his expeditions, a sword from the chief of Bhutan. Younghusband presented it to the newly founded Canadian Geographical Society, and perhaps by doing so hoped to inspire the same sense of adventure and wanderlust that drove his life. Whatever his claims as a mystic, he succeeded in bewitching me. Staring transfixed at his sword on the wall, I felt myself seized by an irresistible urge to explore distant lands.
As a result, I spent only three months in Ottawa working at Canadian Geographic . More importantly, during this time, I also submitted a detailed expedition proposal to the GeographicalSocietyâs Expedition Committee, which approved and sponsored expeditions. I proposed to explore a remote, nameless river in the northern reaches of the Hudson Bay Lowlands that, like the Again, was all but unknown and had nothing on it in the published record. I planned to mount the first expedition to canoe this far-flung river with Wes. To reach the river would entail a long and difficult journey, preceded by an expensive flight north by bush plane. As far as I could ascertain, the Geographical Society had never previously sponsored a journey to the blackfly-infested Lowlandsâwhich would give me the distinction of leading the first-ever Society expedition into North Americaâs largest wetland. But a response from the Expeditions Committee wouldnât be forthcoming for some months, leaving me to pursue other projects.
In April, I was back home in Fenwick, working with my father to build a birchbark canoe for a local museum. In the swamp forests beside my family home, we found a large white birch that was straight with few branches and knots, which made it suitable for our purposes. With a knife and chisel, I climbed a maple sapling growing beside the birch and delicately peeled off the bark to a height of six metres. Not wanting to waste anything, we later chopped down the tree for firewood (my parents heated their house with wood in the winter). In a stroke of fortune, a windstorm struck the area in the following days, toppling over several big spruces. I dug up their strong and supple roots for lashing, while my father fetched some basswood bark for additional lashing. We felled a white ash for the canoeâs gunwales and thwarts, as well as for paddles. The only tree we needed but couldnât find in our forests was eastern white cedarâthe cedarâs flexible wood we wanted for the canoeâs ribs. Instead, I went tothe local farmersâ co-op and bought some cedar fence posts, which my father and I split and bent to form the ribs. After working only intermittently for four weeks, we finished the thirteen-foot canoe (which was as large as we could make it, given the limited size of the birch we felled) and tested it in our pond. It handled well and, unlike the old fibreglass vessel Wes and I had paddled, didnât leak at all. I penned an article for Canadian Geographic about it then boarded a plane to Ecuador, to set off into the Amazon rainforest.
ONCE I ARRIVED at a base camp deep in the Amazon jungle, a written test was placed before me by the scientists there, asking me to identify sundry species by their Latin names. I hadnât done much biological fieldwork since my time working for Ontarioâs Ministry of Natural Resources as a student, but I had spent the last eight months reading Amazon zoology books in my spare time. I have always been blessed with the capacity to memorize large amounts of data, and while rote memorization may not be much of a skill, my visual memory is one of the best assets I possess as an explorerâit has invariably saved me from losing my way, since I can always remember where I have been. The scientists seemed satisfied when I got a perfect score on the test, correctly identifying each species by its scientific name and all of the tropical bird calls they played on a tape recorder.
Soon I was hacking my way through the jungle with a machete, helping to
As a result, I spent only three months in Ottawa working at Canadian Geographic . More importantly, during this time, I also submitted a detailed expedition proposal to the GeographicalSocietyâs Expedition Committee, which approved and sponsored expeditions. I proposed to explore a remote, nameless river in the northern reaches of the Hudson Bay Lowlands that, like the Again, was all but unknown and had nothing on it in the published record. I planned to mount the first expedition to canoe this far-flung river with Wes. To reach the river would entail a long and difficult journey, preceded by an expensive flight north by bush plane. As far as I could ascertain, the Geographical Society had never previously sponsored a journey to the blackfly-infested Lowlandsâwhich would give me the distinction of leading the first-ever Society expedition into North Americaâs largest wetland. But a response from the Expeditions Committee wouldnât be forthcoming for some months, leaving me to pursue other projects.
In April, I was back home in Fenwick, working with my father to build a birchbark canoe for a local museum. In the swamp forests beside my family home, we found a large white birch that was straight with few branches and knots, which made it suitable for our purposes. With a knife and chisel, I climbed a maple sapling growing beside the birch and delicately peeled off the bark to a height of six metres. Not wanting to waste anything, we later chopped down the tree for firewood (my parents heated their house with wood in the winter). In a stroke of fortune, a windstorm struck the area in the following days, toppling over several big spruces. I dug up their strong and supple roots for lashing, while my father fetched some basswood bark for additional lashing. We felled a white ash for the canoeâs gunwales and thwarts, as well as for paddles. The only tree we needed but couldnât find in our forests was eastern white cedarâthe cedarâs flexible wood we wanted for the canoeâs ribs. Instead, I went tothe local farmersâ co-op and bought some cedar fence posts, which my father and I split and bent to form the ribs. After working only intermittently for four weeks, we finished the thirteen-foot canoe (which was as large as we could make it, given the limited size of the birch we felled) and tested it in our pond. It handled well and, unlike the old fibreglass vessel Wes and I had paddled, didnât leak at all. I penned an article for Canadian Geographic about it then boarded a plane to Ecuador, to set off into the Amazon rainforest.
ONCE I ARRIVED at a base camp deep in the Amazon jungle, a written test was placed before me by the scientists there, asking me to identify sundry species by their Latin names. I hadnât done much biological fieldwork since my time working for Ontarioâs Ministry of Natural Resources as a student, but I had spent the last eight months reading Amazon zoology books in my spare time. I have always been blessed with the capacity to memorize large amounts of data, and while rote memorization may not be much of a skill, my visual memory is one of the best assets I possess as an explorerâit has invariably saved me from losing my way, since I can always remember where I have been. The scientists seemed satisfied when I got a perfect score on the test, correctly identifying each species by its scientific name and all of the tropical bird calls they played on a tape recorder.
Soon I was hacking my way through the jungle with a machete, helping to
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