Tumpline
PILGRIMS ON THE THLEWIAZA RIVER, THE SAME ROUTE MOWAT CANOED IN 1947 AND WROTE ABOUT IN PEOPLE OF THE DEER,
NEVER CRY WOLF AND NO MAN’S RIVER. PHOTO: KARSTEN HEUER
Finding Farley
ONE FAMILY’S VERY REAL FICTIONAL PADDLING PILGRIMAGE KARSTEN HEUER AND LEANNE ALLISON
are no strangers to long expeditions. But their last undertaking to cross the coun- try by paddle, sail and train to meet an iconic writer quickly took the form not of an expedition but a pilgrimage. For writer Heuer and fi lmmaker Alli-
son, the story began in 2005 when Heu- er sent an unsolicited draft of his book Being Caribou to Farley Mowat. As child- hood devotees of the 86-year-old writer the couple was amazed a few weeks later when Mowat called and invited them to visit his Cape Breton farm. Living in Canmore, Alberta, Heuer and Allison weighed the options for getting there. T en they realized that Mowat had al- ready written a multi-volume guidebook for them: Why not plot a route over land and water, criss-crossing the settings of Mowat’s books? And so the Finding Farley project
was born. Last May, Allison, Heuer and their two-year-old toddler Zev loaded
up their Prospector and dropped it into the Bow River near their home. T e early stretch of their journey
had the family paddling through the setting of Owls in the Family and T e Dog Who Wouldn’t Be, two of Mowat’s novels about growing up in the Sas- katchewan prairies. By summer, they were deep into the
northern wilds, battling long portages, a thick haze of bugs and a near-miss with a sleeping polar bear. T ey followed the Cochrane and
T lewiaza Rivers through Manitoba into Nunavut, passing the barren settings of several of Mowat’s books, including No Man’s River and Lost in the Barrens. “Farley remembers being terrifi ed
running these rivers with his life in the trapper’s hands,” says Allison. “He knows how unforgiving the landscape can be.” From Churchill, Manitoba, they caught a train to Quebec and then
sailed across the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Newfoundland. After three days on the choppy seas they pulled into Bur- geo, the setting for Mowat’s 1972 novel A Whale for the Killing. In early fall, the family sailed to Nova
Scotia and anchored in the bay at St. Peters, where Mowat stood waiting on the shore. Despite having never met, the group
soon fell into easy rapport. “T ere was already such a shared history,” says Al- lison. “It felt more like a reunion than an introduction.” T e family spent three days exchang-
ing tales from the Barren Lands with the Mowats. Mowat admitted being worried throughout the family’s pilgrimage, de- spite—or perhaps because of—his own extensive travels across the same land. “He had tried a few times along the
way to dissuade us,” says Allison. “So he was very happy to fi nally have us safely ashore.”—Amy Flynn Stuart
w w w. c a n o e r o o t sma g . c om ■ 9
PHOTO: KARSTEN HEUER
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