Profile to the Club
LAUREL ARCHER IS HONOURED FOR REDISCOVERING RIVERS
UNTIL THIS PAST SPRING, Laurel Archer knew little about the Explorers Club, a prestigious group of research- ers and adventurers based in New York with chapters around the world. “I knew it had something to do with Sir Edmund Hillary,
but that was about it,” says the 43-year-old Archer. Archer had been canoeing and documenting wild, for-
gotten rivers for years before she impressed an Explorers Club rep enough to gain his sponsorship. The next thing Archer knew she had been named the 162nd member of the club’s Canadian chapter. “I was quite taken aback,” says Archer, who lists Courtenay,
British Columbia, as her permanent address. “It’s pretty cool that an ordinary canoeist can be considered an explorer.” Archer considers herself a rarity among Explorers Club members—first that she’s among the scant 20 per cent fe- male contingent, and second that she isn’t into anthropo- logical research or trans-Atlantic rowing like fellow mem- bers Wade Davis and Colin Angus. “I feel like I’m a bit of an old-school explorer compared to those guys. I just get in my canoe and take off,” says Archer. Even though she got her start in an unlikely place—the landlocked suburbs of Regina, Saskatchewan—she says she’s always been driven to explore. “We’d portage the canoe to a manmade creek by the
RCMP barracks to paddle and check out discarded shop- ping carts,” says Archer. She then moved north, spending more than a decade paddling the Canadian Shield rivers of northern Saskatch- ewan and writing a guidebook to the region before being lured west in 2002 by the big water rivers of British Colum- bia. Archer first paddled the popular Stikine River before moving on to unknown waterways like the Toad, Rabbit and Turnagain rivers.
“ The word needs to get out . I want to blow the whole thing open”
Archer quickly realized that developers—especially the
oil, gas and mining sectors—have the run of the wilderness in northern British Columbia. She joined forces with the Ca- nadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) to increase awareness of the region’s potential for canoe tripping. “Many of these rivers are in serious jeopardy because
no one knows about them,” says Archer, who is currently writing a new guidebook on the rivers of northern British Columbia. “It’s clear that development is going to happen pretty quickly unless word gets out. I want to blow the whole thing wide open.” —Conor Mihell
18 n C ANOE ROOT S fall 2007 Welcome
GETTING A FIRM GRIP ON B.C.’S LOWER STIKINE. PHOTO: GEORGE PREVOST
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