Written by Susan Nerberg, published by Explore Magazine, June 2019
The rock comes straight toward us. I swear I was keeping an eye out for obstacles from my vantage point in the bow, but now that boulder seems to leap from the froth. “Rock ahead!” I shout to my stern paddler, Alejandro, before tripling an expletive. There are so many other obstacles to worry about. “Go left!” I urge Alejandro, who is also my partner in life, while I throw in a cross-bow draw. I know he’s supposed to be calling the shots, but I want to avoid dumping in this spot. (Again.) Our canoe barely skims the rock. But barely is good enough—we paddle hard to keep forward momentum before tilting and eddying out with a sigh under a cluster of fragrant pines. This section of the Madawaska River isn’t called Rock Gardens for nothing.
FOR MANY CANADIANS—in my mind, even the average Canadian—manoeuvring through a set of river-rapids in an open canoe seems commonplace. Not to me. Growing up orienteering and cross-country skiing in Sweden, I didn’t have a clue what a pry stroke or a cross-bow draw were before Alejandro and I checked in for our five-day whitewater canoe course at Madawaska Kanu Centre. (Neither did he, a former elite track-and-fielder in Chile.) MKC is the canoe and kayak resort in the lush Ottawa Valley that will give us the skills we need to go river-tripping, which will officially begin with a multiday trip down Algonquin Provincial Park’s Petawawa River in less than two weeks. But I also see it as a way to honour our second citizenships, to finally become true Canucks. Besides, my first and only prior experience canoeing down a Canadian river nearly ended in a breakup—with Alejandro.
Having paddled once in Sweden, where a canoe is called a “Canadian” (kanadensare), I decided to take control on an excursion early in our relationship. I sat down by the rudder—that’s how I referred to the position in the back—and commandeered Alejandro, who had never set sandal in a canoe, to take the front seat. Bad idea—because, really, I had zero idea. Shortly after putting in, I realized we were going nowhere. The canoe, though, seemed to be going everywhere— everywhere I didn’t want it to go.
“You said you knew how to do this!” Alejandro hissed, boiling with frustration.
“Well, you’re not helping me,” I replied. We argued so vehemently about how to get the canoe to go where we intended it to go that we floated by a deer so closely we could have felt its breath, without even noticing it.
On day one with MKC we’re running into similar issues. Rated a class II, the Madawaska River has some class III rapids, like Rock Gardens, Narrows and Gravel Pit, that test more than our patience. But there are also flat sections that let us take in the scenery and watch minks play on the treed riverbanks. Each morning starts below Bark Lake Dam. (The dam is run by Ontario Power Generation, which in an unheard-of-elsewhere agreement with MKC, keeps the water flowing during daytime, Monday through Thursday, to ensure a high-enough volume in the river below to practice whitewater paddling.)
We start by practising water rescue and safe swimming, learning pries and draws, tilting, crossing eddy lines and doing S and C curves and build up from there. We get to lunch with only a minor skirmish when one of us confuses the pry with the draw and we almost tip over. After that it’s all downstream.
Little had I known that learning whitewater paddling would be similar to learning a new language—to speak like a kanadensare, if you will. To become a proficient tandem river runner you need equal parts paddling skills and diplomacy. In other words, communicating like Lester B. Pearson while carrying a big paddle. It doesn’t take more than a couple of hours at MKC to realize I’m severely lacking in both.
As we head out on the river again after lunch and the following two days, Alejandro and I don’t click; we don’t find the same language. Since he’s paddling in the stern, I want him to tell me exactly what to do and when, while he’s thinking that since I seem to know what to do, he doesn’t need to tell me. It’s a rough ride. Instructors Erin and Andy put us in separate canoes to practice our strokes in peace. Alejandro and I finally reach a turning point on day three, when we sit down for lunch with Stefanie Van Wijk, a canoe guide and instructor and the daughter of MKC’s owners.
Stefi, as everyone calls her, is taking over the running of the business from her parents, Olympic paddler Claudia Kerckhoff-Van Wijk and Dirk Van Wijk, a canoe and rafting guide, with her sister Katrina, an extreme athlete/kayaker and graphic designer working with the family business from her British Columbia base. Grandparents Christa and Hermann Kerckhoff immigrated from Germany in the late 1960s and started canoeing, “because they wanted to do the Canadian thing,” Stefi says. They did it so well, they decided to start teaching the sport, modelling MKC on a European ski school. (Grandpa went on to compete for Canada in the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich.)
Veering from the family’s high-performance focus, Stefi went to work as a river guide with canoe-outfitter Black Feather at 15, and ever since her interest has been in canoeing for the pleasure of being in nature. “What I want MKC to do is to teach the language of the river,” she says about the company’s canoe and kayak programs. We tell her about the challenges we’re having communicating and (mostly on my part) diplomacy. “Canoeing isn’t always about performing,” she says. “It’s about chilling— going with the flow and having fun.”
On the final day of the course, I wake up before the sun. I blame it on the rain pounding our corrugated cabana roof, but it’s more likely nerves about graduation day on the Ottawa River. Repeating sections on the Madawaska, we knew what was coming at us, even if the execution was wobbly. Today, we’ll be paddling into the unknown. But over french toast, yogurt and granola in the dining room, which is adorned with, among other craft, an Inuit kayak and a canoe used in the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Erin reminds us we know what to do. She’s right—in theory.
As soon as we put in, I can feel the tug of the current. It’s pushing and pulling with a force we hadn’t felt on the Madawaska, but we’re having fun riding in and out of the froth created by tributaries along the way. There’s a portage down a set of tall cliffs in the middle of the river and enough class III rapids to keep us sweating despite the rain. At one point, Erin motions to our group to eddy out. She explains that we’ll be going over a ledge, one canoe at a time. “I’ll go first and wait downriver; Andy will stay above. Keep left of the big boulder, and paddle hard,” she says before disappearing.
It’s our turn. I hear Alejandro’s voice from behind: “Let’s go! Just remember to help me out.” The adrenalin flows as fast as the river, fuelling some inner power to stay clear of the boulder. We go over the ledge with a boof. Paddling madly, I feel the canoe getting tippy. “Paddle forward!” I yell. I hear Erin on river left: “Paddle! Paddle hard!” But we start rocking even more. We flip. I hold on to my paddle and swim ashore. “What the hell were you doing?” I ask Alejandro. He’s smiling, so I can’t be mad.
“I did nothing,” he replies. “I just held onto the gunwales and went for the ride.” I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Erin confirms it; she saw him. “You had it until your partner stopped paddling,” she tells me. Alejandro smiles. “I had to know what it was like,” he tells me.
The rest of the day seems like a breeze. Sure, we hit more rapids, some tricky enough that we decide not to run them (we’ve figured out when it’s best not to go with the flow). On the final stretch, I turn to the stern and ask Alejandro if he thinks we’re ready for our multi-day trip on the Petawawa River. “Of course,” he says. I make him promise not to do that holding-on-the-gunwales thing.
“Of course.”
THE PETAWAWA RIVER has some wicked rapids. As we’re staring down the maw of Crooked Chute on our four-day expedition with Black Feather, I see mangled pieces of aluminum canoe. Having no desire to tempt fate, I’m hoping this is where we’ll do our first portage. “Yeah, it’s a bit sketchy,” says Mark Orzel, our guide and the trip leader. That’s an understatement.
But the scouting mission on the rocks are a good way for Alejandro and me to keep practising river-reading after our course at MKC. It’s also a good way to see the river in a broader context, as Mark tells us about the river being a part of the area’s forestry history. “Those metal rings bolted into the rock are from the logging past,” he says. And going even further back in history, the river was a part of a network of water routes that connected Indigenous people and provided trading routes.
Considering we have no history as wilderness paddlers, we signed up with Black Feather, which offers river expeditions across the country—from the Soper in Nunavut to the Peel in the Yukon—with instruction thrown in for those who want it. We are the newbies on this Petawawa trip, a 50-kilometre jaunt where we’re learning how to pack a canoe and how to portage, while testing our new skills. We also get to enjoy being in nature, swimming, hanging out around the campfire and eating delicious food served from the “countertop” of an upside-down canoe.
As we approach the Thompson Rapids— there’s an upper and a lower portion—we eddy out on river-right and exit our canoes. Mark takes us on a hike downstream and onto a set of boulders above the rushing water. He surveys it, then looks at us. “So, what line do you see here?” Alejandro and I discuss and agree on an option. Mark confirms our choice of a line between boulders then over a tricky ledge. Still, he makes the decision not to run it—it’s too risky. Walking back to pick up our canoes for the portage, I’ve got mixed feelings. “It’s disappointing,” Alejandro says. Like him, I was stoked to give it a go, but at the same time I feel relief. We make it smoothly through Lower Thompson, and it seems that we at least solidify our communication skills. Which work well as long as he is in the stern and I’m in the bow
Swapping roles one morning, I take the driver’s seat. There are a number of class II rapids ahead of us, tricky enough to give me a challenge but not so hard we can’t clear them, even with the roles reversed. We set out after agreeing on the line. But as soon as I have to make a decision, I freeze. I mess up my pry with my draw, and we’re off on the wrong course. I can’t even see where we’re going, because Alejandro is blocking the view, being taller than me. That rock we’re supposed to go past is all of a sudden under the canoe. We can’t get off it, so we step out. But doing so flips the canoe over and pins the boat against another rock so hard the gunwale snaps. Our gear goes down the rapids. At least someone is downstream to drag it to shore.
I’m frustrated and embarrassed by my failure. I vow never to sit in the stern again, leaving that job to Alejandro. Our fellow paddlers, however, offer encouragements. So when we get to the ripple that feeds into McManus Lake, I ask Alejandro to steer to the shore. I want to give sterning another try.
“You know you can do it. Just keep your cool. You know what to do and when,” Alejandro says as we push off. I pick my line, taking us into the centre of the river before moving over toward the right bank. I’m doing my pries and draws and asking Alejandro for help when I need it, or asking him to paddle forward. I’m actually navigating our boat this time— and I’m enjoying it.
It’s calm enough that I think back to the only time I paddled in Sweden. The skies were so sad that day they made the canoe well up with tears. Bailing and whining, my 11-year-old camp friends and I struggled not to cry ourselves. What was the point of this exercise? We were soaked, cold and hungry. Swimming across that boreal lake would have been better, or even running a trail through the forest alongside it. But this was just flat, and I’d never heard of flat-water canoeing. The sport wasn’t for me.
What I’m realizing as I take us downstream without tipping is that I was the one who wasn’t a sport. But I’m in control, and this is anything but flat.
LEAVING THE LAST rapids behind, we start our final push across McManus Lake. Our expedition is coming to an end. Plying the sun-splashed waves with a steady paddlestroke—my mind flips through images of the past couple of weeks: our canoe going down the Madawaska without us; the friends we made; camping under the stars that watch over Algonquin Provincial Park; the fear I felt when the Ottawa seemed to want to drag us under; and the bear cub that swam in front of us yesterday morning on the Petawawa. I go over the skills we’ve learned and how awesome it is to have found a new way of exploring the wilderness. And I think about what it means to live in a country that puts a canoe on its currency and where you’ll find an entire museum dedicated to the watercraft.
It’s a great joy when it all clicks with your paddling partner and you navigate through a class III rapid together without dumping. I still haven’t mastered diplomacy like LBP and my paddle seems awfully underweight, but I’ve come to see the advantages of going with the flow. I am Canadian. And I figure Alejandro is, too, even if he doesn’t put it as bluntly. On the drive home from Algonquin, he looks over at me. “So when are we doing this again?”
