Alone Against the North Read Online Free PDF

behind and go to seek the Again River. In the passenger seat was clean-shaven Terry O’Neil, a, genial old-timer who made extra cash shuttling canoeists and hunters to various rivers and hunting camps across northern Ontario and Quebec. Driving was my father, who had decided—quite unexpectedly—to come along on my expedition. We were on the fringes of the northern wilderness heading some two hundred kilometres northeast of Cochrane, a small logging town located over six hundred kilometres north of Toronto.
    My father, an engineer and woodsman extraordinaire, built canoes, among other things. He had countless camping tripsunder his belt, but he had never undertaken a true expedition: his preference was for idyllic paddles on picturesque lakes, not the gruelling ordeals through mosquito-infested swamps to unexplored rivers that I favoured. At forty-nine, he felt that this was perhaps his last chance to join me on one of my notorious expeditions. Notorious, because generally anyone who had ever accompanied me on an expedition swiftly arrived at the conclusion that—while proud to have done it—they would not readily subject themselves to such a discomforting experience ever again. While I too enjoyed leisurely canoe trips, they’re not the stuff adventures are made of, the trailblazing expeditions into the unknown that I hungered for.
    Back in Cochrane, Terry had taken down our information in the event that we didn’t return from the wilderness. He had been under the impression that our objective was merely to canoe the Kattawagami River, a wild enough waterway, but one easily accessible via a remote unserviced highway that snakes northeast of Cochrane to an old gold mine—the gravel road we were travelling on. The Kattawagami attracts adventurers down its winding, rapid-filled course, but by my standards, it’s well-explored territory.
    â€œTo tell you the truth,” said Terry from the front passenger seat, as we drove along the road, “I don’t like shuttling people to the Kattawagami. I prefer going other places.”
    â€œWhy is that?” I asked.
    Terry stared out the passenger window for a while at the passing spruce forest, then, clearing his throat, he explained, “Well, the last time I shuttled someone to attempt the Kattawagami, it was a young couple. Only one of them came back alive.”
    â€œDo you know what happened?”
    â€œTheir canoe upset in a rapid. The wife drowned. The guy survived. He was delirious when search and rescue found him. You don’t get over something like that. He’s in a mental institution now.”
    My father swallowed hard. “Terrible,” he mumbled.
    Later I found a newspaper article about it. In 2006 Zanna Marie Cruikshank and her husband Derek attempted to canoe the Kattawagami. Zanna, a nurse, was described as an “avid outdoor enthusiast.” Their canoe capsized in a dangerous rapid; Zanna was killed. Her husband survived and managed to continue downriver for several more days, until he stumbled across a trapper’s cabin. The trapper, according to the story, brought him to the nearest hospital—a considerable distance away in Moosonee, a small Cree community. Zanna’s body was later found in a shallow bay on the river. Nor was this the only recent tragedy in the area—two months earlier, some hundred kilometres to the southeast, there had been a fatal bear attack. A woman had been mauled to death and her corpse partially consumed by a black bear outside an isolated hunting cabin.
    â€œThe Kattawagami’s right up here,” Terry pointed to the narrow bridge just up ahead.
    â€œWe don’t want the Kattawagami,” I said.
    â€œYou don’t want the Katt?” Terry asked, surprised.
    â€œNo, we want a different waterway, a small creek. It’s called Hopper Creek on the map. It drains into the Kattawagami. We want to explore it as a different route to reach the