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Ontario's
Lost Canoe Routes
By
Kevin Callan
Boston
Mills Press
Toronto,
166pp. $19.95
ISBN:
1-55046-3888
This
review first appeared first appeared on Ottertooth under
Temagami
reviews.
Kevin
Callan has written his sixth canoe-route guidebook. Not
a cut-and-dried Frommer's Does Ontario by Canoe
guidebook. No, this one has got attitude, the same
attitude that have made his books so popular.
Ontario's
Lost Canoe Routes contains 15 Ontario routes, three of which are in the
Temagami region: Chiniguchi (chih-nih-GOO-chee) River,
Thunderhead-Bob lakes and Marten River Park. These
Temagami routes are not as well known and, particularly
in the case of the Thunderhead route, not well used. His
goal for this book was to find and publish
out-of-the-way routes before they are lost.
And
here is the dilemma. "How can a route be 'lost,' or
better yet," he says in the introduction,
"protected, if some wilderness pornographer like me
writes about it in a guidebook?" This is the same
dilemma Hap Wilson faced back in 1978 when he published
Temagami Canoes Routes. In the end, both Hap and Kevin
came to the same conclusions: use it or lose it.
Publicizing them and getting canoeing traffic back on
these old nastawgan
puts the onus on the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR)
to protect them from industrialists and canoeists. (We
won't get into the
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huge chasm between MNR's and the
wilderness canoeist's concept of protection.)
Those
who write up canoe routes have been criticized by some
canoeists who see them opening up their private utopia.
But I disagree with them because, sadly, reality is a
harsh teacher. |
Kevin's
route books are fun to read and he doesn't gloss over
his own misfortunes or mistakes, often with
self-deprecating humour. On his Chiniguchi trip, he
dropped his canoe on a portage and soaked his first-aid
kit. To bandage a cut he "had to resort to holding
a piece of gauze over the cut with a strip of duct
tape." Ouch.
The
book has plenty of photos and every route is clearly
mapped with interesting features, portages and
campsites. Fortunately, he maps an extension of
the Chiniguchi trip through Evelyn Lake, but
unfortunately doesn't flesh it out in the narrative. (Just
can't get enough of this guy, I guess.)
There
are a few minor factual errors in his research of some
Temagami features. He attributed the Wakimika Triangle
old-growth trails to Friends of Temagami, when they were
built by Temagami Wilderness Society and Earthroots.
This
book will help gain recognition for the 15 routes and
provide some great choices off the beaten path. Even if
you aren't intending to put your paddle in the water any
time soon, the stories of his travels are so interesting
that you will probably change your mind.
Routes:
Wabakimi
Park (Smoothrock-Whitewater route)
Steel
River Loop
Chapleau
and Nemegosenda Rivers
Wakami
Lake Loop
Ranger
Lake Loop
Bark
Lake Loop
Nabakwasi
River Loop
Four
M Circle Loop
Tatachikapika
River
Chiniguchi
River
Canton
lakes (Thunderhead-Bob lakes)
Marten
River Park
South
River
York
River
— Brian Back
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42
Days...Back River 2000 22
min
An
Arctic Journey
Canoeing
the Hood River 38 min
Wilderness
Bound Productions
www.wildernessbound.com
Wilderness
Bound is a small outfitting business in Hamilton,
Ontario with some big multimedia capabilities.
Run
by veteran guides, George Drought and Barbara Burton,
Wilderness Bound not only runs exotic
trips in the far north, they also publish superb river
guides and have two video productions on a pair of the
north’s most famous
rivers, the Back and the seldom-travelled
Hood.
Now
while these are amateur productions, they take
good advantage of the great leaps in technology lately.
And talk about synergies, the videos were shot while
leading groups of paddlers down these remote rivers.
No
doubt these videos serve them well
to attract new customers
who will be impressed by their style — a non-macho,
group participation effort with an emphasis on
history.
And
like the ground they sleep on, the videos are a little
uneven but very watchable and nicely convey the feel and
realities of a northern canoe trip. Though you certainly
would like to have a bit more info about the river and
more about the trip participants who provide most of the
narrative.
The
videos have some great nature footage, of caribou and
muskoxen and even the extremely elusive wolverine
(congrats!)
— Michael Peake
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