Mastering the Art of Capsizing: A Canoe Adventure Down Beaver River

I went camping this weekend, up in Collingwood, at the Craigleith Provincial Park. Its a beautiful campground right at the shores of the Georgian Bay. What’s unique about this shore, is that the shore is made up of fractured pieces of shale, which in itself, harbors the fossilized remains of thousands of trilobites.

On Saturday, my friends Alex, Farah, Nia, Theresa, and myself decided to go canoeing. We had attended to go on the bay itself, but the winds were strong that day, causing whitecaps to appear (when the wind whips the tops of the waves faster then the wave energy can travel through the water, causing the waves to break and making it dangerous for smaller boats). So it was suggested that we canoe down the Beaver River. Supposedly, the waters were calm and it was a novice course, so it shouldn’t of been a problem. As you are going to see, that was far from the case.

The plan was to go from Epping to Heathcote, have a short break, then travel from Heathcote to Slabtown, so we rented two canoes. Farah and Alex in one boat, Theresa, Nia and myself in the other. We decided upon that configuration because Alex, Theresa, and Nia were beginners. Farah and myself had no canoeing experience either, but we have been dragonboating for 3 years now, so we thought the knowledge would transfer over.

The canoe ride from Epping to Heathcote was very smooth. The river was nice and slow, which was great because it gave us time to figure out how to navigate and steer the canoes. Sure, we crashed into the shore a few times, a few of us got hit in the head by a tree, but overall it was a smooth ride. The river was beautiful, and there were no signs of cars, houses, or even human intervention for miles and miles around. The feeling of isolation coupled with our gorgeous surroundings brought upon a sense of great peace and perhaps even euphoria at times. We reached Heathcote fine.

Nia had been sitting in the canoe the entire time, just relaxing, while Theresa and I paddled. She wanted to try paddling, so we decided to switch the seats. I think this was our first mistake. The boats were now Alex and Theresa, and Farah, Nia and Myself. So off we set to Slabtown. It started off smooth. My boat took the lead, as Nia became more confident with paddling. We went around a sharp river bend and saw the water was beginning to flow faster. It was our first rapids. We braced ourselves, but before we could go through, we heard a yell from behind! I quickly turn my head around, and see Theresa and Alex’s boat dangerously dipping far to the right. A few more yells then silence. We started screaming the names but we heard no reply. We were scared, we suspected they had fallen in, but couldn’t see them, because we were around the corner. So we quickly turned our boat around and started to paddle backwards, but were were caught in the rapids! We started paddling hard, and even switched Nia out. But me and Farah just couldn’t fight the rapids. We cried their names a few more times. No answer. So we quickly pulled to the river bank, and I climbed up and ran around to see what was happening.

Thankfully, they were safe. They had capsized, but were okay. The water was shallow, so they were able to pull the boat up to the river bank. The only casualty? Nia’s cellphone. Relieved, I ran back to my boat, and told everyone the good news. I climbed back in the boat, and we waited for them to join up with us again. After a few minutes, we saw them again, and they were about to go through the rapids. They were going too fast though, and not steering hard enough, so they crashed hard into the sloping river bank, causing the boat to fly up a bit and toss them back into the water! This one was actually hilarious, because the river bank was quite muddy, and so, while pulling the boat up, Theresa slipped a couple of times, while Alex played in the river. No one was hurt.

We bailed out the boat, and we were on our way. We thought the worse was over. Alex and Theresa were soaking wet, our boat was completely dry. Life was good. That was until we saw a suspicious looking wire running across the river. The wire was right at our heads, so if we didn’t duck, we’d get hit by it. Also, there was a yellow sign on the wire. From far away, it looked like a black bird resting on a wire, so we thought it said something like, “birds like to play on this wire”, so we decided to paddle a bit closer to see what it said. Here’s what I saw:

Yes. Someone put electric wire across the river! We had gotten too close, and were going to hit it. I yelled out, “ELECTRIC WIRE!”, and frantically tried to paddle backwards to avoid touching it, but I couldn’t paddle fast enough. Just as Farah and Nia were about to touch it, they both jumped out of the boat, and it flipped over, throwing me into the water! I re-submerged and quickly grabbed the boat, to prevent it from floating away. Lucky for Alex and Theresa, they were waiting off to the side, so they disembarked their boat, and walked it under the wire. Unfortunately for Nia, she lost her sandals when the boat flipped over, and had to walk on the sharp rocks with her bare feet! Theresa and I felt incredible guilty now, because when the boat flipped over, most of the contents of our boat was lost into the river, polluting the once spotless water. It was at this point, that we decided to go back to our original configuration. Alex and Farah, Theresa, Nia and myself.

We set off again, a bit shaken from this “near-death” experience. Theresa and I would try to find any piece of garbage we could and throw it into the boat. We spotted a huge pine tree that had fallen down and our bag of chips had been caught in it. We heroically planned to grab the bag, to clean up a bit. Our intentions were good, but our planning was flawed. We thought that if we paddle right into the tree, we could grab a branch, pull ourselves to the garbage, grab it, then pull away. In reality, we crashed into the tree, knocking Theresa under the tree (but still in the canoe), since the water was quite strong at this point. The current was so strong, that we had to push off, or risk capsizing again. So yes. We failed.

Disappointed, we continued our journey. The water started getting stronger and stronger. The rapids got faster and faster. Eppings started to appear. Before I went on this canoe trip, I had no idea what an “epping” meant. Then I got home and googled it. An “epping”, is somewhat of a small vortex in the water. We really should of read that pamphlet more carefully. Our boat traveled swiftly down the river, trying to catch up with Farah and Alex’s boat, which was now far ahead.

Faster and faster we went. We headed around a river bend, only to see another huge pine tree that had fallen down to the right! We tried to steer hard to the left, to avoid it, and for a while, it looked like we were going to make it. But we couldn’t steer fast enough, the current was pushing us too quickly. The pine branches loomed before us, and we braced ourselves as we crashed into another tree. Theresa was knocked over. Nia was knocked over. I was knocked over. By the time the branch hit me, the boat was already leaning far to the left, causing us to capsize once more!

We lost everything again! Suddenly, I noticed that we only had one paddle, I cried out to Theresa, “your paddle is floating away!” Theresa frantically tried to run after it, but there was too much water, so she tried to swim after, but the water was too shallow! So we yelled to Farah’s boat, “The paddle! Grab the paddle!”, they too were too far to get it, so Alex jumped out of his boat and successfully got the paddle!

Nia had lost her slippers earlier, and now she was in the water once again, with rocks as sharp as ever, so we had to carry her to the shore, or else she’d cut her feet badly. Alex helped us bail out the boat, and walked back to his boat and we set off on our way again. We paddled for 45 more minutes until we finally reached our final destination. We have never been more relieved to have seen land.

We originally intended to only canoe for 4 hours, but ended up taking 6 hours! However, despite all the problems, we had so much fun. It was a great adventure that left us with a memory that will stay with us for a while.

In conclusion. This is a geek blog, and nothing has been very geeky yet. I could calculate our speed going around the corners, the distance, velocity, etc… but that would be too troublesome. So I am going to leave you with statistics!

Capsizing Statistics

This is how many times each person capsized:

Farah: 1
Alex: 2
Anton: 2
Nia: 2
Theresa: 3

Since the boats capsized 4 times, here’s the percentage of times each person capsized:

Farah: 25%
Alex: 50%
Anton: 50%
Nia: 50%
Theresa: 75%

Interestingly enough, Theresa was in the boat for every “human-caused” capsize. Does this mean she is bad luck? I am tempted to say yes, but the sample size is not large enough to warrant a conclusion. Perhaps next year, if we go on another canoeing adventure, I will be able to tell you. Until then, I want to say that camping is awesome!