Outers In A Canoe

Outers is an outdoor education course offered by Atikokan High in Northwestern Ontario, and as far as I know, for almost fifty years it has been a unique program in Canada. It is not a course to be entered into lightly; it can, and will, chew up, and spit out those who are only in it because they think it will get them out of school for a day or two, but who aren’t prepared to put in some work. Some seriously hard work.

I, along with my fellow brigade inmates, Sherri, Pam, Charlotte, Michelle, and Cheryl were the six muskeg-teers of Brigade #4. Our motto? Brigade #4 is the best! Yes we were legends in our own minds. We stuck together through thick and thin ice, deep and shallow slush, hard times and even harder times. We also stuck together with our “Buddy Brigade” unless of course someone was giving away free chocolate or fish, or had offered to give our canoe a lift, then all bets were off.

Charlotte was our bowman who kept a sharp lookout for rocks, snags, or anything which might have turned our canoe into the Titanic. Sherri, or as we called her, Cherry Blossoms, was “Julie,” our cruise director. “Julie” provided cheeriness and entertainment; she would laugh even when up to her armpits in loon shit. Pam and I were the power of the brigade; we sat beside each other and pulled our paddles hard and sang really bad songs really badly. We carried food packs heavier than ourselves, and bitched about it for hours before we ever had to strap them on. “I carried it on the last portage; it’s your turn.” “Yeah but the last portage was only 500 meters; this one coming up is almost two k.” And so it went. Cheryl was quiet, sweet, and always working hard whether we were on the water or in camp, and the poor girl started pulling her hair out while listening to us whine. Michelle was our stern man, or should I say stern woman, who steered our ship through all kinds of water, and all kinds of weather.

Our overnight paddle started on Nym Lake and ended at the French Lake beach. It was early October, and the day started out clear and blue but slightly chilly; it was fall after all. Our very first portage was into Batchewaung Lake, and it was a bitch. We dragged, pulled, pushed, and carried our canoes up the steep hill and cursed the people who thought a mountain was a great place to put a portage. Our two-hundred-and-fifty pound canoes felt more like a thousand before we finally got to them to the other side.

We had been instructed to find an island somewhere on Pickerel Lake where we would rendezvous with the boys brigades, rest up, and have lunch around one o’clock in the morning. It looked pretty straightforward on the map. When we finally hit Pickerel it was full-on night and blacker than my mood when taking a Calculus exam. We did a quick raft-up and decided that three brigades would take the north side of the big island in front of us, and three brigades would take the south side, and see which group would get around it the fastest. Unfortunately for us in the dark we had come out onto Pickerel just slightly off course, so the island in front of us wasn’t the one we assumed it was.

The snow started falling around that time and as I sat pulling my paddle through the water I was covered in a two inch layer before long. My hands were so cold they had gone numb early on as the icy water sluiced on them with every stroke. I kept brushing the snow off myself so that it wouldn’t start melting on my pants and jacket making me wetter, and even colder than I was. We had quit singing songs hours before and all I could hear was the plash of the paddles and the squeak of the canoes. I was weary to the bone from the hard work but also because it had never occurred to me to try and get some sleep before the trip. I could feel myself shutting down.

When we finally made it out to the open water we realized we weren’t where we thought we should be, so I was very happy to hear a navigator from another brigade say that she knew exactly where we were. I was too tired, and too cold, to pull out my map and compass and check, so followed her lead. Unfortunately, we ended up getting washed into a bay which wasn’t supposed to be there; we had to pull hard to get back out into the open. There we did another raft-up and a quick conference. The other navigator quickly assured us that she knew where she had gone wrong and this time she was “sure” where she was going. We washed up on the same shore and all three brigades were almost swamped by the waves this time. I was not a happy paddler.

The third raft-up was motivation enough for me to pull out my map and compass and take a bearing. I figured it was either that or the next time we could end up at the bottom of the lake. When I heard the other navigator once again trying to take point and guide us out of our quandary I found myself getting warmer by the minute as my temper got the better of me. It is surprising how far a person can reach when motivated, or how far they can drag another body across three canoes with one arm.

Image Credit

Photo by Gab Halasz – All Rights Reserved

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