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Book Reviews Adventures between the covers


Northern Saskatchewan Canoe


Trips, BY LAUREL ARCHER If you’re going to read this book, make sure you have an empty canoe barrel at the ready. You’ll be packing for your trip before you get to the last page. Archer makes the Churchill


River come alive as a paradise full of "big drops and huge haystacks that will make fire run in your veins." Each river has its charms: the Clearwater’s great beauty, big whitewater and long history; the MacFarlane’s portage (surely the worst in the province); the Waterfound’s fishing bonanza; the Cree’s absence of necessary portages. Practical features include trip notes cata- logued according to topographic map num- bers, UTM grid co-ordinates and distinguish- ing features (put-ins, rapids, fishing holes, campsites and pictographs). Archer’s system allows you to mark your maps ahead of time for easy reference on the river. Archer cites extensive research covering thousands of years. She ranks each river according to difficulty, local history, solitude, wildlife and fishing, with detail enough to help you decide where to go. She gives sources for current water levels and even describes how to call an otter (a simultaneous half snort and huff).


This book is 240 pages of secrets. You’d be a fool not to read it and crazy not to go. $19.95 Cdn. www.fireflybooks.com. — by Tory Bowman


Rendezvous with the Wild: The


Boreal Forest, EDITED BY JAMES RAFFAN Rendezvous with the Wild will take up a signif- icant amount of room on your coffee table. But don’t begrudge it this space. It does, after all, attempt to tell the story of a forest that sprawls over half the land- mass in Canada. It is a big subject, and to approach it the Canadian Parks


10 www.canoeroots.ca


and Wilderness Society put crews of notable Canadians in canoes and sent them down 10 different rivers from Labrador to the Yukon. The result is an eclectic collection (anecdotes, essays, photos, poems) that does a good job of penetrating the many different ways we think about, travel in and live around the prickly trees.


The list of contributors is long and includes David Suzuki, John Ralston Saul, Justin Trudeau, Ken Dryden and Sarah Harmer. This is a book as diverse as the land it celebrates. $39.95 Cdn. www.fireflybooks.com.—IM


Paddling the Tobeatic, BY ANDREW L. SMITH With descriptions of 50 different canoe routes in and around the Tobeatic Wilderness Area, this book is indis- pensable reading for anyone plan- ning a canoe trip in southwestern Nova Scotia. Each route is described in detail—down to where to park your car, where to camp and the probable location of sweepers. Difficult sections are nicely sketched out with advice on where to portage. The book is well-organized with each route cross-referenced to topographic maps and accompanied by a listing of the total distance and approximate time required to complete the trip. Before you run out and buy this book,


however, you should know that it is by no means a coffee-table book. All of the photos are black and white and most of them are quite dark. If you are looking for an exciting read or enticing photos of Nova Scotia, this is not the book for you. That being said, serious trippers should consider buying two copies, one to leave at home for trip planning and another for ripping out pages and laminating them for handy reference while you are enjoying a run down the river. $24.95 Cdn. www.nimbus.ns.ca. —by Doug Scott


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