The Journey

I've always been into adventure and I've done a lot of canoe trips throughout my lifetime, but traveling from Flin Flon, MB to Tuktoyaktuk, NWT by canoe has always been a dream trip of mine. On this trip I’ll be able to paddle from my home all the way to the Arctic Ocean and follow the historic travels of the fur traders. The beginnings of the fur trade began not very far from here, in Cumberland House. From the Hudson Bay fur trade post at Cumberland House, the indigenous people and fur traders would travel the same waters that I’m going to be traveling. I thought it'd be very cool to follow the same footprints of the travellers from the beginning. Many of the communities that were built on the rivers were built as forts during the fur trade so all the communities I'll be going through are there because of the connection between the indigenous people and the Europeans through the fur trade. My journey is to reconnect through different avenues with the people of the land. This is more of a passion than anything. This is a spiritual, physical, and social journey all in the name of exploration and discovery.

My travels will take me from Shist Lake, through Phantom Lake, down the Meridian Creek and up the Sturgeon Weir through Pelican Narrows and Sandy Bay on my way to a place called South End on Reindeer Lake. I’ll cross Reindeer Lake on my way to Wollaston Lake and then eventually to Lake Athabasca. I’ll cross Lake Athabasca on the North Shore to Fort Chipewyan. From there I’ll travel through Slave Lake and then down the Mackenzie River all the way to Tuktoyaktuk, NWT, which is on the coast of the Arctic Ocean.

If everything goes as planned the trip should take about 113 days, so around 3 and a half months. The total trip is 3760 kms so I have averaged about 30 kms of paddling each day.