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THE CANOE by Gerard Kenney
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By Gerard Kenney (Excerpted from Lake of the Old Uncles, The Dundurn Group, Toronto)

While building the cabin, I portaged my old eighty-pound canoe over the winding and steep trail that leads to Lake of the Old Uncles. I used it to tow logs for the cabin walls from across the lake to where the cabin would be. It was easier and quicker than swimming them across as I had done with the first ones.

I bought the canoe when I was a younger man and I could carry it without too much trouble then. Just a few years ago, the canoe seemed heavier with each passing year. I sold it —with regret, after all the miles that we had done together — and bought one that weighs only fifty pounds. Now, even though I am halfway through my eighth decade of life, I can carry it for a mile or more before putting it down. It gives me a great sense of freedom to be able to go to places where few others go, by portaging along rough trails and paddling up small, beaver-obstructed streams from one lake to another. I still admire the traditional cedar-strip canoe of old, the kind that gives a characteristic hollow thunk when struck with a paddle, but they are too heavy for me now, and there comes a time in a man’s life when it is a matter of compromising, or not going where one wants to go. I compromised a few years ago and bought the light Kevlar craft that I can still handle easily. It is of a pale-green colour that blends in well with the wilderness. My lightweight canoe has taken me into waters as varied as those of the wild Labrador interior, and the relative civilization of the Ottawa River.

Someone once wrote, “Store your canoe where you can see it and your paddle where you can touch it.” I love my canoe, and even in the middle of winter I go into my garage and rub my fingers along the gentle curve of its side, thinking back to the boiling rapids we have ridden together, and times when it bucked like a wild horse, throwing me more than once into the foam-flecked, dancing waves. My thoughts go forward as well to future adventures not yet lived and a gentle sense of apprehension comes over me — a sense similar, except in degree, to the feeling I get just before sliding down the “V” of an unknown rapid. In my bedroom stand two paddles, both made of rich cherry wood. One has seen a few miles of wilderness waters and the other, the twin brother of the first, is still new and of the smoothness of silk when I pass my hand along its length. I think I will keep it that way.

Cultures of many origins were represented in laying the foundation for North America. The Native cultures made essential contributions: the canoe and the trapping of the furs that supported the first economic system of the north. The French culture was represented by the trading company of Revillon Frères and men such as Pierre-Esprit Radison and Médard Chouart Sieur des Groseillers, as well as the countless indefatigable coureurs de bois and the steel-muscled voyageurs that followed in their wake. From the British Isles came the Scotsmen and the English — governors, factors, and traders of the Hudson’s Bay Company and the North West Company as well as explorers sans pareil — men such as George Simpson, David Thompson, Alexander Mackenzie, and Simon Fraser, all carried by thin vessels of bark from the St. Lawrence River to the extreme northern and western limits of North America.
Canada is a land of much water. Long ago the inhabitants of the north evolved a craft capable of gliding across its countless lakes and rivers that was perfectly in tune with their nomadic needs and with the materials at hand: the birch-bark canoe. This craft, more than any other, was responsible for uniting the far-flung reaches of the North American continent. The union was forged through the combined efforts of First Nations people and Europeans of many origins using the gift of the interior tribes of Native people: a vessel made from the bark of trees.
Were it not for the birch-bark canoe, the history of North America would be greatly different. This wonderful gift from Native minds and bodies enabled men and women to bridge the thousands of kilometres that lay between the east coast and the waters of the Arctic and Pacific oceans. Thus was laid the foundation upon which the building of the countries of this vast continent began.

Although the material of which the Indian canoe was made has changed in modern times, the basic form of the vessel remains the same to this day. It is truly an enduring symbol of North American history, and particularly of the forging of the links that bind the continent into a land of many and varied cultures. The canoe is no longer a vessel of commercial transportation, but it is one that is held dear for spiritual reasons. In the canoe, many rediscover links with their origins as natural beings in touch with a world of nature -- origins that sometimes tend to be obscured in our hectic modern lives. The canoe is capable of transporting us to mystical places of great spiritual value where we may renew the wellsprings of our human and natural existence. This is why the canoe is still important to the lives of many, and why it carries on its usefulness to humankind, no longer as a tool of commerce, but now as a means of achieving renaissance of our spiritual selves.

The canoe is the perfect symbol for maintaining intact the priceless North American continent. It is from the perspective of a canoe slipping quietly along the darkening shores of a wilderness lake, when the hush of evening accompanies the setting of the sun, that the spirit of the north is most easily evoked. As darkness gently settles, one can almost hear a faint voyageur chorus filtering down through the softly soughing evergreens and the rustling leaves of the birches and maples:

C’est l’aviron qui nous mène, qui nous mène,
C’est l’aviron qui nous mène en haut.