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Speaking French

You don't have to be a Voyageur to enjoy one of Canada's most historic waterways, but it helps.
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roaring rapids The entry to Big Pine Rapid. Photo by Leslie Anthony

Alex Strachan and I leave the dock around noon. Along the shoreline, lone leaves twist like prayer flags on otherwise naked branches. We pass Alcatraz Island, scene of a drunk's infamous overnight imprisonment, before turning into the channel shadowing Eighteen Mile Island, with its vociferous wolf packs and sightings of Eastern Cougar. We stop above Little Pine Rapid, usually a minor riffle but now raging due to open dams on the upper French River near its egress from Lake Nipissing in Central Ontario. Scouting a mellow line for our inaugural whitewater run together. Back in the canoe, Alex astern, we slide in smoothly and angle left through the main wave-train; when it dissipates, I throw a cross-bow draw to pull us from a corner eddy that would suck us into a rock face, regaining smooth water. So far so good.

The crack of our paddles echoes sharp across October waters as the quintessential Group of Seven landscape slides past: whaleback rocks and straining white pines; pink granite constellated in an earthy patina of lichen, leaves, and needles. Soon the roar of Big Pine Rapid rises to meet us — a five-metre drop with ledges, rollers, curlers, haystacks and hydraulics. There's a portage if we wish, a trail worn shin-deep into the turf not by modern recreationists, but explorers that included Champlain, Brulé, Mackenzie, brigades of Voyageurs, and the First Nations travellers who humped it for thousands of years. Beholding this gentle, duff-carpeted trench I imagine those who crossed it over the 400 years of Canada's recorded history, a bottleneck in the continent's nascent fur industry, its shores choked at times with hundreds of traders and their native allies, encamped and waiting turns to move cargoes up or down, likely out of rum and on thin rations of pea soup and pemmican until they reached a fort. Champlain, for instance, used this route in 1615 to journey to the heart of the Huron nation on Georgian Bay, then travel south with them to war against the Iroquois. Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac, later Governor of Louisiana, passed through in 1701 en route from Montreal to founding Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit, which became modern Detroit.

Alex and I eschew portaging in favour of a sinuous line we've divined through the maelstrom. Dropping in dead centre, we cleave a massive haystack then move right to line-up on the main chute; without communicating, we instinctively angle the boat so it ferries swiftly in the right direction. I high brace into standing waves and we tip down another substantial drop, paddling hard. The final wave-train sweeps in a banked curve up sloping shoreline rock on the right, requiring a huge draw to pull left back into the centre, where the highline throws a welcome but soaking cross-wave over our heads. Soaked and smiling, we seesaw over the last stacks into the calm bay. Exhilarated by the triumph, we chatter and paddle twenty minutes before clambering onto an island to lunch overlooking magnificent Blue Chute.

Sitting in sun out of the headwind we've been bucking the broad, lolling tongue of Blue Chute glistens below like a strange dream suddenly revealed... but also familiar. It's not just because this spot is immortalized in Canadian art; I've been here before — 38 years ago, as a canoe-mad teenager. I don't remember much, but as we down a thermos of curry vegetable soup and thick sandwiches, some trickles back. I reminisce about the impression this chute — this landscape — made on me, about the long, looping life's journey through science, academia and journalism that canoeing sent me on while always maintaining a subconscious presence. Like a canoe journey across the land, life also takes you new places; it's de facto exploration and adventure, une voyage, I muse. Alex Strachan nods in understanding, then opens up about his own odyssey from recalcitrant, library-bound student to the corporate world where he made a fortune trading peanuts, went on to great heights in real-estate, then opted out before it consumed him, walking away from CEO certainty to reclaim his soul. He did so by purchasing a dilapidated fish camp, razing and removing two-dozen buildings, and building a smart, spacious, central lodge with 15 tasteful cabins of rustic chic scattered in the surrounding forest.

That would be the Lodge at Pine Cove, from which we'd set out. Pine Cove offers a different kind of backwoods comfort: first-class digs; breakfast delivered in a picnic hamper; lunch for paddling or hiking excursions supplied from an excellent kitchen; forward-thinking eco-consciousness in a litany of sustainability and local sourcing of handmade everything—including insect repellant. French River Outfitters is also based at the lodge. Alex manages the inn while his partner, Nicola Ross, runs the outfitting business. Both lead canoe and kayak excursions, either on scenic flatwater or, as today, to some of the French's most infamous rapids.

Done lunch, bonded, and now a de facto paddling team, we run Blue Chute without unloading, barrelling directly into a straightforward rollercoaster that's forever etched in my mind. A chance to play on this amazing piece of whitewater is a daily opportunity for lodge guests, some of who come for just that. We hit the bottom and return to the main channel by dragging up a route known as The Ladder. Passing a shaded wall papered in the lichen known as rock tripe, eaten in soup by natives and Voyageurs, I tear off a piece to sample; it tastes like dirt. Small flights of mergansers peel off ahead as we paddle and portage back to the lodge with some urgency: Alex has to cook dinner for a dozen guests (it's the Argentine chef's day off — though cooking is a job Alex relishes).

Returning, I revive my tastebuds with other guests under the guidance of a couple of passionate cheeseheads from Collingwood's Dags & Willow Fine Cheese and Gourmet Shop, who walk us through a sampling of some of their favourites. I've earned my dinner of Alex's classic French Canadian meat pie, tortière, which turns out to be the best I've ever had. In any event, it beats pea soup and pemmican. Tomorrow Alex and I will again follow in the paddle-strokes of the Voyageurs — but we will be far better fed.

Leslie Anthony is a Whistler-based author, editor, biologist and bon vivant who has never met a mountain he didn't like.