If you’ve seen the 1972 movie, Deliverance, with Burt Reynolds, Jon Voight and Ned Beatty, you’ll understand.
Bowzog and I spent a couple of weeks in the Maritimes this summer (2004). We wanted to do some fishing while we were at my Mom’s place, so my brother tells us that we can borrow a canoe and go down the “Little River†in a couple of hours. My cousin has this canoe we can borrow, so, sure, we’ll try it.
We take a look at the canoe. It’s a Sportspal and it’s pretty banged up. It has silicone sealant everywhere (alarm goes off,.. ignored it)
. “No problem†my cousin says. “It doesn’t leak, we had it out on the river last week “ (alarm goes off again, ignored it). 
Bowzog and I load it up on the truck, get our supplies and get my Mom to drive us upriver. We told her we’d call her from my cell when we get to the end so she can pick us up. It was 9:30am, we were going to be fishing on the way down so it was going to take more than a couple of hours. We were planning on being back for a family dinner with all my aunts and uncles starting at 4pm.
So off we go, paddling down the Little River. We get to pools that look promising for trout so we stop and fish a little, then off to the next pool. After the second pool, I notice a little bit of water in the canoe. I ask Bowzog if he has water in the back. Just a little, probably from getting in the canoe (there goes that pesky alarm again, ignore it).
The river is really pretty, but it comes by its name honestly, it is “littleâ€. There are only a couple of cottages on this stretch. It’s a weekday, so nobody’s home. We go through bends where the current is a bit stronger, we spook an American bittern at every turn. Probably the same one that just flies downstream a ways and flies off again when we get there.
So far the river is deep enough for us to paddle, but now we’re getting to some small rapids where it’s shallower and the canoe scrapes bottom. We manage to get out of the canoe to walk it by the rapids when we approach them, but still manage to scrape a few times. “Bowzog, how’s the water back there?†I ask. There’s more than before. (pesky alarm again, darn!)
Now we’re not stopping to fish anymore.
To heck with fishing, we just have to get to somewhere where we can call for a pickup. “Hey Bowzog, I’ve got water to my ankles (in the canoe!), how is it back there?†“Up to my a$$†he answers. (alarm!) Gotta stop to drain the boat. Sure enough, we look under it and there’s a nice 2-inch gash in it. We look around, we’re now in a deep valley, trees all around us, no cottages in sight. Do you think the cellphone works here? Not a chance out here in the boonies.Pack the stuff back into the boat and start downriver again. More rapids, more shallow water, more scraping, more getting out to walk it through the rapids, more stopping to drain the canoe. The 2-inch gash has now grown to 4 inches and the water comes in faster.
At one point, we go over a swell in a rapid where the front of the boat goes down over the swell (I’m in the front), the water IN the boat then rushes towards me as the front tips down, sending our cooler, drybag and fishing stuff into my back. I always told Bowzog that if he ever hears me utter French swear words, we’re in trouble. Well, I was slinging them all together in one utterance! 
That’s it, now we can’t even get into the canoe anymore because the water comes in so fast. All we can do now is float the canoe and walk beside it in the middle of the river. That’s no small feat, these small trout rivers are very rocky and don’t have much of a shore, just lots of bushes, so we have to walk down the middle of the stream. I bang my ankles on rock, sometimes so hard we have to stop so I can breathe.
We keep thinking of the Deliverance movie at this point, afraid we’d see someone who would order us to squeal like a pig! :shocked"Finally, we see some power transmission towers downstream. Lo and behold, there’s someone flyfishing there. As we get closer, he moves downstream. What? He doesn’t see us?? We finally catch up to him and I ask him how close we are to civilization. “Wellâ€, he says, “a couple of miles along the transmission towers will bring you to this road, or just follow the river another mile or so to get to the first cottage. Your cellphone won’t work until you get thereâ€. The reason he couldn’t see us, as I could tell at this point, was that he is nearly blind. He could see well enough to fish and that was it.
Off we go, floating our handicapped canoe down the river, stopping to rest now and then and thinking that mile was awfully long. There’s a faint signal on my cellphone so I get a call through but my sister can’t hear me so she hangs up. Second call, same thing. At this time, my mother figures it’s us wanting our ride so she sends my brother to the pickup point… not the right place.
We eventually see the cottage, about 50 feet straight up a cliff! :shocked: There’s a set of stairs but they’re pretty steep and we don’t have the strength to carry the canoe up there. I try the cellphone again, my mother answers and I tell her we’re not at the pickup point, but a couple of miles upriver at this cottage. She tells us to stay put and they’ll be there. My brother, without a cellphone, gets tired of waiting at the pickup spot so he finds a payphone and calls my mom, luckily, after I called, so she was able to give him directions to where we were. By this time, the flyfisherman catches up with us. We talked a bit and I told him he looked familiar. Sure enough, he was my grade 10 history teacher!
Great! We’re saved!
Well, we still have to drag that canoe up the stairs, although now we have my brother’s help. We carry the canoe and stuff a few hundred feet to the locked gate when the cottage owner arrives. The owner smirks when he finds out we hauled our stuff up the cliff. He said it was nice and flat a little ways further down the river, it would have been easier there. AAAArrrrrgggghhhh! To top everything, we get to my mom’s place where the family dinner had already started, and most of the food was gone!
Sorry, no pictures – never took the camera out of the drybag – good thing! My extra digital cards got wet, but I just let those dry out real well and I didn’t lose any of the pictures already on them.
Fish? Yeah, we got a couple of small brookies. Mom said they were real good!
Morals of the story:
- listen to your little alarms;
- never borrow a canoe from anyone, no matter how adamant they are that the thing doesn’t leak;
- never believe your cousins;
- always bring lunch, no matter how short you think the trip will be;
- always put your expensive stuff in a dry bag, including your cellphone;
- always listen to your little alarms;
- buy another kayak;
- did I mention to always listen to your little alarms?
- laugh about it when it's all over
