I Love Paddling

They nearly won it in 2003.  They did win it in 2004.  One of them won last year, too. And this year, at the 61st Weyerhaeuser AuSable River Canoe Marathon, Andy Triebold of Spring Arbor, Michigan and Steve Lajoie of Mirabel, Quebec, the pre-race favorites going into the 120-mile overnight canoe race, won it again.  The pair […]

If the names of Northern Saskatchewan’s rivers — the Churchill, the Clearwater, the Fond du Lac, the Sturgeon-weir — aren’t enough to beckon you to paddle on them, then perhaps the photos in Robin and Arlene Karpan’s book will finally send you down one in a canoe. The couple’s Northern Saskatchewan Canoe Country (Parkland Publishing, […]

Andy Triebold and Steve Lajoie paddled into the favorites’ position for this weekend’s Weyerhaeuser AuSable Canoe Marathon with a win in Spike’s Challenge, a preliminary race held over the first fraction of the AuSable Canoe Marathon’s 120 mile course. The victory dubbed Triebold of Spring Arbor, Michigan and Lajoie of Mirabel, Quebec the team to beat for 61st AuSable […]

Christopher Bell, a Jamestown, New York-based folk musician, is using a canoe to travel from gig to gig on his six-week, 11 engagment tour of his home state.  The 22-year-old “canoebadour” pushed off into the Niagara River yesterday with plans to finish his tour in New York City on September 4.  Bell intends to cross the state from west to […]

Duluth’s Northland’s Newscenter television stations have begun broadcasting a series of stories on the effects of the 1978 Boundary Waters Act on the city of Ely, Minnesota, one of the gateway communities to the million acre wilderness area.  Three decades after legislation created the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, hard feelings still exist between locals, […]

William Hafford and Eileen McCue recently paddled the length of the Northern Forest Canoe Trail in a wood-canvas canoe Hafford built himself. The recent college graduates completed the 741 mile trip in 51 days. The Kennebec Journal of Maine recently published THIS story about the pair. “It’s a very powerful thing (being in a boat […]

Minnesota’s Mankato Free Press recently introduced its readers, HERE, to Joe Michel, a local resident who has spent thousands of hours paddling the nearby Minnesota River. The 72-year-old retired electrician has paddled rivers in more than a dozen states, but prefers the one he grew up on and still lives along. ““I like the peacefulness, […]

The 2008 Thompson Bridgade canoe flotilla is set tomorrow to complete its 2,200-mile, 63-day trip from Rocky Mountain House, Alberta to Thunder Bay, Ontario. An armada of 11 north canoes paddled by 150 hardy travelers plans to land at historic Fort William at 2:00 p.m. CKPR radio of Thunder Bay has THIS story about the […]