I stumbled upon this very cool map this morning showing every single river in the lower 48 states.

It’s all part of a new vector map project released on GitHub by Nelson Minar so if you are techy, you can install the software on your own server and depending on your project, configure it to display the river information slightly different. Or, you can be like me and just play around with a live map here and dream of future trips.

All I know is that there is a whole lot of water out there to paddle on.

Why are there no Salmon in the Upper Columbia River? What can we do about that? What are the options?

Sea to Source is the first episode in a series of short films following the journey up the Columbia River in 5 dugout canoes that were hand carved by 1000’s of students.

The journey is about getting people reconnected with the history and culture of the Columbia River as well as the salmon that was once prolific before the creation of the Grand Coulee and Chief Joseph Dams.

Hap tip goes to Conor for the lead.

More info: voyagesofrediscovery.blogspot.ca

This is not a story you want to have happen on your trip. Students on a class canoe trip paddling down the South Saskatchewan River in Saskatoon got a shock last Tuesday when they discovered a body in the river.

The chief coroner is working to identify the remains and foul play is not suspected.

The local public school board has offered counselling to any student on the trip who needs it.

More info: nationalpost.com

Flickr Photo Credit:  Some rights reserved by damiengabrielson.com

Just imagine how envious your camping neighbours will be when you pull this out of your canoe and set-up shop. The only addition I would make is to add in a battery operated light that turns on when opened. People will swear that it’s filled with glowing gold.

Can somebody please rush this to market? Work with me people.

Photo Credit: cheezburger.com

The king of cheats, Lance Armstrong was spotted this weekend in Hawaii out paddling in an outrigger canoe with friends.

Image credits: dailymail.co.uk

Kelly Blades and I are very excited to make episode 8 of Kayak Mainline available to you.

This week on Kayak Mainline we learn about:

• a marriage proposal in a canoe that ends with a call to 911,
• Michael Jackson karaoke in kayaks,
• the epic North American Odyssey,
• enough paddling stats to come out your yin yang.

We also get Bonnie Perry on the phone to talk about her BCU 5* certification. Did you know she is one of only four woman in North America who have it? Amazing.

For those of you keeping track, you will notice there was no announcement of episode 7 here. The story I’m sticking to is that I uploaded it to the server just as I was going out the door last month to the Gales Storm Gathering with the plans to post a note about it when I got back. Yeah, I forgot.

I hope you enjoy this one as much as we did putting it together.

There are several different ways to get our sweet voices directly into your ears:

You can stream it live in your browser here:

 You can directly download the mp3 (Right click and select, "Save target as..." or "Save link as...".

I recently stumbled upon an article that was originally published in Collectors Weekly back in July. It looked at how back in the 1900-1920(ish) canoeing was viewed as a very sexy activity. If you were looking to get away from people for a little "private time", the canoe was the only way to do it.

Adolescents took to the waters with the urgency of salmon fighting their way upstream, spawning a veritable canoe craze, particularly in places like Boston along the Charles River and at Belle Isle, near Detroit. While any canoe would do, companies such as Old Town, Kennebec, and White marketed “courting canoes” specifically designed for waterborne lovebirds. “These boats usually had long 4-foot decks and an 8-foot elliptical or oval cockpit,” says Young. “The woman would sit in the bottom of the canoe on cushions with her parasol to shade her from the sun, while her gentleman in his boater hat would paddle and probably croon to her. Or she might read poetry to him.” Make no mistake; these were wild times.

One Minneapolis Tribune headline read 'Girl Canoeists’ Tight Skirts Menace Society'

As further proof that canoeing had become a hotbed for teenage delinquents, in 1913 the Minneapolis Parks Board refused to issue permits for canoes with unpalatable names. Local newspapers published some of the offensive phrases that slipped past the board the previous summer, including “Thehelusa,” “Kumomin Kid,” “Kismekwik,” “Damfino,” “Ilgetu,” “Aw-kom-in,” “G-I-Lov-U,” “Skwizmtyt,” “Ildaryoo,” “Win-kat-us,” “O-U-Q-T,” “What the?,” “Joy-tub,” “Cupid’s Nest,” and “I Would Like to Try It.” The commissioners unanimously agreed to outlaw phrases lacking obvious moral and grammatical standards, though a few of these clever pre-text-message abbreviations clearly had them scratching their heads.

Check out the entire article and learn more about the scandalous image that canoeing had at the time.

Actress, Amber Tamblyn (of House, M.D. fame) got married a couple off weekends back to David Cross (Arrested Development) in a non-traditional wedding that involved a yellow-dress and canoes for both her and the wedding party.

I would have been quite happy to have been invited to the wedding since Yo La Tengo performed during the reception and Questlove served as the deejay.

Photo credit: Questlove

You read that headline right. Jonathan Berger from Philadelphia has been going on canoe trips all over northern Canada for over 50 years and during that time he has spent more then 1825 nights out camping. That’s a serious number of days! Here I was all proud of my upcoming two-night family camping trip to the local Provincial Park.

The Winnipeg Free Press recently did an article on the amazing accomplishments of this surprisingly risk-averse guy. You can read the full story here.

Surely, in all that time canoeing uncharted rivers with rapids, cataracts and waterfalls, thousands of kilometres from civilization, he has encountered some mishaps and adventures and learned some difficult lessons.

Well, the last time he had a canoe tip was 1971. He has never had to be evacuated. He has had just two bears in his camp in all that time, and they ran away when he and fellow travellers banged pots and pans.

"I don't know what to tell you," Berger said on a recent stopover in Winnipeg. "I just don't take chances." That's probably the boring secret to how you keep paddling for months at a time every summer for 50 years.

I loved the quote right at the end of the article when asked how he can find the time to so many canoe trips:

"It depends what you want to do. You make sacrifices," he said about dedicating so much time to canoe-trekking. That includes sacrifices both monetary and in terms of professional advancement, he said.

Update: In my research, I discovered that Jonathan is also the co-author of the coffee-table book, Canoe Atlas of the Little North which highlights the best canoe routes of Northern Ontario and Winnipeg.

Photo credit: Jonathan Berger

July 30^th will be the 40^th anniversary of that film that made everybody terrified to canoe down rivers, Deliverance.

Staring Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ronny Cox and Ned Beatty, Deliverance is the story of four friends who decide to canoe down the (fake) Cahulawassee River in Georgia before the valley is flooded by the construction of a dam. Scariness ensues over the next hour and a half.

To celebrate the anniversary, Yahoo movies (known for their hard hitting investigative journalism) interviewed the cast to get their memories of the making of the film.

The interview has the usual fluff but does have an interesting conversation about the cast learning to canoe and how they choose the canoes for the film:

Ronny Cox: That was the thing about Burt. When we were doing canoe practice, Burt couldn't be bothered with having to learn the right way to do stuff. But the thing was, he ended up being the best canoeist of us all, because he would just go there with this attitude of 'God D**nit, I can do this.' And he would just do it. So that spirit of 'I can do this' sort of pulled us through."

Jon Voight: Also, he had the much better canoe. He had the one that wouldn't sink!

Burt Reynolds: I didn't pick the pretty one, you did!

Ronny Cox: The wooden Old Town canoe is not intended for white water. It's a lake canoe. No stability. The Aluminum canoe is very broad.

Burt Reynolds: Ronny, when we went out to pick the canoes, I said 'Jon is the lead in the picture, let him pick the canoe.'

Jon Voight: To tell you the truth, the reason why I picked the green canoe is because it matched our characters. There's no flash in our characters. We were kind of homeboys. And this was a more humble thing. But it was dangerous to pick that canoe, and we knew it, because every time you'd hit a rock you'd hear the ribs of the canoe give way. It wasn't a happy experience to have that canoe. But Ed should have been in that canoe. Lewis should have had the higher tech stuff, and he looked more like Lewis in that canoe.

But Burt laughed about my choice. Because we were very competitive always. And as soon as I made the choice, he was chuckling to himself knowing I'd be fortunate not to sink. Many years later he gave me the present of a small replica of that canoe, which I have on my mantelpiece, and it says 'Voight's Choice.'

Ronny Cox:  I saw in John Boorman's commentary on the DVD that in the course of making the film, Jon and I wrecked five canoes. That scene at the end of the picture where they find that half a canoe, they [the crew] didn't have to do that, we did that for them. Burt and Ned would run a set of rapids, if they had the slightest inkling of trouble, then the crew would make big bets that the two of us would wreck. You could make a lot of money betting on us wrecking.

If you are interested in seeing the two canoes in the flesh, they are currently on display at the Burt Reynolds Museum located in Jupiter, Florida.

Film capture credits: mickeyandava.blogspot.ca