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Their 1978 Black Feather Wilderness Adventures brochure describes the Dumoine as a, “superb wild river, offering beautiful scenery, a variety of whitewater challenges, good fishing.”


derness Adventures brochure describes the river as a, “superb wild river, offering beautiful scenery, a variety of whitewater challenges, good fishing. Te river is paradise for all canoeists willing to put in the effort to cross the watershed and reach its headwaters.” It was Wally who first tipped me off to the increased pressures


caused by easy access and larger groups. “When I look back over 40 years, I’ve seen a slow erosion of the camp-


sites and the wilderness experience,” Wally told me. “It started back in the ‘80s with the introduction of Royalex canoes and Term-a-Rests.” Although many consider the heyday to have been 20 years ago,


roughly the same number of people are still going down the river today. Te difference is that trips are now concentrated into a two- month window. Like my family, most canoeists today want perfect summer weather, lower flows and no bugs. We stepped out of the van for a stretch at Grand Chute—about


the halfway point of our shuttle. Boundless High School was also stopped for a stretch. Teenagers leaned against the mini school bus- es swatting flies and punching each other in the shoulder, as excited about the trip as we were. Boundless is an outfit that runs 10 or so trips down the Dumoine


in July and August. Adrian Meissner is their director of operations. He realizes Boundless is one of the heavy users of the Dumoine. I counted 10 tandem canoes tied on their tandem axle trailer. “Developing social skills and teamwork can only be done in larger


groups. And to run a river like the Dumoine with new paddlers, we like to maintain a three-to-one student to staff ratio,” Adrian wipes a mosquito off his neck. “We need a river that allows longer trips with challenging but not over-the-top whitewater. Te Dumoine is perfect.” Smaller, private groups flown in from ice-out to late fall by Ronnie


Bowes’s Beaver have been replaced by busloads of inner-city teens. Tere are four large groups on the river with us this weekend—ap- proximately 80 people stretched over the 60-kilometer run. “Te nice thing about river travel is that everyone moves at rough-


ly the same pace; we may never see another group. If we do, we just plan our days so we aren’t tripping over each other,” Adrian tells me. I began this trip watching out for trash. We had a loose plan put-


ting us at the nicest and most used campsites: Little Italy on Benoît, Little Steel, Lake Robinson and Margaret Spry. I was looking for the telltale signs of overuse. I checked every fire pit for burned bean cans


40 SUMMER/FALL 2011


Left: Once a farm depot, then a gentlemen’s club, the Dumoine Rod and Gun Club is a historic and well-preserved stopping place.


Above: Thirty-nine runnable rapids with only a few portages.


and crumbled bits of tinfoil. Nothing. I scanned campsites for plas- tic bread ties, juice box straw wrappers and half buried toilet paper. Twice a year Boundless sends staff down the Dumoine, partly to


train new guides and partly to look after the river. “We know we are heavy users of the river and so we do our share to


keep it clean,” Meissner explained. Staff paddle in with saws, shovels and new thunder boxes and paddle out with any debris they find. “I believe the increased use by camps and outfitters has actually cleaned up the river over the last five years. Looking after the river is part of our curriculum and part of camp culture.” I didn’t have the same 40 years of Dumoine experiences as Wally


Schaber. I hadn’t smoked a pipe and drawn every rock in every rapid like Hap Wilson did for his Rivers of the Upper Ottawa Valley. I hadn’t watched the best campsites sprawl to accommodate a dozen tents. I was paddling the Dumoine for the first time—with a fresh perspective. At Bowman’s Portage, what the locals call Ryan’s Chute, we’d pad-


dle only a short distance to where the Dumoine pushes into the Ot- tawa River and then 2.5 kilometers across to Ontario and our truck. Motorboats can access this site and it shows—we stuffed our pock- ets with nested fishing line and granola bar wrappers, and tossed a dozen empty beer cans in the canoe. Tis was the first trash we’d seen on the river in six days. I was still thinking about the future of this river as my kids car-


ried the last of their things to the truck. Te Dumoine is the last undammed, free-flowing tributary to the


Ottawa River. Ironically, the most significant change to come will likely be the success of conservation groups lobbying to create a type of wild river park to protect the Dumoine from hydro development. With any level of protection comes special status; with status comes increased awareness and surely more marketing to increase use to justify a government budget. I’ve come to accept that this is just how it goes. Tere may have been a progressive erosion of the wilderness ex-


perience, but I wouldn’t know that, nor would my children. It’s the next 30 years that will matter most. Certainly it will to them. If the Dumoine is ever challenged by hydro development, the more people down the river, the more people will care and fight to protect it. And if we were to lose that fight, then all this fuss about the campsites getting a little trampled will seem a bit silly.


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