Canoe camping in Northern Ontario

Wenebegon River

In May of 1974 we went on a wilderness canoe camping trip with Alan and Trish Britten in northern Ontario about 130 miles north of Sault Ste Marie. We canoed the Wenebegon River from Burying Creek on Highway 129 to Aubrey Lake, a distance of about 65 miles. About 60% of the route is on the river while the remainder is on small lakes. There was very little traffic on the trip since it was still early in the year: I don’t recall seeing any other canoeists. The trip took about a week so we had to carry all of our provisions for that duration.

These photos were scanned from the Kodachrome slides taken at the time. Their quality leaves much to be desired and reflects the inexperience of the photographer as well as the difficulty of getting good photos in the non-digital age.

We had gourmet freeze-dried meals.

Mostly we used campsites that had been previously set up.

Canoeing

The trip consists of paddling through a series of small lakes and down the Wenebegon River. Because of rapids and log jams there were about 10 portages where the canoe and gear had to be carried for up to a quarter of a mile in length. There were also numerous log jams which required wrestling the canoe through the downed trunks and branches, as can be seen in the photos below.

At the beginning or the end of a portage

Log jam

River otters

One of the highlights of the trip was a stretch of the river where we were accompanied downstream by a family of otters. The otters led us down the river, diving underwater and surfacing about 40 yards downstream and waiting for us to catch up before repeating the maneuver. They did not seem to be afraid of us, but really seemed to enjoy watching us row through their territory.

Otters ahead!

Why is it taking so long?

Fishing

In late May in northern Ontario the ice had just cleared off the lakes and there were still patches of snow in the woods. This meant that fishing was good so that was a great supplement to the freeze dried food we packed in. We caught mostly northern pike, not the best eating but fantastic compared to the freeze dried alternative.

Fish in the net

Whitewater rapids

While the river is mostly pretty calm, there are stretches of white water that are daunting for canoes filled with all the gear and food required. We had a detailed description of the trip and portages were available for all of the rapids. Our strategy was to portage around all of the rapids and then decide whether or not to run the rapids in empty canoes, which Alan and I did in a couple of cases. The wives were too smart to have anything to do with such nonsense. Since we were there during the spring high water season, the river was probably higher than normal.

We did not run these rapids!

But we did run these.

On one occasion, we portaged our gear around the rapids and then Alan and I ran the rapids in an empty canoe. Then we loaded up the canoes on the far end of the portage. There was only room for one canoe to launch at a time so after Alan and Trish had loaded and launched their canoe, they were practicing ferrying in the swirling waters below the rapids while waiting for us to load our canoe. The eddies after rapids can be tricky which they discovered when they got caught in a current, leaned the wrong way and found themselves in the water with the canoe upside down. The water was still extremely cold since the ice had just gone off the lakes so this was an emergency situation. We immediately launched our canoe and helped them bring theirs to shore. They said that the water was so cold that they had trouble getting a breath. To do so, they had to haul themselves up onto the upturned canoe so their chest was mostly out of the cold water.

We immediately built a fire to help warm them up as well as to try to dry out their gear. Fortunately, they had tied down their packs so there was not much lost to the river, except for a hat or two. Alan’s camera was a casualty of the accident. I remember when he took the lens cap off of the SLR camera, looking into the lens was like peering into an empyy aquarium as the lens was half-filled with river water. The subsequent slides from the roll had a decidedly odd color cast. Fortunately, they did not have down sleeping bags, as we did. Their fiber fill bags could still be warm even though they were wet. Unfortunately we do not have any photos of the overturn as our attention was directed to non-photographic matters.

The last section of the river has some serious rapids.

Beaver dam

Birch trees

Stand of birches

Sunset over the Wenebegon

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