It was the perfect, rugged Canadian image: canoe,wild rice bog, and a portage that could have beenused 150 years ago by tough voyageurs conqueringthe savage northwest. The canoe snaked throughthe high green screen of wild rice toward theportage entry point. Plant shafts hissed alongfibreglass. Seed-heads slapped our faces. Wild ricebounced onto our hat brims. As we nudged shore, I hopped out of the bow andsank butt-deep in slime. My stern partner threw hisweight sideways to counter-balance while I grabbedthe gunwale and pulled myself up from the bog.Floundering soggily onto hard ground, I helped dragthe canoe up, shouldered my pack load, andsquished onto the narrow, stony path, grinning likea fool while my water socks dribbled gobbets ofmuck. I would rinse the green goo out of my shorts at theother end of the two-kilometre portage. There’splenty of fresh, clean water in northernSaskatchewan; almost half the world’s supply offresh water flows in Canada, most of it through theCanadian Shield that covers fully half this vastcountry’s land mass. There are as many kilometresof inland waterways in Canada asthere are on the rest of the earth.Many of them, close to towns andcities, can be paddled on short daytrips or week-long flat-waterexcursions, where a dozen ormore nature-lovers, led by acouple of paddling veterans, learnbasic paddling techniques. Somemore distant raging, rapid-studdedstreams should only be attempted iftwo or three novices areaccompanied by veteran guides,one per novice. The fiercest, mostremote of Canada’s rivers shouldbe tackled only by experiencedwhitewater canoeists. I am not an experienced paddler. Iam accustomed to simple, dignifiedpre-dinner turns around peacefulbays in tame cottage country. Hence, my firstextended paddle took place under the watchfulveteran eyes of CanoeSki Discovery Company’s

Cliff Speer, on the tamest bit of northernSaskatchewan’s Churchill River system. A four-day,sixty-kilometre journey punctuated by five portages,

it was the perfect beginner’s jauntthrough a series of glassy channelsof floating, flowering fields ofwater-lilies framed by dark firforests, and across lakes and bayswhere light summer breezesfeathered up tiny, choppy waves. There were lazy breakfasts, swimsin the black, cold water of million-year-old lakes, loving icy water onsweaty, itchy skin, and longlunches followed by light napsstretched out on the sun-warmedgranite of stone islands. Thoughmosquitoes around dusk campfiresregularly tormented our group ofa dozen and my long-neglectedmuscles ached to the bone for thefirst two days, the landscapeworked instant magic on my tired,

urban-addled mind. Loons sang us to sleep under bright moonlight andserenaded in the mornings while we sipped coffee,

ate hot cornbread studded with wild cranberries,and breathed morning air fresh as a stack of pressedlinen. We lost count of soaring bald eagles after thefirst morning. Beaver, otter or muskrat dunkedabruptly when our canoes passed in marshychannels, and at dusk occasional moose or caribouswam, almost submerged to avoid the hungryswarms of mosquitoes, from island to island. Wesaw no bears; we did see their scat. Portages tookus through thin, silent forests of tall pines, steppingcarefully along high, narrow rock escarpmentsjutting out from thick carpets of pine needles. Four days later, when we pulled into tiny StanleyMission on the Churchill River, I was hopelesslyhooked on wilderness paddling. So, when theopportunity arose, I leapt at the chance to conquernorthern Manitoba’s remote Seal River withWilderness Spirit Adventures guides Rob Currie andMark Loewen and American photographer EricLindberg.

The allure of the SealI knew there would be no wild rice bogs here, noplunges into chill, sweet water. The Seal, one ofCanada’s wildest waterways, springs to life out ofremote Shethanei Lake in northern Manitoba and

flows to Hudson Bay. It isone of those fierce, remoterivers that should be tackledonly by experiencedwhitewater canoeists, forwhom this jaunt is the wildride of a lifetime. Eachsummer, only a few dozenpaddlers tackle the Seal’s 42sets of rapids, which includesavage stuff studded withjutting chunks of worn rockand liberally peppered withjoltingly-high waves, nastycross-currents, and hiddenstone ledges. As the riverflows north, its landscapeshifts from wild CanadianShield pine forests to boggytaiga and stark tundra, achanging vista that’s onereason it was declared aCanadian Heritage River. Like many northernCanadian paddle routes,the Seal is not easy toreach. But that’s part of itsallure. Paddlers fly fromWinnipeg to the remotemining city of Thompson,then on to the tiny, isolatedDene Cree community ofTadoule Lake on an oldpropeller-driven bush plane

that seats perhaps a dozen passengers. A freightplane follows, carrying canoes and campingequipment. From Tadoule Lake, paddlers may takea day or more to cross Tadoule and ShethaneiLakes before reaching the Seal’s headwaters to takeon the ten-day, 260-kilometre water trek toHudson Bay.As we began the trip, rapid-running seemed easyenough for even this nervous whitewater novice.The first rapids offered up a few hundred metres ofimpudent little waves that made for a bouncy ridebut posed no real threat. The second set, an hour later, was another story.The leading canoe, paddled by Mark and Eric, tilted,swerved, and skewed alarmingly through ‘haystack’waves towering a metre above the spray-skirtedbow of the canoe where I kneeled, numb withterror. Rob, my sternman, bellowed, “Paddle, Judy!Forward!”Blankly, I obeyed. The canoe lurched and bucked,drenching me and filling my spray-skirt girdle withgallons of icy river water. We bounced downanother half-kilometre of one of Mother Nature’smore extravagant water tantrums and finally ‘eddiedout’ into a quiet spot at the bottom. “Deer in headlights!” Rob hooted while I sputteredand bailed gallons of icy water out of my sprayskirt.“That’s what you looked like – a deer caught inheadlights!” It was the best fun I’d had in years.I wanted more.

Canada has arguably thebest to offer both buddingand experienced canoeistsfor river adventures. JudyWaytiuk tells of her personaladventures in the Canadianwater wilderness

Tour tips…… The Canadian Heritage River System(www.chrs.ca) lists Canada’s Heritage Riversand paddle routes.… Trips in this story were taken under theguidance of CanoeSki Discovery Companywww.canoeski.com and Wilderness SpiritAdventures www.wildernessspirit.com. … For more on canoeing in Canada, check theCanadian Recreational Canoeing Association(www.paddlingcanada.com) or Out There, acompendium of Canadian travel and adventureresources (www.out-there.com).

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“A four-day, 60-kilometre journey punctuated by fiveportages, it was the perfect beginner’s jaunt througha series of glassy channels of floating, flowering fields

of water-lilies framed by dark fir forests”

All photographs supplied by Judy Waytiuk

And I got it: two, three, four or more sets of rapidsa day, some of them easy rides that rolled for sevenor eight kilometres, others brief, boiling, breath-stopping furies. Undaunted by insect repellent, tiny,biting blackflies swarmed us constantly onshore,deflected only by netted ‘bug-hats’ or cooking fire

smoke. At night, we camped on sandyshelves overlooking the tempestuousriver, and tried to avoid crushing groundcover of ripe wild blueberries as wemoved about, scooping berry snacks onthe way to and from the fire. As we leftbehind the hard granite and eskers(high sand ridges) of the Shield andmoved into tundra, we pitched ourtents on small crescents of riversidebeach or in spongy spaces amongwillow and peat bogs where weforaged for Arctic cloudberries.Where the river ran quietly, we passeddignified families of Arctic swans,parents bracketing young, nervoussignets. Occasionally, I wedged glovedfingers into crevice finger-holds in mid-rapid boulders, single-handedly holdingour canoe in position while Rob fishedfor Arctic grayling for supper. Onmarshy river islets, agitated ternsswooped overhead, protecting nests offluff-headed chicks. Startled moosefloundered to shore as we drifted by,‘rafted up’ for mid-river lunches ofapples, cheese, sausage and bread. As the days progressed, the river widened into ashallow, boulder-strewn channel where dozens ofharbour seals slithered off sunning rocks and bobbedcuriously past us. Finally, our canoes scraped the lowtide stone bottom of the river’s rocky tidal estuary atthe edge of Hudson Bay. We slept that night insleeping bags spread over a tarpaulin on the dirtywooden floor of a tiny fishing shack. On the nextmorning’s high tide, we paddled out to a 40-footlaunch waiting in the bay, to be plucked up andcarried south to Churchill, where indoor plumbingand hot showers awaited, to be followed by massivecheeseburgers at Gypsy’s Café.Now that I know the thrill of conquering a heart-stopping ‘Class V’ rapid, flatwater paddling in Shieldcountry has become a simple long-weekendpleasure. But there’s plenty of room for both formsof wilderness canoeing in the wild tangle of forests,rivers and lakes that skeins the Canadian Shield’s

scoured granite. Both forms offer, in their ownways, rides of a lifetime. And somehow, it seemsfitting that one of the world’sfew remaining stretches ofuntouched wilderness shouldbe explored by silent,respectful paddle blades. The native Cree people heretell legends of Wasagajack,the trickster hero who, intheir version of the floodmyth, created the post-floodworld by sending animals intothe water to find a speck ofdirt Wasagajack could use tore-make the land. Theanimals – beaver, muskrat –all failed, until the brave otterfinally floated up, drowned,

its dead paws clutching the needed, precious bit ofmud. The Cree ark was a giant canoe.

Did you know…… Formed more than two billion years ago, theCanadian Shield is the oldest exposed piece ofour planet, and was scoured clean ten thousandyears ago by Ice Age glaciers? You can still find‘chatter marks’ where glaciers skidded a little. … The word canoe comes from the Caribword Kenu: a boat dug out of a tree? Today,canoes can be made from wood and canvas,aluminum, fibreglass, plastic, and exoticlightweight Kevlar or Royalex.

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