A FAMILY THAT PADDLES TOGETHER ...
Young family expects four-month trip to be a life-changing event
Benoit Gendreau-Berthiaume, left, his wife Magali Moffatt and their five-year-old son Mali Berthiaume are planning to canoe and portage from Edmonton to their hometown of Montreal in a four-month odyssey.
The inspiration, believe it or not, was a dying station wagon.
Benoit Gendreau-Berthiaume and Magali Moffatt had planned on a leisurely road trip to Montreal when Benoit finished his doctoral dissertation at the University of Alberta.
The family car started having gasket problems. Even if they bit the bullet and paid $4,000 to fix it, what if something else went wrong the next month?
“Let’s go by canoe,” Magali jokingly suggested.
“When she said that, I was like, huh,” says Benoit. “I started looking it up, like is it possible? As we researched it more and more, we were like, oh, it is possible.”
On May 2, the couple and their five-year-old son will push their canoe out from Capilano Park, then paddle east for a few thousand kilometres, back to their home town.
They expect the trip to take four months. And to change their lives.
Benoit and Magali started dating 11 years ago. They met at a Montreal climbing gym. She was an instructor. Then he got hired on, too.
They fell in love, married, and in 2010, had their son, Mali. That summer, they packed up and moved to Edmonton, where Benoit would study forest ecology. They’d spent their honeymoon climbing in the Rockies. The West would be their next adventure.
The first six months were hard. Magali had never lived away from Montreal. She was raising their son while Benoit studied full time. The absence of family and friends was palpable.
Magali was shy and uncomfortable with English. Other grad school families had their own languages and cultures. She’d hoped to teach climbing, but Edmonton gyms wanted her solely for evenings and weekends. That would mean she’d miss time with Benoit.
When Benoit and Magali tell people they’re taking their five-year-old on a four-month canoe trip, they get varied reactions.
“That’s really, really awesome,” another mom recently told Magali.
“You’re totally crazy,” her eyes said.
Even at his young age, Mali has spent more time outside than many adults. His first word, apart from mommy and daddy, was dehors. Outside.
As an infant, his parents took him to Kananaskis for seven weeks. When he was three, they went on a back country trip to Mount Robson, where Mali hiked 11 kilometres in one day.
People underestimate the compatibility of kids and the outdoors, they both say, and the formidable bribery power of chocolate.
Last spring, they took a 10day trial run between Edmonton and North Battleford, Sask. They experienced hot and cold weather, sun, wind and rain. They saw bald eagles, owls, and paddled past a lone wolf on their intended campsite. At night, they listened to coyotes.
Along the way, Mali would occasionally pick up a paddle. Or pretend to be a grizzly, scooping pretend salmon from the water. Or ask for a story. Or fall fast asleep, usually through the rapids.
Yet every morning, he’d be anxious to get back in the canoe. At the end of the trip, Benoit asked Mali how he’d feel about doing this for an entire summer.
“I want to do this for the rest of my life,” he replied.
Edmonton might not have been easy at first, but Benoit and Magali made friends with other francophones on campus. The real change came a couple of years ago, when Magali took a job at Mountain Equipment Coop (MEC).
At a store geared toward the outdoorsy, her climbing and paddling experience were obvious assets. The job added an extra social circle, winter camping or ice-climbing expeditions. Moffatt loved it so, she plans on continuing with MEC in Quebec.
Benoit will paddle toward a fellowship at ISFORT, a forestry research centre an hour from Ottawa. Funding is still a bit up in the air, and for the first time in many years, he doesn’t know what’s next.
Adventure is in Benoit’s blood.
His father, a lung doctor, lugged his family across the continent for professional training. Benoit was born in San Francisco, lived in Calgary until he was nine, then moved to Montreal after his mom finally put her foot down. At 30, he still hasn’t spent a single summer there.
There were always canoe trips. Or camp. When Benoit was too old to be a camper, he got a job taking children on canoe trips. More recently, summers have been occupied with field work, long days in the forest.
“I feel at home when I’m outside,” Benoit says.
No matter how comfortable he might feel, planning for a 5,000-plus-kilometre canoe trip isn’t easy.
Companies have donated cool gadgets: solar panels and a sail so they can catch “free air miles” and an occasional rest. They bought a canoe skirt to keep gear from getting soaked, and a canoe cart for shorter portages. A two-way satellite communicator can track their whereabouts and, if needed, send a distress signal.
One of the best devices is a BioLite camp stove. Fuelled with twigs, it has a USB plugin to charge batteries while you cook.
Paddling burns a lot of calories, and you can only eat so many nuts. Variety is a key to sanity. They’ve consulted with a nutritionist and arranged for food caches to appear every two or three weeks in towns along the way, where there will also be a chance for a rare shower.
Apart from two or three portages, canoeing to Winnipeg is relatively straightforward. After that, there are dams to avoid, a 20-kilometre portage, and they’re renting a car to travel between Thunder Bay and Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. They considered travelling between those cities along Lake Superior, but if the canoe flipped, the water is so cold, hypothermia could quickly set in, so they’re playing it safe. They’ll also duck potential storms on Lake Winnipeg and portage around most rapids.
The last part is a smorgasbord of rivers: the French, the Mattawa, the Ottawa. They’ll touch the St. Lawrence shortly before reaching Montreal.
Benoit and Magal i’s apartment is divided. One side holds remnants of life here in Edmonton. The other is an unknown future, gear they’ll wedge into their trusty five-metre Royalex canoe.
Finishing his dissertation meant 20-hour days for Benoit before he submitted a final draft. He defended on Friday, and is hoping to make quick corrections before he drives their few remaining possessions home to Montreal before flying back for the canoe trip.
“Ironically enough, we actually purchased a new vehicle,” Benoit says. “Now we have a great car that could have allowed us to do a road trip.”
Stare all you want at a map, talk calmly and methodically about the trip. It’s getting harder to ignore. They’re excited to be paddling home, moving on from the pressure of a dissertation, but they’re also sad to leave.
They’ll remember Edmonton as a sunny city, with family-friendly parks and municipal programs and a river valley that grows and withers each season.
It’s hard to know what they’ll experience downstream. They’ll retrace routes of voyageurs on waterways that were once Canada’s highways.
They’re also hoping to share their great adventure. With guidance from a filmmaking friend, they’re shooting footage in the hopes of later assembling a documentary. There’s even a shockproof waterproof camera for Mali.
They’ll keep journals and try to post updates on their twitter feed (follow them at paddlinghome.weebly.com and @PaddlingHome).
The goal is to inspire others — even those with small kids — to get outside, to dream and wonder what makes a home a home, not just scenery you pass by.
“I think we’re going to realize home is where you make it,” Benoit says. “Regardless of where we are, we are well, because we’re together.” Follow the family’s canoe adventure in an occasional series of stories in the Edmonton Journal’s Family & Fitness section on Mondays starting mid- May.