Nearly 30 years ago I made the mistake of going on my first canoe adventure with my friend Mike. Now this guy would try anything. When hang gliding became popular he and his brother were eager to try it. However living in flatland farm country presented an obstacle. They ended up constructing one out of black plastic silo tarp material (@ 6 mil) and cut down 2"x4"s. They tied this their VW Beetle and took turns pulling each other around their alfalfa field. I asked him how high it had gone? His response was "A hell of a lot farther than you'd want to fall".

With this background lets return to the canoe trip. We were both just out of High School and working at the same place. We had some vacation time and he had the idea to go on a canoe trip. So in mid NOVEMBER we loaded up the car and headed for Canada! We had no idea where we were going. In looking at the road map he noticed that near the southern end of Lake Winnipeg we could drive to where there was a narrow channel we could cross to Black Island. So that was the plan. On arriving in Hecla we found two men working on a commercial fishing boat and asked them about taking our canoe across to the island. The first one responded "You wouldn't catch me out there dead in that thing". We should have listened to him. The other told us just to stay away from a particular point because the current ran pretty strong there.
So we loaded up and set out. In thinking back it was probably several miles of open water across the channel. But the water looked smooth as glass and it was a nice day. We wanted to paddle almost straight east. But as we got farther from shore we discovered that what had looked smooth as glass was actually 2' to 3' rollers coming from the north. So we were obliged to angle to the northeast in order to keep from tipping. It was a good thing we were young and strong because we had to paddle hard for what seemed like hours. Exhausted we finally made it to Black Island and set up camp on the shore.

During the night we were awakened by the wind which had come up considerably and was blowing right in the door of the tent (a canvas pup tent). We battened things down as best we could and went back to sleep. The sight of the lake the next morning caused my jaw to drop. There were HUGE white-capped waves and it was at least 20 degrees colder than the day before. We were marooned. And we were maroons for being there! We moved our camp about 50 yards into the woods and spent the next three days waiting for the wind to go down. We could see the lights of boats on the lake at night but they never came near where we were. We were wondering how we were going to signal them to save us.

Finally on the 4th morning the weather had abated. We quickly packed up and pushed off. Made it across in record time I'm sure. And I'm here safe to tell this tale today.

Posted by Pops on November 13, 1999 at 10:00