and Kathy – retired now so that gives us time to persue our love for the outdoors.
As residents of southern Ontario we're blessed with having the best wilderness areas in the world within a two day drive of our house.
I began canoeing in my thirties as a way to spend part of my vacation time, which at that time was a lot of tent camping. We used the canoe to get away from the campground and spend the day exploring, swimming and fishing.
That became an exploratory 3-day trip in Killarney Park and a 7-day trip on the Restoule Route.
Learn a little
of our history
We joined the Wilderness Canoe Association and my son and I got involved in some of their weekend trips. We did the Credit, Nottawasaga and Salmon Rivers as day trips and the lower Magnetawan from Wawashkesh Lake to Highway 69 including running all of canal rapids.
Then my son and I branched out on our own to lead three trips down the Spanish River. As part of that we took people to Palmer's Rapids to do some basic whitewater instruction. This would have been in about 1977.
In the meantime we discovered the Gogama area through my digging around in the files of the Ministry of Natural Resources. Those were the good old days of open offices at Queens Park and routes that were maintained by the Junior Rangers.
Those discoveries led us to the Sakatawi route, the Aux Sable Lake Route and the 4M Circle Route.
I met Kathy in the fall of 1984 after having spent several years solo canoeing – all in the Gogama area. Naturally by the time the canoeing season rolled around in 1985 we had planned some excursions.
How we progressed
to expedition
canoeing
You see, Kathy had done some canoeing also and so she was not unfamiliar with the basics.
We still laugh about our first trip – really an extended weekend – I took her to Shist Lake, a place I'd been before so I knew that the campsites were good and the swimming and fishing would be good. We arrived at our intended campsite; a nice site with an open area for lazing about and a nice steep rocky drop off for swimming. We unloaded the canoe and decided to place the tent out on a grassy spot where we could get a nice view of the water and of the night sky. Nature supplied the instruction later in the weekend as we were in the tent holding it down in a thunderstorm.
Kathy started her own company in 1988 and I lost my job of 27 years in 1990 so our vacation time was quite limited. We still managed to get away to our old haunts by scheduling some time around a long weekend.
Over the next few years we had the time to devote to getting out for longer jaunts; including ten days to do Little Mississinaibi Lake, two weeks in the Gogama area and two weeks on Kipawa Lake.
It was on one of our Gogama trips that we started to talk about a longer trip ... "If we can comfortably do two weeks in an area with no marked portages and no easy way out then why can't we think about a longer trip?"
"All that's required is a method of restocking our food and fuel as well as the ability to contact the outside world"
See some of the areas we've traveled
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