Rivers are the highways of old in Canada, and St. Albert's Bill Stinson has been down most of them.
A retired business professor at MacEwan University, Bill, 64, and his brother Don, 60, have spent much of the last 30 years paddling the nation. They've rowed up the B.C. coast, navigated the Yukon and Northwest Territories, and kayaked a fair chunk of the North Saskatchewan River.
Last summer saw them take a six-day, 600-kilometre journey from Fort McMurray to Lake Athabasca and back. It was just them, their cousin Rob and the Athabasca River, plus all the sights and sounds along it.
It was a place where you can get in touch with the land and reflect on who you are, Bill says.
"You really get to know people when you're travelling in a remote location like that."
Seasoned sailors
Bill says he and Don grew up camping and paddling with the Boy Scouts and have kept at it ever since.
Like his brother, Don says he boats because he likes being out in nature.
"You absorb more when there's fewer things to absorb," he says; cities are so busy that your mind just shuts down in them.
Bill says he's been thinking about this trip up the Athabasca for years now. He used to teach in the Northwest Territories, and always wanted to go back and explore the place some more.
"It's like a third of the landmass of Canada, and we know so little about it."
This year, he decided to go for it with a canoe trip from Fort McMurray to the Peace-Athabasca Delta. He roped his brother and his cousin into the trip as well.
Sir Alexander Mackenzie sailed this route to the Arctic Ocean back in 1789 as part of a massive 4,800 km expedition, Bill notes. As Mackenzie had hoped that the river would lead him to the Pacific, he ended up calling it "the river of disappointment."
While he can still paddle 50 km a day, Bill says he decided to use a motor for this trip on account of his age. That meant he needed a boat that could mount a motor.
While he could have bought one, Bill says he decided to carve his own from cedar.
"I really enjoyed the craftsmanship of being able to work with wood," he says, adding that he'd made five smaller boats previously.
In Mackenzie's day, these boats would have been made from birch-bark and patched with spruce resin. Bill used a mix of plywood, cedar, fibreglass, and resin for his, constructing the spine and ribs from plywood and the boards from cedar.
"I had more boat than I had garage," he says, as the ship was 20-feet long, so he had to have most of it sticking out the garage door.
The project took a year to complete, with a long pause during the winter where it was too cold to work with the resin.
The finished boat seats three and carries up to 2,000 pounds. It's a freighter canoe, Bill says, "the workhorse canoe of the north," designed with a wide, flat bottom perfect for navigating shallow waters.
"I call it the Kathy T. after my wife."
Bill and Don filled the canoe with food, medical supplies and spare parts and set off from Fort McMurray on Aug. 23.
On the water
They had to stop moments later after Bill accidentally sheared off the prop of their motor on a rock, forcing a retreat into town for a spare.
They'd lost the prop due to the river's low water levels, which could change from six feet to 12 inches deep in just a few metres, Don says. This variability forced them to stick to a snail's pace.
"We were driving the motorboat at half the speed over everyone else on the river."
Don says troubles like this are all part of being on the land, where sometimes a hot drink or a scotch is the highlight of your day.
"It's not until people are wet or cold or hungry that you really see who they are."
Bill, Don and Ron spent their days cruising upriver at about 10 km/h, reading, chatting, taking pictures and stopping at historic sites. Bill, who's written a camping cookbook, would often prepare elaborate meals of steaks, green onion cakes and calamari.
Temperatures went from as high as 28 C in the day to as low as 6 C at night, Don says – the cold kept the flies and mosquitoes away at least, his brother notes. They slept on the ground in sleeping bags, protected by tarps against the wind and rain, and climbed back into the canoe by morning, often wading through knee-deep muck to launch it.
They passed through oilsands country first. Don says he recalls hearing the boom of sound cannons meant to keep birds off tailings ponds and seeing the lights and flares of industrial plants in the distance. Huge water intakes jutted into the river.
The bitumen seeps right out of the banks into the river in this region, Bill says. It even flows into your footprints.
"We were shocked and awed by the immensity of the oil and gas projects," he says, particularly the giant open pits and the huge, kilometre-long sand dunes left from the extraction process.
"But we were also left feeling that significant effort is being made to reclaim the land," he continues. They could see mine sites shift from sand dunes to brush to trees as they sailed along, as well as the large wood bison herd that frequents the area.
The three of them were often the only people on the river. Up above them flew flocks of migrating ducks, swans, Canada geese, and sandhill cranes. Along the coast were tall trees and shrubs, often populated by deer and a huge amount of beavers. They also spotted a few First Nation families in cabins, most of whom would wave them over for a chat.
Some of the group's more memorable encounters happened while they were on shore. They heard a bunch of timber wolves howling one night, for example – Don says they howled back. Other times, they'd wake up in the middle of the night and watch the shining moon.
"Bill and I were lamenting that we couldn't show a moose to Rob," Don says.
"I turned around from picking up the coffee pot and there was a moose a quarter way across the river."
Bill would sometimes set up a sweat lodge at their camp and hold a short steam bath.
"It just seems to cleanse you, cleanse your body and cleanse your mind," he says.
As the Stinsons travelled north, the tall banks and taller trees gave way to the low, marshy wetlands of the Peace-Athabasca Delta – a maze of twisty channels, tiny lakes, and many, many muskrats, where it would be easy to get lost if you didn't have a GPS.
Eventually, they reached the shores of Lake Athabasca, which proved to be the end of their trip – a lack of time and the lake's huge waves forced them to turn back.
"It was sort of anticlimactic," Bill says, as they had planned to go farther.
"It's the journey, not the destination."
You might come out wet and covered with bug bites, but Don says there's nothing better than being out on the land.
"When I go on the land, I always come out stronger," he says.
"It heals you, and makes you better."
Bill says he's already planning next year's outing.
"This was a bit of a shakedown trip for us," he explains – he hopes to travel the rest of the Athabasca in the future, reaching the Beaufort Sea within two years.
"Maybe at that point I'll be able to get a senior's discount or something!"
