By Maria Lodge

For over one hundred years, the Hayes River system served as the major highway into the western interior of the North American continent. From York Factory at the mouth of the Hayes River, the Hudson's Bay Company controlled the enormous watershed draining into the Bay.

Over the years, prior to 1714, when the Hudson's Bay Company was left in command of York Factory, it had been alternately under the authority of the French and the British, both vying for control of the lucrative fur trade. In the interior, the major staging point for this operation was at Norway House, at the northern end of Lake Winnipeg.

By Maria Lodge

The Canadian Heritage Rivers System was established in 1984, as a cooperative program of the Government of Canada and all of the provincial and territorial governments. The objectives of the program are to give national recognition to the important rivers of our country, and to ensure the conservation of their natural, historical and recreational values for the benefit and enjoyment of Canadians. Among the rivers designated as Heritage Rivers is the Bloodvein, which begins its westerly flow in northwestern Ontario, and eventually enters Lake Winnipeg at the Bloodvein Indian Reserve.

July 1 was the launch of the first official water trail in Atlantic Canada. About 50 people gathered early in Lunenburg to send off the small flotilla on a nine-day "cruise" to Halifax. The idea was to get a first-hand experience of some trail sites and water conditions and better understand the needs of different types of boats. The flotilla included about 10 kayaks, a small sloop, and the NS Sea School sail boat, Dorothea, and some canoes who joined us for the first leg including Dusan Sodek and family. We were joined the next day by a 40-foot schooner, Dorothy Louise, along as a support and safety boat.

In the Wake of Alexander Mackenzie: Ottawa to Bella Coola

Over 200 years ago, near Bella Coola....

"I now mixed up some vermilion in melted grease and described in large characters on the Southeast face of the rock on which we had slept last night this brief memorial":

Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada, by land, the twenty-second of July, One Thousand Seven Hundred and Ninety Three.

Three years ago, while kayaking in Nepal, I met a fellow paddler who told me about a raft trip he had taken down “the wildest part” of China’s Yangtze River – the “Great Bend,” where the upper Yagtze makes a hairpin turn to the northeast and the rapids create waves up to 20 feet high.

During the rainy afternoon of August 27, 1967, eleven canot du nord came around a bend in the Calumet Channel of the Ottawa River, on the eastern side of Grand Calumet Island, Quebec. Once a common sight, these were likely the first big canoes to paddle this way in almost a century.

I was only 15 years old when I took my first trip to Canada. I went with my mother to visit relatives who lived in Ottawa. As a young boy growing up in Edinborough, a trip to Canada in winter was a dream. My heroes were professional hockey players. I dreamed about going to a hockey game. And we did fulfil many of these dreams. We saw the Senators beat the Montreal Canadians....we skated on the Rideau Canal in the shadow of the Parliament Buildings. We went toboganning at the Experimental Farm....but what I remember most from this trip, the experience that is indelibly etched into my childhood, is playing shinny hockey on the frozen Ottawa River.

The Soper River winds through the heart of the Meta Incognita Peninsula on southern Baffin Island. Meta Incognita – The Unknown Place – was the forbidding name given to this land by Queen Elizabeth 1st in 1576, after explorer Martin Frobisher described it to her. By 1931, when Canadian biologist and Arctic explorer, J. Dewey Soper, travelled up the river, it was still largely unknown to the outside world. The Inuit who live here call it Kuujuaq, the Big River. Although it is navigable for only 50 km (by canoe), the Soper is a major river by Baffin Island standards. It is a Canadian Heritage River, one of a select group of Canada’s most outstanding rivers. The land it flows through is protected as Katannilik Territorial Park meaning “Place of Waterfalls”, and everywhere, water tumbles down the steep valley walls.

“Get up! There’s a grizzly bear in camp!” Those terse words, hissed through clenched teeth, cut into my dreams like a news flash. Jim and I crawled out of the tent into the brilliant stillness of an arctic dawn. All traces of sleep evaporated instantly when our bleary eyes focused on the silver-tipped barrenland grizzly nonchalantly investigating the gear we had stashed under our canoe. Without any clear plan of action, we shouted, “Stupid bear! Get out of here! That’s our stuff!”

Free again. The first, fleeting moments alone beside a barrenlands river deliver a sensation you can never forget. Impossible to hold onto, it is nonetheless so profound that its memory is permanent. Left alone beside the river, with no more than a tiny pile of gear, a silent travelling companion, and an immense wilderness all around, the solitude penetrates through every sense, every pore of your body. It is palpable, flowing over you like a wave. It may be familiar, and expected, yet all the more profound because of that. There is a feeling of having awoken from a dream, to find yourself within a beautiful, peaceful sanctum. There is stimulation everywhere, and yet there is nothing, absolutely nothing, imposing itself upon you. Nowhere is this experience more impressive than in the Thelon Wildlife Sanctuary, in the heart of Canada’s Arctic barrenlands, as far away as you can get from “civilization” in continental North America.

Grand dad, what’s your favorite animal? asked my six-year old granddaughter. I was in Prince George, British Columbia – visiting my daughter while travelling home to Victoria. This followed an extraordinary adventure on the Yukon’s newly designated Heritage River, the Bonnet Plume.

The cool, clear, swiftly-flowing water caressed my ankles as I lowered the canoe into the river. Sunlight sparkled on the surface of the current, making polarized sunglasses a necessary addition to the trip gear. Using the glasses, it was easy to make out the gravel bottom in shallow sections of the flow and hopefully, would allow me to see any submerged obstacles in our path.

In the summer of 1996, the Yukon Territory began three years of celebrations to mark the centennial of the Klondike gold rush. My husband Don and I decided to follow the trail of ’98, by hiking the Chilkoot Trail and paddling the Yukon River from Bennett Lake to Dawson City. Our 22 day journey covered a distance of over 900 kilometres. We paddled in our ocean kayaks and found they “took like ducks” to river travel. As with most adventures of this kind, no amount of pre-trip preparation, whether it be physical conditioning, historical research or just plain old romantic notions, could quite prepare us for the experience we had.