How a Harpoon-Throwing Marathon-Canoeing Canadian Saved My Arm

In 1999, when Charly and I were paddling twenty-plus miles a day from Lake Superior to Canada, we had a paddle problem. 

For nearly one thousand miles Charly had been using his sturdy but heavy Mohawk paddle. For five hundred miles I had used a light but flimsy paddle we had bought for a few bucks at a lumberyard in Pine Falls, before Lake Winnipeg. In all of our planning—including building a wooden-canvas canoe—we had overlooked one of our most essential tools of the trip.  

We needed better paddles—my forearm in the early stages of carpel tunnel, reminded me of this every day. The Pas, Manitoba, located along the Saskachewan River, was our first chance to find some.  

Gib with his water-bombing plane

As luck would have it, one of the first people we encountered at the dock was champion paddler Gib McEachern. Gib had raced canoes professionally for twelve years in his youth. In 1967 he led the Manitoba team to victory in Canada's centennial Trans Canada 104-day, 3,300-mile canoe race. 

Gib had created pretty eclectic living quarters for summers. 

A bush pilot for thirty-odd years, Gib fought forest fires from the air in summer and either skied or headed to Mexico for the summer. 

He correctly identified our E.M. White Guide canoe as a freight canoe—meaning big and sturdy but not very fast—and my paddle as ridiculous. "That's not a paddle, that's a pushing stick. You'd break it this is one good stroke," he said, holding it in the air.

"Don't worry, you won't leave The Pas without good paddles," he told us. 

And he took it from there. Five days later, we left The Pas with Bending Branches paddles from Wisconsin. Gib had had them sent up from Winnipeg. 

Those same paddles not only got us to northern Saskatchewan but they've since propelled us through the lakes and rivers in Ontario, Saskatchewan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin—and now both of our kids have their own Bending Branches paddles. 

Three years ago, I discovered this 2006 book about Gib's epic paddle at Churchill River Outfitters. According to the book, Gib was not only a champion paddler, he also "took the canoe portaging and harpoon throwing contests," that happened at stops along the way on the 1967 centennial canoe route. 

I haven't seen Gib since that time in The Pas, but I hear he lives in British Columbia and continues to ski and paddle and have a lots of fun (he's the one in the foreground in the picture). 

After Paddling to Winter came out in 2013, a friend passed my book along to her brother, who works at Bending Branches, and he passed it along to others. This past fall, Bending Branches contacted me and asked if I'd like to partner. Indeed. 

Bending Branches will be giving away four copies of Paddling to Winter at Canoecopia in Madison. If you're planning to go, be sure to stop their booth, submit your email, and enter the drawing. Bending Branches is an American manufacturer located in Osceola, Wisconsin, focused on innovating quality paddles, servicing our customers, and spending time on the water.