Book description
Canoe across large lakes, up and down rivers and rapids; labour over
portages and through a miasma of blackflies; bask in the golden
evenings of the Subarctic. In this account of an 800-mile canoe trip
-- which begins at Reindeer Lake on the Manitoba/Saskatchewan border,
continues into Nunavut past the treeline, and ends on Hudson Bay --
Peter Kazaks conveys the experience of being in the north by
describing the daily details that bring the trip to life. He captures
the flavour of an extended wilderness canoe trip and reflects on
living in unfettered wilderness. The reader will also grasp something
of the serene beauty of the barren lands and begin to understand why
its intoxicating nature keeps drawing some back.
The first half of the trip, essentially from Reindeer Lake to
Nueltin Lake, retraces P. G. Downes' voyage described in his classic
Sleeping Island. Next the four men of this expedition, led by George
Luste, entered the barren lands and followed the Thlewiaza River, the
Kognak River, South Henik Lake and the Maguse River north and east to
the shore of Hudson Bay. These lands, seldom visited, are close to a
true wilderness -- one of the few remaining ones.
Peter Kazaks studied at McGill University, Yale University and the
University of California, Davis. He was a physics professor and an
administrator at New College in Sarasota, Florida, from which he took
early retirement. He now lives in Davis, California, and does some
teaching and some soccer refereeing. In recent years he has travelled
with one or more of his children in the Pacific northwest, Nevada and
Utah, but future trips will probably take him to visit his children
and grandchildren who are dispersed along the east and west coasts of
North America.
