Why paddle a stand up board from Vancouver to Victoria? MEC Envoy Bruce Kirkby reveals why he tackled this trip, and ponders why adventure matters in the award-winning short film The Questions We Ask by Kalum Ko. It’s intriguing, beautifully shot, and may stir up a few adventures of your own.
The idea was born from a phone conversation with Duff Gibson, Canadian Gold Medallist in skeleton.
Every year, Duff raises money for the Stephen Lewis Foundation by tacking a physical challenge, and last spring he was thinking about paddling a stand up board from Vancouver to Victoria. Unfamiliar with coastal paddling, he called me for advice and to gauge if it was a reasonable or possible challenge. I instantly agreed to tell him everything I knew, on one condition: I could come along on the adventure.
Duff said yes, and it was game on.
Duff wanted to go in early June, which gave us just eight weeks to prepare. Despite never having stood on a paddleboard before, I ordered an inflatable from MEC that very afternoon – the robust 12’6” C4 Waterman iTrekker.
Two days later, a brown box appeared on my porch. I threw it in the back of my car and headed straight to St. Mary’s Lake, near Kimberley, BC, where spring ice still clogged the shorelines. A local friend told me that in two years of paddling a SUP on St. Mary’s Lake he’d never fallen in, so I pumped the board up and confidently set off from shore.
Less than three minutes later, my paddle entered the water at a slight angle, stalled, and I tumbled head over heels into the icy water. And after paddling the 6km shoreline loop, I was exhausted.
But I was also hooked. Standing up offered a unique view into the water beneath my feet, which was so different from the kayaking I was accustomed to.
The board seemed to float over crystal waters. Colourful pebbles and shimmering trout flashed beneath, and the biggest flat fish I’d ever seen swam beneath me for a minute before I realized it was a beaver’s tail. The silent craft brought me within a stone’s throw of elk, bears, eagles, osprey and even wily mountain goats at shoreline mineral licks.
Then there was the graceful paddling technique. It reminded me of Nordic skiing in the sense that anyone can learn the basics in 20 minutes, but it takes years, and thousands of kilometers, to master the motion.
I paddled 10km the next week. Then 20km. And 30km. While paddling at Moyie Lake, I was lashed by a storm and learned that even in gale force winds, I could drop to my knees and scratch out progress. Soon I was paddling five days a week, after work and longer on the weekends, which required careful planning to meet my fuel and hydration needs. I did a 50km paddle down Columbia and Windermere lakes, and a 70km/12 hour paddle on Lake Koocanusa. Six weeks after I bought the board, I felt ready at last.
By that point, Duff’s plan had changed to paddling 100km in a single day on Vernon’s Lake Kalamalka. On June 4th, we set out at 4am in twilight, alongside our mutual friend Kelly Forbes. Eighteen hours later, our bows crunched onto the sandy beach in darkness, and we stepped off, exhausted and happy – having raised several thousand dollars for Stephen Lewis.
Duff and Kelly returned home, but the idea of paddling from Vancouver to Victoria stuck in my head. I’d spent a summer guiding around the Gulf Islands when I was younger, and it was a landscape I loved and missed. The challenge of crossing Georgia Strait felt daunting, but doable. I was fit and ready. It was time.
A young filmmaker, Kalum Ko, and my long-time paddling buddy, Dave Quinn, agreed to come along in a double kayak. So the next week, as dog walkers and joggers enjoyed a sunny Wednesday morning, we pumped up my board, stuffed food and tents in the kayak hatches, and paddled away from Vancouver’s Jericho Beach. Five days later – after SE gales, sunset crossings, ferry traffic, crystal waters, quiet camps, porpoises, sun and rain – we rounded Gonzales Point and entered Victoria Harbour. Less than an hour after landing, we’d rolled up the board, thrown it in a duffel bag, and were headed home.
This movie is the story of that journey… sort of. More importantly, it attempts to answer the question we all face as outdoor enthusiasts and explorers of wilderness landscapes: What is adventure? And why does it matter?
It’s worth noting that Kalum took three days off high school to join us on the paddle, and hadn’t been in a kayak before our trip. The three-minute film he produced – The Questions We Ask – premiered at the Banff Mountain Film Festival, and has gone on to be shown at festivals from Hatteras to Hawaii, for which he deserves every accolade.