Water Ways

We have a 'Canadian' canoe. Not that it came from Canada, but the sort of open canoe where you sit one person at the front and one at the back and put the cargo in the middle. Having said that, I think the design is Canadian - it's called a 'Kawartha', named after a set of small lakes linked by a river, north of lake Ontario

Canoes like this got their association with Canada because they were the main mode of transport used by fur traders - who made trips deep into the Canadian interior to buy pelts and then carried back the bundles of furs by canoe. This was in the 17th and 18th century, when much of Canada was a French colony. The fur trade was tightly regulated, and those given a licence to trade in this way were called 'Voyageurs' 

Voyageurs were incredibly tough men, renound for their physical strength, making arduous journeys in dangerous conditions at breakneck speed, manually carrying canoes and heavy cargo across sections that could not be navigated by water. The French term for this land traverse was 'portage' and the word survives in English today for any part of a journey where an obstacle means the canoe and cargo has to be removed from the water and carried

The Google image of the Kawartha lakes looks remarkably similar to the one illustrating an article in today's paper about beavers migrating into arctic tundra in North America, and damming previously narrow rivers, creating heat-absorbing lakes that warm the surrounding permafrost and release methane, leading to further climate collapse and more beavers - a classic positive feedback loop. The article suggests (apparently seriously) eating more beavers as a solution. I think a return to environmentally-sustainable beaver hats might be a better bet

The paddles are not my response to Storm Henk. We are clearing a room to give access to get some maintenance work done, necessitating a short portage to the shed