Since tomorrow is July 1st….Canada Day….I thought I’d repeat the posts from previous years, Reflections On The Outdoors Naturally: Canada Day….Spend It In A Canoe….The Perfect Canadian Thing To Do and Reflections On the Outdoors Naturally: Canada Day In A Canoe….Final Poetic Thoughts:
I know a man whose school could never teach him patriotism, but who acquired that virtue when he felt in his bones the vastness of his land, and the greatness of those who founded it. - Pierre Elliott Trudeau (FromExhaustion and Fulfillment: The Ascetic in a Canoe, 1944; also cited in Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Why He Paddled by Jamie Benidickson, pp. 54-59, from Kanawa, Fall 2001.)
An interest in the wilderness means getting there, and getting there means canoes.- Kirk Wipper
A better understanding of one’s past can only lead to better understanding of one’s present and one’s future. – Kirk Wipper
A true Canadian is one who can make love in a canoe without tipping.- Pierre Berton
Anyone can make love in a canoe, it’s a Canadian who knows enough to take out the centre thwart! - Philip Chester
When you look at the face of Canada and study the geography carefully, you come away with the feeling that God could have designed the canoe first and then set about to conceive a land in which it could flourish. - Bill Mason, Path of the Paddle
I feel the canoe is actually a metaphor for the Canadian character. It’s not loud, pushy or brassy. It’s quiet, adaptable and efficient, and it gets the job done. – Janice Griffith, former General Manager of the Canadian Canoe Museum
They say that one day God was fooling around, the way He does, and son of a gun if He didn’t make a canoe. Well, He’d made a lot of stuff, but that canoe really blew Him away. “Helluva boat,” He said. “But where am I going to paddle it?” All of a sudden, it came to Him. “I know,” He said. “I’ll make Canada.” – from Burying Ariel, by Gail Bowen
Canoeing more or less defines who I am. Patched boats in the backyard affirm soul truths. My home, Canada, is not an abstraction; it is kindred canoe spirits and a constellation of sun-alive, star-washed campsites, linked by rivers, lakes, and ornery portages; scapes of the heart, rekindled by sensations that linger long after the pain is gone. When I meet someone, I wonder what they would be like on a trip. - James Raffan
We are Canadians who took the time and hard work to feel the history in the stroke of our paddles and blisters in our boots. - Michael Peake
In Canada, whether or not we have much to do with canoes proper, the canoe is simply inside us. — Roger MacGregor
The Canadian Shield was never a block to travel; in fact, it was the reverse, for the Shield helped to spin the web of interconnecting rivers and lakes that covers half of Canada, an unrivalled system of ‘highways’ extending over a quarter of a million square miles of forest-lakeland and comprising a good part of the whole world’s fresh water. - Eric W. Morse
What the camel is to desert tribes, what the horse is to the Arab, what the ship is to the colonizing Briton, what all modern means of locomotion are to the civilized world today, that, and more than that, the canoe was to the Indian who lived beside the innumerable waterways of Canada. — William Wood
The romantic life of each colony also has a special flavour – Australian rhyme is a poetry of the horse; Canadian, of the canoe — William Douw Lighthall
Firewood, smoke and oranges, path of old canoe;
I would course the inland ocean to be back to you;
No matter where I go to, it’s always home again;
To the rugged northern shore, and the days of sun and wind;
And the land of the silver birch, cry of the loon;
There’s something ’bout this country, that’s a part of me and you. – from ‘Woodsmoke and Oranges’ by Ian Tamblyn.
Canada Day In A Canoe
Floating along on the still water of a small lake
Being in a canoe on Canada Day is no mistake.
Hardly disturbing the water’s surface, canoe hiked over to one side
Paddling in the Canadian Style, the solo canoeist takes such pride
The canoe is silent, quietly moving and being free
The solo canoeist dips his blade in a rhythmic motion
Maybe just thinking of how wonderful it is just to be
Not really thinking of anything, no ideas or silly notion
Maybe how this is such a great country to have been born to
So many great places to dip a paddle, to take a canoe
Great paddlers….Mason, Trudeau, Stringer and Wipper, to name a few
So many rivers and lakes to canoe trip through
The canoe was one of Canada’s Seven Wonders in a national poll
This is a country with so much history tied to the canoe
So many places to go, whether by paddle, portage or pole
Whether solo or in tandem, something any of us can do
To me, Canada is canoe country….water, rock and tree
I’m a Canadian paddler proud to be
In a land that beckons us to just see
More of Canada, True North strong and free - Mike Ormsby
Lots has been said about the canoe as a Canadian icon. Tomorrow is July 1st….Canada Day….what better way to celebrate our country than in a canoe. Get out for a paddle. Enjoy the day. Celebrate the canoe. As well as Canada’s birthday. Canada Day….spend it in a canoe….the perfect Canadian thing to do….never forget we have Canadian Canoe events (the “C” is for Canadian not Canoe) in Olympic paddling….and there is a type of paddling known as Canadian Style Paddling….Kevin Callan has his Canadian Maple Leaf canoe….and the CBC listed the canoe as one of the Seven Wonders of Canada. Not to mention great Canadian art from the view of the canoe….by the likes of Tom Thomson and members of the Group of Seven. Or great writers like Archie Belaney (Grey Owl), Hap Wilson, Kevin Callan, James Raffan, and the McGuffins. And last but not least, the Canadian Canoe Museum….the world’s largest collection of canoes. Without canoes, Canada wouldn’t be the country it is today. So I think it is certainly the Canadian thing to do to spend tomorrow in a canoe.
Still I find myself reflecting on my previous posts on Canada Day and canoes (or maybe it was just that I had too much time to think of such things LOL LOL)….so I decided to revisit some of Sigurd Olson’s writings….now I’ve quoted Sigurd Olson before…even part of the following quote….and despite the fact that Sigurd was American (and not Canadian, considering this is supposed to be about Canada Day), his message is universal, knowing no political boundaries (much the same as the canoe itself)….the following words explain so well the importance of the canoe to so many of us:
The movement of a canoe is like a reed in the wind. Silence is part of it, and the sounds of lapping water, bird songs, and wind in the trees. It is part of the medium through which it floats, the sky, the water, the shores….There is magic in the feel of a paddle and the movement of a canoe, a magic compounded of distance, adventure, solitude, and peace. The way of a canoe is the way of the wilderness, and of a freedom almost forgotten. It is an antidote to insecurity, the open door to waterways of ages past, and a way of life with profound and abiding satisfactions. When a man is part of his canoe, he is part of all that canoes have ever known. – Sigurd Olson from The Singing Wilderness
Some universal thoughts on the canoe and its place in the scheme of things….the importance of the canoe….and I hope you get time to paddle a canoe on this Canada Day….and many other days.
Paddles up until later then.
Paddles up until later then….especially on Canada Day.
