The canoe carried aboriginal people for thousands of years, followed then by the explorers and the missionaries and the engineers and the surveyors….until in modern times it gives us the gift of freedom. The canoe is a vehicle that carries you into pretty exciting places, not only into whitewater but into the byways and off-beaten places….You are removed entirely from the mundane aspects of ordinary life. You’re witnessing first hand beauty and peace and freedom – especially freedom….Flirtation with the wilderness is contact with truth, because the truth is in nature….I like to identify myself with something that is stable and enduring. Although [nature] is in a state of flux, it is enduring. It is where reality is. I appreciate the canoe for its gifts in that direction. - Kirk Wipper, from CBC Radio’s Ideas program The Perfect Machine: The Canoe.
In its contemporary use, the canoe and kayak become a medium to experience peace, beauty, freedom and adventure. These values are of utmost significance in a world which has lost much of its contact with the profound lessons learned in nature. To travel the paths in natural places makes all the differences and in this the canoe and kayak are essential partners. – Kirk Wipper
….the canoe is not a lifeless, inanimate object; it feels very much alive, alive with the life of the river. – Bill Mason, Path of the Paddle
There is nothing that is so aesthetically pleasing and yet so functional and versatile as the canoe. – Bill Mason
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
The path of the paddle can be a means of getting things back to their original perspective. - Bill Mason, Path of the Paddle
Wilderness: a beautiful word to describe a beautiful land. Wilderness though is a white man’s concept. To the Native people, the land was not wild. It was home. It provided shelter, clothed and fed them. And echoing through their souls was a song of the land. The singing isn’t as loud as it used to be. But you can still hear it in the wind….in the silence of the misty morning….in the drip of the water from the tip of a paddle. The song is still here if you know how to listen. – Bill Mason, Song Of the Paddle
What sets a canoeing expedition apart is that it purifies you more rapidly and inescapably than any other. Travel a thousand miles by train and you are a brute; pedal five hundred on a bicycle and you remain basically bourgeois; paddle a hundred in a canoe and you already a child of nature. – Pierre Elliott Trudeau
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 (From Exhaustion 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.)
Paddling a canoe is a source of enrichment and inner renewal. – Pierre Elliott Trudeau
Canoeing gets you back close to nature, using a method of travel that does not even call for roads or paths. You are following nature’s roads; you are choosing the road less travelled, as Robert Frost once wrote in another context, and that makes all the difference. You discover a sort of simplifying of your values, a distinction between those artificially created and those that are necessary to your spiritual and human development. – Pierre Elliott Trudeau
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
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
Nothing feels like a cedar-strip canvas canoe - Omer Stringer, a confirmed traditionalist
Canoes don’t tip, people just fall out of them. – Omer Stringer
For IMMEDIATE Release
Inaugural Event: National Paddle Week Promoting Fun, and Safe Skilled Recreational Paddling
NATIONAL – June 15 to 23, 2013 – Paddle Canada, Rapid Media, Canadian Canoe Museum and Transport Canada Office of Boating Safety have joined paddlers and groups across Canada announce the first annual NATIONAL PADDLING WEEK (June 15 to 23, 2013) a public awareness initiative aimed at improving the opportunity to engage in safe and skilled recreational paddle sports. National Paddling Week provides a spotlight on events, groups and individuals offering and/or participating in paddling across Canada.
What is National Paddling Week all about?
“This week has been created to boost awareness of our national recreational paddling sports, safety measures, skill development, and heritage!” said Graham Ketcheson ED of Paddle Canada. “National Paddling Week wants to encourage as many Canadians to get into a canoe, kayak or onto a board and be counted during this week to show our national commitment to the fun, the benefits, and challenge of paddling!”
This special week has been created to boost awareness of our national paddling sports, safety measures, skill development and heritage. It is there to speak with paddlers of all skills about: Introductory paddling skills; Safety tips for paddlers; Equipment checklists; Trip Planning; Environmentally friendly camping and Paddling Associations in Canada for regional contact.” A/Sgt. Mike Gilbert, Vancouver Police Department “As Director for BC with Paddle Canada I am looking for direction on media outlets and contacts to get the word out to, hopefully, improve paddling skills and awareness which leads to greater safety and fun on the water.”
About National Paddling Week
National Paddling Week supports and promotes opportunities for paddlers, paddle skill instructors, paddle events, paddle clubs and individuals to connect with each other and the Canadian community at large. National Paddling Week and its partners promote the highest personal and professional operational standards in paddling while promoting the safe operation of non-motor, paddle propelled recreational water craft and boards.
Visit www.paddleweek.ca for more information. Follow us on facebook: www.facebook.com/NationalPaddlingWeekCanada.
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For more information or to schedule an interview, please contact:
Graham Ketcheson, Executive Director of Paddle Canada
or
Founding Partner:
Rapid Media – Canada’s Paddling Magazines
Scott MacGregor, Founder and Publisher
National Canoe Week….In A Canoe
Floating along on the still water of a small lake
Being in a canoe during National Canoe Week 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
