About Us

A Boy and a Girl in a Little Canoe

Our canoeing story started almost 10 years ago when KJ and I took our first canoe, a big, unwieldy, heavy fibreglass canoe, up Indian Arm, a fjord in our backyard. Over time, we upgraded our canoes several times, and we improved our skills enabling us to take on bigger and more exciting and complicated journeys. We like paddling for its own sake, and lakes, such as the Bowron Lakes circuit, and Ross, Pitt and Harrison Lake, bring us joy. However, it’s the ocean that stirs our imaginations.

Desolation Sound, just north of Vancouver, was our first big foray, and it was there that we braved our first big crossing, a not insubstantial five kilometres.

Then in the Broken and Deer Groups on Vancouver Island’s west coast, we learned that our little canoe could handle ocean swells, and we were rewarded with a close sighting of a humpback whale and calf.

The Broughton Archipelago, a group of islands between Vancouver Island and the mainland, was a real testing ground. We paddled in an area over three times the size of the comparatively tiny 300 square kilometres of the Broken and Deer groups, made several crossings, one in a deep fog and used a radio to get information so that we could avoid bumping into massive cruise ships. We were astounded at the rich marine life, abundance of humpbacks and magnificent and fierce Orcas, which passed within feet of us in Johnstone Strait. Here’s a video of that trip.

This trip from Bella Bella to Calvert Island and back was our biggest yet. For more, read a trip overview, trip logistics and our stories, view more pictures and watch some videos.