Canoeing, Kayaking, Rowing @ Ruby River

Watersheds come in families; nested levels of intimacy. Serbs, Russians, Indians, Amish, the 1.3 billion in the People's Republic of China; as you work upstream toward home, you're more closely related. The big river is like your nation, the lake is your cousin. the creek is your sister. the pond is her child. For better or worse, in sickness and in health, you're married to your sink. - Michael Parfit, National Geographic

Rowing is a fine, simple, and economical way to get afloat and enjoy the water. You are often able to use areas not well suited to sailing or even power craft. Long forgotten as a sport by most, rowing once again seems to stir the interest of many people. However, the majority still seem to think of it as “work,” to be avoided if possible. Rowing certainly can be work if you have the wrong boat, oars, and other equipment, which is quite possible because rowing paraphernalia has degenerated since other interests have caused rowing to be more or less abandoned for some time.

Just why rowing now seems more attractive to some people, once they are exposed to good boats and all that goes with them, is hard to say. Possibly, to some at least, it’s new and different; the totally mechanical age is fine in some ways, but you can get fed up with it. When rowing, you are very much the master of your craft. It is true that there is a modest skill to be learned, but it is one that is not beyond anyone of reasonable physical condition and aptitude. Anyone who can get in a boat can learn to row. The thing is to have a suitable boat properly fitted out, and capable for your stamina, or lack of it, the waters you will mostly use, and the size of your pocketbook.

In a rowing craft you find that you are closer to the water than you ever were before, no matter how much boating you have done in other craft. You are much more aware of sea and weather conditions, and see more of your surroundings than you ever did before. You get into places, holes, and creeks you never really knew existed. You get a first-hand look at the inner workings of, say, a big ferry slip - when the ferry is well away, of course - and the underside of an occasional big dock. At a certain state of the tide, you find it quite possible to navigate that rock-choked crick that no one goes near, and you discover there is a mile or more of winding, unspoiled stream that few know about. There is a big culvert some way along; keeping in mind the tide, you find you can push through. Another vista opens up a large, floppy, happy dog, who likes strangers, along with an interesting fellow taking his ease by a small cottage no one realizes is there; a beat-up skiff is moored to the bank, as is some sort of fyke net. You admire the fellow’s spread and he your boat - good pulling boats are always admirable. You make a friend and pick up some local lore. You have found a spot unreachable by the hordes and their manufactured, powered craft.

The tide is on the turn; it’s time to go. That rocky entrance will be impassable in an hour or so. It’s fun riding the ebb down - there are slight overfalls and you find that by backing down or pulling gently upstream at times, you have fine control of the boat, and shoot out between the rocks in fine style. You don’t tell just everyone about this fine adventure. Old Ike up there enjoys an occasional gam, but doesn’t want a mob; that’s why he’s there.

There are also days that are “right” for an open-water cruise. Such a cruise is often quite ambitious but easy once you are slightly toughened to it. And then there are exploratory trips to tidal ponds, and among rocks and ledges. More than once I have had a very good couple of hours going up drainage ditches with the making tide across a marsh. It was so narrow that I stood and poled; so narrow I sometimes couldn’t turn the boat, so I came out stern first. On these cruises I never failed to see some interesting thing I’ve never come across before.

One thing that I’ve discovered on these inland cruises is the need for a likely spot to beach now and then. You should get ashore to stretch for a few minutes, especially if you are alone, for you are confined to one position in the boat. This stretching is especially important as age advances. Keep as comfortable as possible - rowing is supposed to be fun.

This is only part of what it’s all about. In a rowing boat you will have an eye open for all sorts of mild adventures, all of which are interesting and give you a new outlook on areas that once seemed commonplace or even dull.

Kayaking for sport developed in southern Germany around the turn of the century. Lured by the whitewater rivers rising high in the nearby Alps, people began to experiment with wood-framed, fabric-covered boats based on the Eskimo kayak. Out of the experimentation came the collapsible kayak-das Faltboot. The frame was assembled on the riverbank and inserted into a fabric outer skin. When the day’s boating was over, the Faltboot could be quickly disassembled.

By the time World War II broke out, whitewater competition, the distant cousin of flatwater racing, was well developed. Flatwater kayak racing won a place in the 1936 Olympic Games. The first world championship whitewater slalom race was held in 1949 in Switzerland, and in 1955 the first wild water (downriver) world championship (time trials through rapids) was held in conjunction with the slalom competition.

Whitewater slalom racing began officially in the United States in 1952 on the Brandywine River in Delaware. Early slalom races were typically run in open canoes with a smattering of Faltboots in attendance. In 1958, the first national championship slalom trials were held on Vermont’s West River.

Let’s look at the evolution of the kayak and its cousin, the closed-deck canoe, describe the modern kayaks, and offer pointers on how to choose the right boat for you.

From Nanook to the Olympics

The native North Americans developed three unique species of boat: the dugout canoe used in the warmer climates; the birchbark canoe used in the great northern forest region; and the skin boat used in the barren Arctic. The arctic boats were fundamental to life in the harsh world from the Bering Sea to the east coast of Greenland.

Easily the best known of the arctic skin boats is the kayak.

Originally a hunting boat, its closed deck and sealed cockpit kept the hunter warm, and made the kayak seaworthy in rough water. Its streamlined shape made it fast through the sea and easy to paddle. Typical dimensions-about 18 feet in length and B~ feet across the beam-made it even longer and narrower than today’s recreational kayaks. Double-bladed paddles were common, although some single-bladed paddles were used.

The unique construction of the kayak made it resilient and durable in wild, ice-filled seas. The kayak frame was a masterpiece of primitive engineering. The supporting member was not the keel, as it is in most wood-boat construction, but the gunwale. A framework of bent staves was hung from the gunwale and lashed to battens running fore and aft. The bow end, and sometimes the stern as well, was extended to provide a hand grip for lifting the kayak from the sea. The deck was built like the hull, but could be structurally less robust since the deck did not get the same kind of abuse as the hull. Sealskin was used to cover the kayak frame, and seal sinews lashed the frame together. The skin was stretched taut, but because it was not sewn to the frame, collision with a chunk of ice was less likely to cause a tear.

The hunter drew the bottom of his parka over the cockpit rim, fastening it with a drawstring. Thus buttoned in, if he capsized he could roll up without shipping water.

Water is a fascinating thing. Next to the air we breathe it is probably the most significant thing on this planet. Certainly there is more of it around than any other material, for three fourths of the earth’s surface is covered with it, and over 80 percent of the human body consists of it. It is the universal fluid: we drink it plain, or we doctor it up by adding color, flavor and gas to it. We use it to create power and light for growing food, washing our clothes, mining for rare metals, and transporting goods from here to there.

Of all the substances on earth, water has some of the most interesting characteristics. First of all, it is wet and slippery. It slithers around unless penned up, and it works tirelessly to escape its bonds so it can rush downhill until it eventually joins the ocean. If dammed up it will quietly bide its time and then descend as rain somewhere else on earth in its relentless journey to the sea.

Fresh water is quite heavy, weighing about 62 pounds per cubic foot. This means that in addition to having the quality of weight, it can create a lot of force. The kayaker discovers this when he tries to dislodge his boat from a rock in the rapids: water can exert 8 to 10 tons of force against a boat hung up in a fast-moving current.

Water also has personality. It appears alive. It can sparkle; it can look ominous. Its gentle sound can lull you to sleep, its boisterousness can tingle your nerves, or its forbidding roar can fill your heart with apprehension.

Water is incredibly versatile. As a liquid it is most common, but as a solid it can cool you off on a hot day or store itself up for the spring run-off. As a crystal it gives birth to the world of skiing, tobogganing, snowshoeing, and snowmobiling. As a solid it can be skated upon.

Water, as a liquid, is dynamic. It can form the tiniest ripple from a trout nibbling on the surface of a quiet pond, or become a 50-foot tidal wave roaring across the wide expanse of the Pacific Ocean.

One of the greatest moments in the history of mankind must have been when man first discovered that he could move in water either by swimming himself or by riding along on a log. Together with the invention of the wheel and the use of fire and metal, man’s ability to propel himself along in water marked a major breakthrough in the development of civilization. No longer landlocked, man had a whole new horizon extending before him, much as space travel in our own age now lures us on to the distant stars.

And as he mastered water, he learned to play in it. Actually, there are only two ingredients necessary to enjoy boating on water: an ability to swim reasonably well with confidence, and an appreciation of and fondness for water-even if it is cold. If you enjoy the smell and touch of water and are fascinated by moving current and thrilled at the sight of rapids, then perhaps kayaking is for you.

In general, people of all ages enjoy kayaking. Children just barely big enough to see over the cockpit and strong enough to lift a paddle have been seen kayaking merrily around millponds and gentle streams. Historically, the Eskimos began to teach their children the Eskimo Roll as soon as the child had reached the age of 12.

In terms of muscular co-ordination, experience has shown that youngsters of 8 and 9 often have a remarkable sense of balance and movement and can handle themselves smartly in the water. Of course the fact that these little folk probably weigh only 60 pounds or less certainly gives them an advantage, for with so little weight in the boat it rests as lightly on the water as a leaf, and seems able to turn at a mere suggestion.

During the adolescent years and in the 20’s those who enjoy kayaking will often be caught in the competitive urge, will turn more serious about the sport, and will train their bodies to a fine pitch to improve their skill. Many schools, colleges and youth groups are taking up kayaking as an ideal environmental sport.

Perhaps the golden years of kayaking extend from age 30 to 60.

By the time a person is 35 (if he is realistic about himself) he will no longer try to keep up with the college crowd to win the coveted racing championship, but will gladly settle for the veteran or senior racing class. And many more will be content simply to attend a race, sharing the excitement that prevails in the campground and taking part in the activities.

Older people should not shy away from kayaking either. Steering your own little craft around the coves and inlets of a wilderness pond, in search of fish or wildfowl or even an illusive view of a sunset, can be a rewarding experience. If, gliding along silently, you round a bend and suddenly come upon a deer-or better yet, a moose or an elk-the day will long be remembered.

A well-known set of rapids that has given you many good times in past years will always welcome you again as a long-lost friend. And what can be more satisfying than introducing a young paddler for the first time to one of your favorite whitewater runs?

As therapy, kayaking is unmatched in its ability to wash away the pressures of a too highly charged modern society. A weekend trip, or even a Sunday afternoon paddle, can rejuvenate your spirits for a taxing week ahead.

Thoreau was right: rivers are a constant lure to the adventurous instinct in mankind.

The romance of the canoe does not just stem from the era of exploration. The incredible journeys of the voyageurs add immensely to the history of canoe travel. These adventurers were divided into two groups: the Porkeaters or Comers and Goers, and the North Men or Winterers.

The Porkeaters paddled from Montreal each spring to Grand Portage, now the extreme northeastern tip of Minnesota. Their SOO-pound canoes were 25 to 40 feet long, laden with massive cargoes of rum and trade goods. In Grand Portage they camped and waited for the North Men to come from as far north as Fort Chipawayon on Lake Athabaska through the vast wilderness of Canada’s north west. The canoes of the North Men were smaller - 22 feet in length, the maximum size for river travel. The North Men brought with them cargoes of fur. At Grand Portage they switched cargoes and each party began the return journey.

The Porkeaters were mostly Quebeckers, while the North Men were frequently part Indian, scions of the union of early Quebec voyageurs and Indian women. The North Men were the elite of the voyageurs. To them, unexplored territories, dangerous rapids, and long portages were shrugged off as routine. On long portages each man carried two 90-pound packs; on short portages some carried more. And they always trotted, never walked. What made this even more remarkable is that they were physically small men. Large men took up too much space in the canoes, space that was needed for trade goods.

Their day started before daybreak and lasted until dark. They sometimes paddled 80 miles in one day. Traditionally they crossed the huge Lake Winnipeg in an orgy of self endurance. And even after they had beached their canoes, the day’s work was not over. They had to cook their meals and gum the frail canoes to stop leaks.

It was said of the voyageurs that they were “obsessed with a desire to be first.” Every canoe wanted to be in the lead. They paddled at full speed at all times. Those that did not drown or were not killed in accidents were old men at forty, worn out by the rigors of their occupation.

The Porkeaters were of a different temperament. They were skillful navigators, accustomed to big waters. Their journeys were less perilous, less physically demanding, and less frenzied. They had the Gallic zest for life which they showed in the color of their dress, in their jokes and laughter, and, most of all, in their songs.

R. M. Ballantyne, who canoed from Norway House on Hudson Bay to Lake of the Woods and from there eastward to Lachine in Quebec, describes the fur brigades, including the exhilarating songs of the voyageurs, in greater detail than any other early traveler. He states that every summer no less than 10 brigades departed, each numbering 20 or more canoes. “I have seen the canoes sweep around a promontory suddenly and burst upon my view, while at the same moment the wild romantic song of the voyageurs, as they plied their brisk paddles, struck upon my ear,” he wrote. “And with hearts joyful at the happy termination of their trials and privations, sang, with all the force of three hundred manly voices, one of their lively airs which swelled out in the rich tones of many a mellow voice.” (Hudson Bay, Blackwoods, 1850).

Even Washington Irving commented in his book, Astoria (Knickerbocker Press, 1836) on the singing of the voyageurs. “The steersman often sings an old traditionary French song with some regular burden in which they all join, keeping time with their oars,” he wrote. “The Canadian waters are vocal with these little French chansons that have been echoed from mouth to mouth and transmitted from father to son from the earliest days of the colony.”

The musical nature of the voyageurs was exploited by John Jacob Astor to publicize his American Fur Company. While a guest of the Beaver Club in Montreal, Astor arranged for a crew of Canadian voyageurs to paddle to Lake Champlain and from there down the Hudson River, singing their chansons, all the way to New York.
Today, the songs that the voyageurs sang to paddle by are treasures of musical folklore. Some would be considered ribald even in our liberated age.

The first European explorer to use and write about the birchbark canoe was Samuel de Champlain. He was quick to admit that it was a far better craft for Canadian exploration than the skiff in which he had traveled to reach what is now known as the Lachine Rapids.

“With the canoes of the savages” Champlain wrote in 1603, “one may travel freely and quickly throughout the country as well up the little rivers as up the large ones.”

In the year 1608, Champlain joined a war party of Huron, Algonquin, and some Montagnais Indians against the Iroquois. They traveled south on the Richelieu River, eventually reaching a large lake which Champlain named after himself. What impressed him most was the speed with which they traveled. “…every day we made 25 to 30 leagues in their canoes,” he wrote. In 1615 he and Etienne Brule traveled by canoe up the Ottawa River and from there to Lake Huron via the Mattawa and French River systems. On this trip the canoe route to the west was laid open and the great period of exploration and fur trade began.

In 1660, Jean Nicolet canoed across Lake Michigan and reached Green Bay, the Fox River, and Lake Winnebago. A dozen years later Radison and de Grosselliers paddled northward from Lake Superior to the headwaters of the Albany River and from there into Hudson Bay. When they returned to Three Rivers, they brought with them 360 canoes laden with furs. Pierre de Voyer, the French governor at Quebec, who had forbidden them to take such journeys, fined the two explorers onethird of their furs. As a result, they switched their allegiance to the English, and, on visiting England, told King Charles of the unlimited wealth in furs waiting to be traded in the wilderness around Hudson Bay.

In 1673, Count Frontenac, governor of New France, sent Louis Joliet and Father Marquette, a Jesuit, westward to find the giant river of the west. They left in two birch-bark canoes on May 17 and reached the Mississippi a month later. Joliet returned to Lachine four months later, having covered 2400 miles. An expert canoeist, he claimed that 50 portages were needed to make the journey upstream - westward; to return, only 15 were needed if one were skilled enough in running rapids.
It was not until 1682 that La Salle, with a party of 54 men, canoed down the Mississippi. Leaving Fort Frontenac on Lake Ontario, they canoed westward through the Great Lakes to Illinois, and from there inland to the Mississippi River and south as far as the Gulf of Mexico. Along the way the party visited numerous Indian villages, and La Salle claimed the land for the King of France. This epic journey still stands as one of the most audacious canoe trips of all time.

For the next hundred years, canoe exploration turned to the Canadian west. It was La Verendrye who first canoed from Lake Superior to Lake of the Woods, where one of his sons was killed by the Sioux. His two other sons, Francois and Pierre, continued exploring westward establishing forts on Lake Winnipeg, Lake Manitoba, the Red River, and finally the Assiniboine River.

This bold move enraged the Hudson Bay Company. Fearing that the French forts in Manitoba would stop the Indians from going northward to their trading posts on Hudson Bay, the company began to send flotillas of canoes westward on the big rivers that flow to Hudson Bay. By this time the French had already established posts on the Saskatchewan River. In spite of this, Hudson Bay Company employees, such as Curry Finlay, Frobisher, Paterson, Alexander Henry, and even such independent traders as Peter Pond, a Connecticut Yankee, continued their canoe travels on the western rivers.

A new, and perhaps the greatest, era of canoeing began with the formation in Montreal of the North West Company in 1783. In 1789, Alexander Mackenzie, an officer of the company, left Fort Chipawayon on Lake Athabaska and canoed down the river that later bore his name - the Mackenzie. He wanted to reach the Pacific Ocean. His canoe was a 32-foot birch-bark craft. On reaching the ocean, Mackenzie saw that it was not the Pacific but the “Frozen Ocean” of the north. His round-trip of over 2000 miles took 102 days to complete.

Up to then, no white man had crossed the Rocky Mountains.

But in 1793, Alexander Mackenzie traveled over the Peace River Pass and re-launched his canoe on the Blackwater River. From there he made his way to an Indian village on the Bella Coola, near the coast, having just missed meeting George Vancouver, who was exploring the British Columbia coast from the sea. The next man to cross the Rockies was David Thompson, a surveyor in the employ of the North West Company. Thompson chose a different route. He canoed up the Saskatchewan River to the Howse Pass. There he abandoned his canoes and traveled on horses purchased from the Indians. On reaching the Columbia River, the party camped and built new canoes with which they traveled to Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia.

We in North America tend to view the canoe as “our” invention, an invention of the North American Indian. This is not so. The canoe was “invented” by many peoples in many parts of the world - Africa, Asia, South America, and the islands of the South Pacific, the only differences being in the method of construction. The river tribes of Africa, the aboriginals of Asia, the Polynesians, the Paupaus, the Indians of South America, and even those of the North American Pacific coast, used dugout canoes. Eastern American Indians and those in the western mountains, on the other hand, made their canoes out of bark. We tend to think of birch-bark canoes as typical, yet bark from at least 10 or 12 other species of trees was also used. The Iroquois, for example, commonly made canoes of elm bark, while the Kootneys and other mountain tribes of British Columbia used pine. However, the birch-bark canoe was the most widely used because the white birch or paper birch grows widely across the northern portion of this continent, and because it is easily peeled, fairly pliable when wet, and surprisingly durable.

All bark canoes had one feature in common. They were light and easy to handle, both in and out of the water. They were as ideal for traveling “up the little rivers as up the large ones” as Samuel de Champlain once put it. Indeed, until the advent of cedar and canvas, and later of aluminum and fiberglass, bark was the unsurpassed material for canoe construction.

It is difficult to say which Indian nations and tribes were the best canoeists or which built the best canoes. Undoubtedly the best bark canoes were built by the eastern or northern tribes. The plains Indians, such as the Blackfeet, scorned the canoe. When the white man arrived on their land, they were already horsemen.

Father Galinue, a cartographer who traveled with the explorer La Salle, became an expert canoeist. He claimed that the Algonquins whose canoes lasted for 5 or 6 years, made better canoes than the Iroquois. Francis Parkman called the Huron canoes “masterpieces of Indian handiwork.” Diamond Jenness, in his book Indians of Canada (Queen’s Printer, 1960), lists the Micmacs, the Algonquins, the Hurons (particularly the Ottawas), and the Swampy Crees as being the best canoeists. But Sir George Simpson, the governor of the Hudson Bay Company after it had amalgamated with the North West Company in 1821, used Iroquois canoeists on all his travels in the Canadian north and west, having great faith in their ability with a paddle and on a portage.

The Slave and Dogrib Indians of the far north built birch-bark canoes with spruce frames. These were rather small, usually made for only one man. Mackenzie once remarked that their canoes were agile and easy to handle.

The Interior Solish made pine canoes with sharp noses and stems running underwater, similar to the canoes made by the natives around the Amur River in eastern Siberia. These Interior Solish canoes were about 15 feet long, made of cedar frames covered with spruce or pine bark turned inside out, so that the smooth inner surface of the bark faced the water.

Of the coastal Indians, the Haidas of the Queen Charlotte Islands were among the best whalers and mariners on the Pacific coast. They did not hesitate to venture from sight of land on their whaling expeditions. Probably all the coastal tribes in their dugout canoes were expert canoeists, although not all used large war canoes. In fact, most were small craft for two to four men, used mainly for fishing and sealing.

The first white man to see canoes was, of course, Columbus, who saw those of the Carib Indians. The name canoe reportedly comes from the Carib word “kanawa.” But linguistically the word can be traced even further, to the old Siberian and Mongolian languages where similar terms mean “a boat with pointed ends.”

Probably the first white man to see an Indian birch-bark canoe was John Cabot in 1497 when he dropped anchor off the coast of Cape Breton Island where the Micmac Indians were expert canoeists. But nothing exists of Cabot’s thoughts about this Indian vessel. It took another century, when the great era of exploration started, for the canoe’s virtues to be appreciated by the white man.

The canoe is a symbol of wilderness - of rivers running free. It is an ideal craft with which to penetrate the wilderness; an ideal craft with which to run wild rivers. The early canoeists were unfettered people - full of independence, self reliance, adventure, and courage. They were physically tough, and their souls sang with a “joie de vie.”

The legacy of the canoe is intrinsically tied in with the history and early commerce of the northern half of this continent, Canada in particular. Indeed the early history of Canada is almost a series of ever longer and bolder canoe trips into the heart of this continent. When steam and rail came into use the canoe still continued to be the best and easiest method for travel into remote areas - even for Canadian governors, several of whom made long and exhausting canoe trips into the hinterlands of their territories.

Even today, in the era of float planes, the canoe is still useful for trappers, prospectors, geologists, surveyors, forest rangers, and timber cruisers from Newfoundland to Alaska.

It is difficult to completely comprehend the historical significance of the canoe. Without it, it is unlikely that La Salle would ever have made his epic journey down the Mississippi to claim what was later termed the “Louisiana Purchase” for the King of France. It is unlikely that the La Verendrye brothers would have traveled to Lake Winnipeg to open the gateway to the west. And, of course, the canoe allowed Mackenzie to travel to the Arctic Ocean and later to the Pacific some years before Lewis and Clark made their epic journey overland.

Without the canoe, the fur trade would have been much more difficult. And there is no doubt that it was the furs - particularly the beaver - that created the commercial impetus for much of the European exploration on this continent, once the Europeans had concluded that this new land held no easy passage to China.

The men who paddled canoes during the early era were the greatest canoeists ever. We, modern voyageurs, pale beside them. We can never hope to match their spirit, savvy, or stamina. Yet one does not need to compete with the voyageurs of old to enjoy the freedom and bounty of the canoe. Many rivers still flow unfettered by dams; much wilderness is left untouched by farms, mines, settlements, or highways. And even where wilderness has been conquered, a canoeist can still find water in which to wet his paddle, as some modern-day voyageurs have discovered in their trips around the waterfronts of big cities or on man-made canals and lakes.

The modern voyageur who wants to feel his paddle bite the water and to send his canoe gliding will always find a place.

Vive loe voyageur!