Back in the day...

When I was ten years old, and my brother, Nathan, was 8, our father somehow talked Mom into letting him take us out into remote back-country Georgian Bay wilderness south of Parry Sound.  Having grown up with a cottage on Healey Lake, Dad was very competent around the water.  I remember the day that we pushed off from the boathouse dock, a clear, warm summer day, and Mom (and probably our younger siblings, Anne and Ben) waving good-bye.  I was in the bow of Dad's old 14 foot canoe, and Nathan was perched on some gear in the middle, free to take a nap whenever he felt like it!  (Fast forward 24 years, and my 4 year old neice did the same thing last spring! Like father, like daughter!)           So around the point into Kapikog Bay, portage over the dam into Kapikog Lake, through the inlet, and voila!  Nate and I are now in completely new territory on one of the biggest adventures of our young lives.  On the first big portage, over the granite and low scrub bush that is found all along the Georgian Bay coast, we were walking close to Dad when Nathan flushed a partridge that had been in a nearby thicket.  That was an experience, walking in silence and all of a sudden a very loud drum roll 5 feet away!  I think Dad was just happy that it wasn't a black bear that jumped out of that thicket!          I don't recall much else of that first overnighter 25 years ago, but it instilled within my brother and I (and our younger siblings when they joined our trips a few years later) a passion for canoe-tripping specifically, and the outdoors in general.  The dip of the paddle through backwater lilys, the bald eagle circling overhead on an Algonquin lake, the sheer joy of sleep after long hours of paddling, portaging and swimming-and, especially, the fishing, these are things we will continue to do for decades to come!             Thanks, Dad, for creating such an enduring legacy!  And thanks, Mom, for letting us go!            Uncle Dan