RETURN TO DRY LAND
Family home after 5,000-kilometre canoe trip
They’ve crossed rivers and lakes, braved poison ivy and tapeworms, endured the blistering extremes of heat and freezing cold.
Now they’ll have to manage the trickiest part: Returning to normal life.
Five months after embarking from Edmonton’s Capilano Park on a mind-boggling 5,000-kilometre canoe journey, Benoit Gendreau-Berthiaume, 31, Magali Moffatt, 35, and their five-year-old son Mali are finally recuperating in their native Montreal.
Last Saturday, they paddled up to the beach at the Cap-St-Jacques park, their Prospector Royal ex canoe accompanied by two canoes filled with family and close friends, greeted by many others on the shore.
“It was just a very, very special moment,” says Gendreau-Berthiaume, who admits to some emotional moments. “It was a bit unreal that this was ending. We’re still kind of slowly realizing we’re not getting back in the boat in two or three days.”
The cross-Canada trip was physically and mentally challenging; they expected it to take four months, but it ended up taking almost five. They battled huge waves, fought strong currents, but nothing was more exhausting than a hellish trek along the 13.7-kilometre Grand Portage in Minnesota, on which they had to repeatedly load and unload their canoe cart, while battling injuries, bug bites, rashes and dehydration.
More regularly, they enjoyed beautiful evenings by the campfire or the company of adventurous strangers along the way. They soaked in the Northern Lights along the French River in Ontario, were soothed by the meditative stroke of the paddle. But Gendreau-Berthiaume says the real wonder was watching Mali interact with nature.
“These small things, when you see them through the eyes of your five-year-old son, you almost feel sad that we lose that curiosity,” he says. “Yeah, this is a really beautiful bug. It’s really nice.”
The last leg of the trip wasn’t easy, as they pushed to make their expected arrival date. The weather cooperated, but the current on the Ottawa River didn’t.
Conflicted feelings were expected, but they haven’t had time to experience that yet. There’s been countless TV and radio interviews, planned suppers and evenings, a to-do list stretching a mile long.
Before next month’s move to Gatineau, Que., Gendreau-Berthiaume still needs to submit the final version of his University of Alberta PhD dissertation, the impetus for their move to Edmonton in 2010. They’ll soon settle into new jobs: Benoit in a post-doctoral fellowship in forest ecology, Magali at the Mountain Equipment Co-op in Ottawa.
They’ll also crowdfund to make a documentary film of the trip, based on more than a terabyte of footage shot on the trip. Production and editing will be handled by Canmore-based filmmaker Mike Quigley.
Next weekend, they’ll head to the annual closing weekend at Camp Kéno, the summer camp between Quebec City and Trois-Rivières where Gendreau-Berthiaume first fell in love with paddling, then later worked as an instructor. The camp sponsored the family on this trip. Mali will attend his first camp next summer, though he might find the canoeing a little dry.
Apart from the adventure, the family decided to take the cross-Canada trip with a rambunctious five-year-old to encourage others to spend more time outside. The response has been overwhelmingly positive. They also plan to share their experience with as many classrooms as possible in the next year. When they’ll be back in Edmonton for the Greater Edmonton Teachers Association Conference next February, they’ll try to visit schools that followed their trip.
“That’s kind of what we want to do,” Gendreau-Berthiaume says. “Allow them to see parts of the country they’ve maybe never seen before, give them a little taste: If you go outside, this is what you might see.”
Back in civilization, the world admittedly looks a little different. The family walked by a bagel shop the other day, then gorged themselves on the Montreal specialty. Their first trip on the downtown Metro was an adjustment, with a stream of people emptying onto a platform.
“That was kind of the first ‘crowd bath,’” Gendreau-Berthiaume says. “Almost instantly, we both looked at each other. Kind of intense, huh.”