There sure has been a lot of support for your idea of taking an 11-month old baby on a wilderness canoe trip, so (as another noob on these boards) I hope I don't get blackballed by being negative.

The issue of emergencies has already been brought up, so I won't go over that again. Instead I'll focus on "expecting the normal".

I know you and your partner are prepared to be watching your kid every single second you're out there too, so I also won't bring up obvious things like fire pits (and flying embers), poison ivy, poison berries, spiky logs, etc.

Babies need a lot of protection from the sun. An open canoe on a sunny day is an invitation to heatstroke. With so much radiation being reflected from the water, protecting your kid effectively is going to be nearly impossible. A sun hat and UV60 won't do it.

Babies need regular potty breaks. At 11 months, your child is probably not yet close to being toilet trained. Are you planning to carry disposable diapers (full ones) around for your entire trip? You weren't planning on rinsing cloth diapers out in the lake, were you? I know you weren't planning on just burying the disposables.

Babies also puke. If they puke at a campsite, are you prepared to completely clean everything up so it's clean for the next party?

Babies can't swim. Assuming you can find an effective baby pfd, how do you keep your 11-month old in one place while you are canoeing? You can't strap him down, since he would drown if the canoe overturned. If he starts to crawl around, there is a real possibility he will either fall overboard or slip and whack his head on a gunwale.

Which leads me to the next thing. Babies cry. They cry when they're hungry. They cry when they're uncomfortable. They cry when they're tired. They cry when they're sick. They cry when they're bored.

Assuming you can deal effectively with hunger and fatigue, and assuming illness (including things like simple gas pains) doesn't need to be re-addressed, how will you deal with the other two? Canoes and wilderness are pretty boring to infants, so you will need constantly to keep them occupied. And comfortable? Even if they're shaded from the sun, you still have the potential for wind and rain. And cold - better plan on bringing lots of blankets, just in case. And you'd better not accidentally splash your baby with an errant paddle either. They don't like cold+wet, especially not surprise cold+wet.

Perhaps you're not bothered by a little crying from your little bundle of joy. But sound travels very easily across lakes, and there's usually not much background noise in Quetico to mask things. What might seem to you to be "a little quiet whimpering" at the next campsite is "someone else's screaming brat" - the exact thing they came to Quetico to get away from.

So for the sake of your child and for the sake of the other campers, please put Quetico on hold for a few years.