Canoeists stop in RR enroute to the Arctic

By Jack Elliott
Contributor

This summer there seems to be more traffic than ever traversing our waterways. The latest group coming through the old Voyageur route were headed to the Arctic Ocean via the Mackenzie River, from Ottawa, a distance of 7000 km. Wow talk about a journey.
I discovered the group of eight, Trans Caneauda, settling into the campgrounds at Hannam Park in Rainy River on Tuesday evening July 12.
“You’ve got the best facilities we’ve seen on the whole trip,” enthused one trekker just back from a hot shower at the public washrooms in the park.
This group of ‘20 somethings’- students, post grads, musicians, adventurers- are mostly from the Ottawa area with one Calgary transplant. The group of nine set out from Ottawa on April 30 with four canoes, but lost one paddler, Alex Bevington, for medical reason at Fort Frances and had to ship their extra canoe onto Winnipeg where they will pick it up and be joined by a replacement member. The 9th member Yevo doesn’t paddle. He’s in charge of naps and sentry duty. He’s their super friendly dog. Paddlers are Nicolas Desrochers, Louis-Philippe Robillard, Xavier Giroux-Bougard, Kalya Saulnier Jutras, Dalal Hannah, Ellerie, McKnight, and Karine Houde.
Why and how? The adventure of a lifetime. To raise awareness of Canadian Wilderness. Promote watershed conservation Those were just some of the reasons given. But it took a year of planning, a $3,000 personal commitment, and a lot of fund rising to cover the estimated $50,000 cost of the expedition.
They are taking the voyageur river system to Fort McMurray, Alberta, then down the Athabasca River system eventually into the Mackenzie and north to the Arctic. They expect to arrive around October 15 in Inuvik and have promised each other they vowed not resort to cannibalism if they get iced in before reaching their final destination.
They expected to be back on the water by 7:00 am, but at 7:15 they were still at tables in the Park scarfing down plates of donuts, their sugar covered faces glowing and effusive in their comments praising their most treasured Rainy River discovery, Wood’s Quality Bakery. Oh well, they’ll burn off those calories before they hit Lake of the Woods
And you can keep track of them all along their journey. Go to their website www.transcaneauda.ca and click on the ‘tracking’ link. They carry a Spot GPS unit that uploads their location to satellite every 20 minutes. Parents just what you need for your teenagers.
So log on and follow along as this amazing group of young people takes on a remarkable quest for the Arctic.