The birth of the Bandits: Year 1-Pretrip and Day One
Pre Trip
“Two’s company, three’s a crowd but four's a party.”
It’s June 2011. Adam and I are sitting at our designated lunch table eating one of the College’s famous chicken caesar wraps with complimentary hot sauce. These wraps are about half the size of a football and they’re packed with chicken, romaine lettuce, cheese, caesar dressing and of course lots of bacon. The TV mounted above the cafeteria entrance is on per usual, playing the latest breaking news… the BP oil spill, the assassination of Osama Bin Laden and Jackass star: Ryan Dunns death... to name a few headlines .
Adam and I were both working for the College on a student summer job program. We’d meet at the same spot everyday to discuss what kind of shenanigans we were going to get into that evening or weekend. One day, on one of our lunch breaks, the idea of a canoe trip came up. The two of us had grown up fishing, canoeing, hiking and camping but we’ve never done a canoe trip that lasted longer than a few days. Our jobs, being funded by the student union, would come to an end in the third week of August. This would leave us a window of opportunity to do a trip with a week of NO work or school to worry about.
I'll be honest, I had nothing to do with planning that year's route. Other than coming to an agreement on the general area we’d paddle in, the majority of the planning was done by Adam. He did all the research on canoeing forums as well as talking in person to local canoe legends. One of them being a paddling veteran and employee of Wild Waters Canoe and Kayak, Dave Clements.
With the general idea and route planned out it was now time to recruit a team. Two’s company, three’s a crowd but four's a party. As years went by, it actually became easier to recruit paddling brethren but in the early days, folks were weary and I don't blame them, Adam and I didn’t exactly have a reputation for thinking things through. Que the flashback to a few weeks earlier when we went whitewater tubing in hockey helmets and lifejackets on a raging river, but that stories for another time... Winging s**t is how we roll and we were friends with a couple of potential paddle buddies who rolled the same way… or should I say flowed the same way.
Tom, a good friend of ours, was an easy recruit. We had done short canoe trips together before and at the time our previous trip included half a summer's day of portaging two 18ft aluminum canoes through dense bush during peak mosquito season. The trip before that, we almost capsized our "over capacity canoe" (filled to the gunwales with beer and two other passengers, Dana and Adrian) in a heavy crosswind. So you could say Tom, as a paddler, was a no brainer.
Evan was our fourth and final recruit. Tom and I had not met him yet but we were told he was living in the mountains snowboarding so obviously he fit the part. Also, being a friend of Adams made him a friend of ours. He basically “winged it” the hardest by not knowing Tom and I and only meeting us a few minutes before we hit the road on our trip to Quetico. That in itself is admirable.
Fast forward to a few days before the trip. As the departure date was sneaking up on us, we were beginning to realize that we needed more than a bottle of Everclear, some cheap sleeping bags, an old Coleman tent and crappy backpacks to make it out alive. We needed gear stat! Being poor young and inexperienced students, we headed to the local dollar store. We bought rope, tarps, chairs, cutlery, pots, pans, lighters, headlamps and even food. I would honestly say 85% of our gear was "made in China" crap from the dollar store and we’d learn the hard way that Dollarama was not the goldmine of gear we thought it was.
The most awful but efficient alcohol to bring for a canoe trip.
Pre-Bacon Bandits: We had done short canoe trips together before and at the time our previous trip included half a summer's day of portaging two 18ft aluminum canoes through dense bush during peak mosquito season.
Year One: Day One
“What a start, we’re two minutes into the trip and we already almost managed to capsize the canoe”.
Departure day. We needed two vehicles to successfully complete the trip since we were not doing an out and back loop. So we took Adams legendary forest green 98’ Honda Civic and my blue 94’ Chevy Blazer. We’d throw one canoe on the Blazers roof racks and then tow the other canoe on a small trailer. We had everything packed and ready to go but we were missing one key component, Evan. Daylight was burning but eventually Evan was dropped off at my parents house (the meeting spot). We were running late! Adam acquainted Tom and I with Evan, and a quick few minutes later, the four of us were headed off to the unknown.
Within a few hours drive later we were at our put-in, French Lake. We ditched our gear by the beach. We then picked up our provincial park backcountry passes and did a mandatory orientation at the visitor center led by a park ranger who was probably concerned about our well being. We hopped back into our vehicles and with a quick stop for supplementary beers we headed off to drive another hour and fourty-five minutes to our soon to be finish line at Beaverhouse lake.
We dropped off my blue Blazer and the four of us piled into Adam's little car to head back to the French lake put-in. Now by this time the sun had begun to set and we were still at least two hours from paddling. We didn't care though, instead we slugged back some Busch tall-boys, blasted the Hip and excitedly discussed our adventure.
Once we arrived back at French lake, we loaded our canoes hastily. Our heavy worn out food bags literally bursting at the seams. We then all drank a membrane destroying, gut burning celebratory shot of Everclear, not knowing this would become a yearly tradition down the road.
By the time our paddles hit the water it was pitch black and nearly midnight. We gave it a few powerful strokes then glided into the silence of the night. There was a slight fog hovering over the small lake making it very hard to see, so we decided to pull out our cheap dollar store headlamps to light the way. I turned mine on and realized we were about to glide right into a rock the size of a punch buggy. We scrambled to maneuver the giant aluminum canoe and narrowly missed the giant boulder. What a start, we’re two minutes into the trip and we already almost managed to capsize the canoe.
Once we found our bearings we began to slither our way out of French lake through the winding Pickerel river. We paddled slowly through the thin fog with the marine vegetation lightly dragging across the bottom of our canoes, hearing nothing but frogs and the strokes of our paddles in the water. Up ahead of us we could see a faint mysterious beam of light in the middle of the channel. We crept towards it… When we came within a paddle's reach, none of us could understand what we were seeing. It was just this faint foggy beam of light coming out of the river pointing to the sky. Erie...Still to this day we don’t know WTF we saw and have yet to find an explanation for it.
The narrow river was beginning to open up and we were out of the fog. We picked a star in the sky and decided to aim our canoes towards it. Full speed ahead. After fifteen minutes of givener’ hard Adam and Evans canoe came to a dead stop. They hit a hidden sandbar about twenty feet from shore… with it being well past midnight, we figured it would be wise to set up camp nearby. We rolled up our pants, hopped into the shallow water and dragged our massive aluminum canoes to shore.
After a quick little search, we found a flat spot in the forest and pitched our tent. In true Les Stroud fashion, we started a nice campfire with my flint stick. Then soon after, out came the Everclear and so did the Salvia. If you don't know what Salvia is, I'll give you the first few sentences of its Wikipedia definition:
Salvia divinorum (Latin: "sage of the diviners"; also called ska maría pastora, seer's sage, yerba de la pastora or simply salvia) is a plant species with transient psychoactive properties when its leaves are consumed by chewing, smoking, or as a tea.The leaves contain opioid-like compounds that induce hallucinations…
Salvia divinorum
As the four of us entered into another dimension a fox appeared out of the forest shadows and approached us. We were all tripping balls but since all four of us agreed we could see him/her, it was confirmed, the fox was real. He hung out around the fire keeping his distance for a good twenty minutes then disappeared back into the night… bed time.
Our only group shot together from the first night of the first year.
From Left to Right: Adam, Andrew, Tom, Evan
Stay tuned for day two. You can fast forward 8-10 years ahead to our Youtube playlist:
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