I feel like I owe my canoe an apology. – Story by MEC Envoy Leanne Allison
I’ve taken my canoe for granted my entire life. I’m halfway between 40 and 50, and I’m finally showing some gratitude. Finally showing some respect for what an incredible craft it is. If I try to imagine what my life would’ve been like without a canoe, I can’t. It would be like imagining Canada without the canoe. It’s impossible. One has shaped the other.
My earliest adventure was in a canoe. I can still feel myself as an 11-year-old skinny-armed girl desperately trying to keep a loaded Grumman canoe straight from the stern as we hurtled down the Devil’s Elbow rapids on the North Saskatchewan River in Alberta. I can still remember being on the banks of that river brushing my teeth under a blanket of stars. I knew then and there that I’d found my nirvana. Rivers have been my happy place ever since.
Zoom ahead a decade and it was a canoe that took me north to the Nahanni River where I had my first kiss with my future husband in a natural hot springs under northern lights. No canoe, no first kiss like that. Maybe even no husband. Or one that, heaven forbid, didn’t like canoeing.
Fast forward another decade or so and it was a canoe that propelled my family (husband, two-year-old son, and border collie) from our home in Canmore to the shores of Hudson Bay as part of a longer journey to meet author Farley Mowat in Cape Breton. No canoe, no incredible family bonding, no Finding Farley. None of it.
In fact, it wasn’t until our Finding Farley trip that we really started to appreciate how incredible the canoe is. Until then, we’d only canoed on western rivers. The canoe worked well, but so did other crafts like kayaks and rafts. But once we hit Shield country, we realized the canoe was king. No other craft can touch it. The canoe is the grand soloist.
I recently came across a quote about love, and if you substitute the word “love” with “canoeing,” it would perfectly describe what canoe tripping has meant in my life:
“Love (canoeing) is a human act of becoming, a condition that is invented and modified moment by moment and day by day, by the will and the intelligence and the heart.”
- From Stoner by John Williams.
Both love and canoeing are a bridge to something larger than ourselves. Can there be a greater gift? I don’t think so.
So thank you, canoe. Sorry it’s taken me so long to say it.