Scoutmaster Podcast 280

I'm Tim Jakes and I am Scoutmaster with Troop 93 in Westchester, Pennsylvania. This edition of Scoutmaster Podcast is sponsored by backers like me And now the old Scoutmaster. Hey, everybody, this is Clarke Green.

It's summertime and so our next few podcasts feature on-court presentations from our archives. And this week I'm excited to play an interview with one of my absolute favorite outdoor authors, Kevin Callan, who is called the Happy Camper. Kevin is a Canadian author, canoeist and just a marvelous guy who's written a whole slew of books about camping and guidebooks to the different parks in Canada, And I always enjoy getting a chance to talk with him. As always, this podcast is only possible because of the generosity of the folks who become ScoutmasterCGcom backers.

Go to ScoutmasterCGcom, click the support link at the top of the page. You'll find out how you can become a ScoutmasterCGcom backer. We'll be back with our regular schedule of podcasts in a few weeks.

Until then, let's get started, shall we? Today I'm talking with Canadian author and canoe enthusiast, Kevin Callan, who is also known as the Happy Camper, And we've seen some of his videos on the Scoutmaster blog before.

How are you doing Kevin? How are you doing Clark?

I am happy, Are you happy? I am ecstatic because I'm talking to you. Your book about Algonquin Provincial Park and canoe routes in Algonquin was really instrumental into us building a program where we bring our Scouts up that way.

Well, that's great. What do you think of Algonquin? It's an amazingly different place. I'm convinced you could go paddling in Algonquin and around there for 20 years and never see the same water twice. Oh, definitely, There's lots of places to go. That's a nice thing about the park.

I mean, I only live an hour away from it, so that's the nicest thing too is I can just head up and paddle. My favorite place is the Nipissing River, the northwest corner, And it's just one of those tranquil little trope rivers that's hard to get to. It's got old growth forest with old growth pine hang. It's just a beautiful place Because it's like a transition zone. The neat thing about Algonquin is that the forest ecology that's around that area continues south through southern Ontario or southeastern Ontario, then right into the main area.

You know the United States, And it's this sort of corridor that's a lot of wildlife travel. They figured out the last few years they've tracked the wolves and everything else and moose that travel this corridor all the time. It's kind of neat that we actually have that.

And now let me get this right. Is it portaging or portaging?

Well, it depends on where you live. It doesn't matter how you say it: Everybody hates one. Bill Mason said it best when he said: people who actually like portaging is either a liar or a crazy.

And I got to say, though, the only thing that I think is left, though, that keeps wilderness wild, is a long portage, Because, you think about it, if you go three miles with a canoe in your head and a pack on your shoulder and stuff, what you're going to get at the end is going to be worth it. I don't care how people get into the woods. To be quite honest, I'm not a purist, But I know a lot of people that drive the ATVs and stuff, And I'll go up to him. I said: look, you always get on my case that you go into this lake, and it's not what it was a few years back.

The reason why is it's too easy for you to get in here now, And as soon as it's easy to get in, then the wilderness concept is gone and the trout are gone, And if you actually put a canoe on your back and portage for three miles, then what you're going to get is going to be worth it. And I think they're not getting that. They all want everything easy for them And the nice thing is if you meet someone at the end of the portage- a really long portage- if you actually do see someone, they're going to be just like you because they actually went through the same thing that you just did.

Well, and we should explain for the non canoe heads out there: a portage or a portage where you take all your gear, But basically you're backpacking with a canoe. Yeah, In fact, my wife loves backpacking.

We always do a backpacking trip every year, But I always curse at her: I go, you know, this is the longest portage ever. You know all you're doing is walking with a pack on. Yeah, There's no paddling involved at all. Come on.

No, what's with that? There's a lot more canoeing in Ontario, isn't there?

Oh, yeah, We've got so many bodies of water that really the canoe was invented for the landscape. Some say the landscape was invented for the canoe, But it opened up Historically. It opened up Canada.

We should come back in Ontario. And you know, Americans got the, I guess, the Chuck wagon and the cowboy hat, whatever.

Got to the west We had the Voyager canoe, So for a little bit of driving, if you're coming from New York State, Ohio, Pennsylvania or any of the New England states, you can be in Canoe Paradise pretty quickly up over the line in Ontario. Well yeah, if you're going from that area, you've got not only a Gonkwin, you've got Tomoghame, which is actually just an hour or maybe a couple hours north of Gonkwin. It's a vast wilderness in endless rivers.

The Sturgeon River is one of my favorite which is, oh you know, for three days it's almost continual class three or class one, class two rapids And you won't see anybody. You were talking a little bit about the Upper Ottawa. Yeah, the Upper Ottawa, It was kind of a miracle.

My wife- actually my wife- has strict rules when we go on her holiday canoe trips. I'm not allowed to work and ride about them.

My daughter was turning six years old and she said: I want to go on another canoe trip for seven days. I want to go somewhere we haven't gone before, which is not that easy, because I go everywhere and wanted to be an easy trip and not a lot of portage.

Well, the Ottawa River. I never thought it would be the way it is, But up from Mattawa, which is where the Champlain Park is.

We started there and we paddled down to what's called Driftwood Provincial Park, which was halfway between Tomogamy and the city of Ottawa, And you could do it in five days, but we did it in seven. And there's no rapids, It's just a strong current.

There's one town halfway through and then we got supplies there, But we saw 12 motor boats and that's it in seven days. And we saw one other canoe group And this is the Ottawa River, Like everybody in Canada knows, the Ottawa River.

So on one side you had the Laurentian Mountains and the other side you had the Ontario Bush, And it was one of those things where you think you've seen it all and then you realize that a lot of people ask me what's my favorite canoe trip, And it's always. It sounds bizarre, but my answer is the next one. I'm going on Because it really doesn't matter where you're going. It matters that you go right.

I think you're absolutely right. You just have to go. There's just some marvelous opportunities for people to take a group of scouts up there and not to spend a whole lot of money, And you can have a marvelous trip.

I guess you could probably throw a dart at a map of Ontario and just go just about anywhere, couldn't you? Oh yeah, Then that's.

The nice thing about it too is that there's so many other places outside of parks you can paddle, Even in Northwestern Ontario. A couple of years ago we went down what's called the Cupca River and it's south of Wabakimi.

Now you can get to Wabakimi just by train From the Toronto train station, for everything, But they drop you off. But we went down the Cupca and it was one of those rivers that not many people knew. In fact it was. Cliff Jegas, in an American nation, told me about it And we went down that river and we paddled to Nipagon, the North Shore, Nipagon, which is an oasis.

It's just so beautiful. It's one of the inland sort of great lakes And we spent five weeks paddling and we weren't in the far north, We didn't spend a fortune. In fact it didn't cost as much at all to get to do that river.

So there's lots of places to go and it's pretty cheap. And any place that there's good paddling, usually there's going to be an outfitter nearby- Yeah, there usually is, And there's a lot of information nowadays on the computer obviously to where to get the information and if it's a good outfitter and that sort of thing.

But most likely in areas like really well used areas like the Gonquin Tomography, even Wabakimi or Quiddicoke, there's at least a half a dozen outfitters that are going to help you out. And I don't own a canoe. I do have a lovely paddle, which is kind of like having a leash without a puppy.

Sometimes I think a paddle is more important to you than the canoe. You think about it. You paddle 10,000 strokes a day on a good paddle day.

So, yeah, I'd sleep with my paddle if I were you. It is really pretty simple to get in with an outfitter and to find your way up there.

You know you're working on a book right now about some of the places to go canoeing in Ontario. Yeah, what I did is I wrote eight guide books throughout my years on where to go paddling and come back in Ontario And then my publisher said: can you do the best of like the Beatles White Album or whatever it's called, I don't know. But I said, yeah, I can do that, but I'd like to add new ones as well.

And what they did is that I chose 40 of my favorite roots in Ontario and then 10 new ones And that'll be out in March And it's called Terrell's Best Canoe Roots. Yeah, But there's some new ones, though that really might interest you because it's not really being written about before.

And there's an old canoe route in the south end of Tomoghani. There's a place called Chinakuchi.

Now there's a place near Chinakuchi. This is just north of a gulking park that is called Kalarni Park.

Now that is the most scenic place in Ontario, Kalarni Park. It's got quartzite mountains, It's got turquoise water. But there's a place near there, near Sudbury, called Chinakuchi, And it's a south access to Tomoghani. But what I did is I went up to Chinakuchi.

Now they created that into a new park back in 1999 but they haven't done much to it, So there's no reservation period. Basically nobody really goes there. And what I did is I went up through Chinakuchi River but then I hooked up into Tomoghani.

So I went through a bunch of Tomoghani lakes and then I hooked up to the Sturgeon River and I went down the Sturgeon River back to Chinakuchi And it's six, maybe eight days, But it's one of the best canoe trips I can ever imagine, because you've got a little bit about everything. You've got amazing scenery like the quartzite mountains, You've got a river that actually is doable. It's not a dangerous river, It's a very doable river, but it's a lot of fun.

And then you've got the big, huge white pine and Tomoghani. You get a palace through And it's fantastic. And just make sure you go with a good person. Social dynamics is more important on a trip. You guys know that more than I do.

On the trip you just described with somebody you didn't get along with very well and you wouldn't really be looking at the quartzite mountains all that much would you. Because here's the thing: when you're in the wilderness, you are who you are. There's no faking your character, There's no facade. And if you don't like your boss, for example, the best thing to do is take them on a canoe trip in May, when the bugs are up, Because they can't fake themselves. And I love that. I love that about wilderness.

I am who I am out there, You know. But you back really bad.

You have to sort of immerse yourself with it and become you know, in one sense living out there. So the people you're with, even if you go canoe-tripping with someone and you never meet them for 40 years, you finally meet them. You're still friends. Yeah, No, you're right about that That's for sure, Is that route that you were talking about, one of those old routes that you've opened back up. It's an old canoe route called the Nostagwan route. There's another one that I did this year up by Biscoe Tacing, up by Mississaugee River.

It's sort of central north-central Ontario, north of Lake Huron And a couple places up there, but one was Grey Owl. He traveled that area a lot when he was Archie Blaney, when he was a ranger, And he talks a lot about the Mississaugee River, which is a beautiful river to do.

And I went to other places and I went to talk to a lot of natives up there And they said, well, there was an old canoe route that was south of Biscoe Tacing, where he lived, And it links up to what's called the Spanish River. And so I did a 12-day solo canoe loop through there and retraced it and found the old cabin that was kind of neat that I was told that he stayed at and, sure enough, the little scribblings inside. Archie Blaney.

Now, we had huge problems here this summer. I'm not sure if you guys have, but we had no water. There was no water at all And the weirdest thing is because of that I had to change my route all the time. Places I thought I could go, I couldn't, which was kind of neat because I found other places that I would never have found. And I found this old lodge that was built in 1939 for the prince that was supposed to arrive And the locals had built it.

Oh yeah, I read, you did an article about that, didn't you? Yeah, yeah, The neat thing about it is that there's a story about it, whether it's true or not, but I guess the locals say that he got off the train and the black flies were so bad he went back on the train And they were so mad that he did that. They burned the lodge around. There's nothing left of it except an old chimney and I actually found that chimney.

So that was kind of neat. I read that article- you reminded me of it and it was a cool article.

And then it gets to the day, new mom, where this royal gets off the train and is besieged by black flies, And I thought there is, if somebody doesn't know Canada, there's like a perfect Canada story right there. Oh, yeah, yeah, Because you got there. And oh yeah, and I've experienced the first year we went up, we went up in June and we learned that going in August was a lot smarter, because most of the black flies and giant biting flies and the mosquito airplanes were pretty much all gone in August. Yeah, it's true, If I was going to take any time off, August, September, it's the best time to go. I go out in June a lot, which is just insane, but I go out in June because I usually have lots of time in June but also nobody in the right mind would be able to do it. I have you.

I mean, these things can carry a person away. They're amazing. You think of what the black fly does to you. If you try to symbolize what Northern Wilderness is in the springtime black fly, you don't feel it by you.

It slices your skin, so it doesn't really hurt you at first, And then it pulls your skin apart with stylists and then it slices you again and keeps slicing until it gets to the capillaries And then it starts lapping the blood up. And it needs to lap blood up for at least three minutes to get enough blood protein for it to have its eggs.

And then, when it's done, it pulls its head up, but during that time it spits salivating you so your blood doesn't clot, Right. So if you actually hit the black fly while it's hitting you or biting you, then you'll push all the salivating you and that's what irritates the wound And you think a million of those are doing that to you at one time. That's Northern Ontario.

You know way too much about that, Kevin. I'm going to be happy in my ignorance and come up in August. That's true.

So you do a fair amount of talking to scout groups. Yeah, I've always have. I mean, I was a scout and I also. I have a lot of background in outdoor education. Back in the 80s That's what I did and it's almost like payback time and throughout the years I've always sort of volunteered to go to scout groups and give a talk. It's usually a humorous talk.

It's usually like sort of a burst of enthusiasm. This is why you guys should go out and this is why you did go out and that sort of thing. Tell me a little bit more about Grey Owl. I don't know that. A lot of people know exactly who that was and what the story is there.

Well, I think a lot of scouts, scout leaders, would actually look into this character and just find it very intriguing for many reasons. He was an Englishman that really didn't like where he lived, Didn't like his home, didn't like his family. I'm not sure if he didn't like his family. He just he was a dreamer and he wanted to become a woodsman and become a native in Canada.

So he moved over to Canada- and this is back in the gosh 30s, 40s- and so what he did is he disguised himself up as a native and the natives knew that he wasn't a true native, but they just ignored him. They said, well, if he wants to be a native, he can be a native.

But then he became a writer and then he became a conservationist and he was on conservationists that saved the beaver from extinction. Actually, He used to have a job trapping and then one day he decided not to trap and then he wrote books about it and then he did films on his pet beavers that lived inside his cabin down in a.

You know, he was an Alberta in a cabin and he became a legend. But the thing is, the day after he died, then the newspaper reports came out and said: oh, by the way, he wasn't a native, he was Archie Blaine.

And you would think at that time because of that, people would say, okay, well, now the Wizard of Oz is now showing itself that sort of thing. How dare he do that? And he shunned, but he was still celebrated and he's still celebrated to this day. People are flying with the idea that he disguised himself.

Well, now I know who to thank. Every time I have to pull a canoe over a beaver dam at, I'll be thinking about him. I got to tell you a good story.

I paddled in the United States once- oh, no more than once, but I do remember going to Maine in the Outer Randax and it's a busy place and I was lining up to go paddling but I went to this woman ahead of me and I said: so what's so special about this river? Everybody seems to be lining up to do this route.

And she said: well, this is really good because it's got those things they have in Canada. What do they call? They make mounds of sticks. I went beavers. Yeah, yeah, I went beavers dams on this river. I went- you're kidding me- and I packed up my stuff and went back to a gondola.

You mentioned bears. I think that there are some people below the parallel who think Canada is just crawling with them and it's a clear and present danger. What can you tell us about bears up in Ontario and environments.

Well, we have the black bear here, we don't have the grizzly. It's not really an issue if you look at it statistically. Since 1936 there's only been seven deaths from a predatious black bear in Ontario.

Actually, I think even Canada. Actually there's so much more of a chance of you getting hit on the highway by a car than a black bear attacking you.

The only problem is I'm very bare phobic, so I'm not going to be going and telling you that actually it's safe. You're okay, don't worry about it, because I'm still just so bare phobic as well. But I like the idea that bears scare people out there. It keeps a little bit more willingness out there. Just like the black flies, it keeps people on their toes. If you see a bear, it's a nice experience.

It's a nice wildlife sighting and using the bear as soon as it sees you will be gone in a second. If you spent your life not going into the willingness because you're afraid of bears and then you got hit on the highway, it's not worth it. I'd rather actually spend my life in the willingness, maybe one day if it ever happens and I get killed by a bear in the woods.

Well, it's better than getting killed on the highway and it's so much easier for the survivors because there's not much to deal with once you're gone. That's true, I mean, it's quite funny too. My wife always tells me to never tell these stories.

But predacious bears, how they kill you is they take your head off because they think you're a moose cat, and so the studies show that even the people that got killed by these bears didn't feel too much okay. So I'm sure we've made everybody very comfortable about going into the woods up there. When I was in a gunk one at one point I was talking to one of the rangers there. Some of those guys go for several years between bear sightings and they're in the park every day. Yeah, it's funny. I see bears a lot.

A kree elder once told me that the bear was my spirit and I said: can I change that? Is there any way I could do that?

But I was wondering why the bears always came into my camp and he said: well, the bears know you're afraid of them and that's why they're harassing you more. And he taught me a lot. But then the bear story I had this summer in tomography. It's a classic family adventure. Last morning we woke up and we're on an island and thankfully I woke up early and I see this bear swimming to the island.

And what that meant to me was this bear had got food on that island before, so it's coming to this island for food from our stuff. And I'm waking everybody up and it's okay.

We have a bear encounter here, so everybody get prepared. And my buddy was there and he goes.

Well, my kids haven't seen a bear yet. So could you wait before you scare it off?

Could you wait for a while? I went, you're kidding me, right?

I go, I want to scare this bear. He goes.

Well, wait until it gets halfway. And I said, look, once it's halfway, that's it. I'm going to start shooting the bear bangers and stuff.

Okay, okay, that's an agreement. So we get all the kids and they're watching the bear swim towards us and everybody's excited.

And then so the bears got halfway and I said, okay, I'm doing the call, so I get the bear bangers shoot it over nothing, the bear just keeps swimming towards us. And I went: oh, this is not good.

And then I shoot the flare and the bear just looks at me. Well, then I ended up getting my paddle and started bashing the paddle against the rock and that worked. The noise of that scared the bear off.

But I broke the paddle and the guy that was with he made me that paddle and he looks at me and goes: why did you do that? And my daughter, right on cue, goes: dad, it was my birthday and that bear was coming to my party.

How dare you scare him away? So obviously I was the only one afraid of this bear, so I thought it saved your life, but your book's a happy camper. Tell me a little bit about it. That was a enjoyable book. Um, uh, years ago I wrote a book called the ways the wild.

I think it was called- I'm not sure we do it into a how to book- and I ended up doing a little bit more sense of humor to it. It could. It sold like 10,000 copies in the first month or something.

Um, so we- which in Canada, by the way, is huge like that, because the best seller in Canada is 5,000 copies- and, um, I was a little nervous about it because it's it's how to. So I'm telling people what to do, but everybody says I'm a professional. But I'm not. I, I call myself a person that just loves camping, loves going out the outdoors, and I learn from experiences.

So the book was based on my experiences. So it was basically this: is you know what not to do?

Because I did it and then I after that they want me to do a happy camper too, and I kind of didn't want to do a happy camper too. So I did another book called willingness pleasures, and it was more about why we go and why we should keep going, and I really enjoyed writing that book. Um, that sort of uh changed into a thing I'm doing the less. Last year uh called the happy camper online show and it's it's, um, it's at kevincalincom and it's basically just a bunch of videos- how to videos- but it's all done with humor and just uh, just yesterday we launched the newest one was all how to choose a good camp and it's just silliness.

We have a green screen behind me and the weather's changing every time I change my hat, and but it's a lot of fun. Now, scouts actually.

Um, they just contacted us and we- we just gave them the okay to put all the, all the videos they want on their what on their own website. So, and they are really great. Um, I've put a couple of them on the Scoutmaster blog and I've gotten really favorable comments about them. But they are they. They're hilarious. I really do enjoy those.

And you've got uh four uh water walker film awards to your credit. Yeah, water walker is a um a thing they have in Canada. It's all across the world actually, but it's um based in Ottawa and it's uh, people from all over put their canoe films in for um awards and I I want a few of them.

There's so many places in the bush. You know.

There's so many stories up there. How, how did we find the film? A YouTube site called Callan Canoe, Callan Canoe. You go to Callan Canoe. There's like endless videos. Uh, I always take a camera with me when I go on trips and I do a lot of solo trips and I just have the camera in the canoe.

Yeah, the Bisco tasting route I did this year is all online on that site too. If I'm headed up to Ontario and I want to get like a taste of some of the canoe routes and some of the things up there, is there a good online resource for that?

It's uh, explore dash mag MAG and it's explore magazine that I write for, but I have a blog on there and what I do a lot on that blog is I write a lot of my trip journal notes, so, um, so scouts would actually get a lot of that and, uh, even a one I. One trip I did a couple years ago was up by LA Lake where we reopened a canoe trip that closed in the 1980s and, uh, rainbow trout were stocked there in 1942 and they self-sustained themselves. Oh, and we got into these lakes, were catching 10 pound rainbows that had never seen a fly. I, I'm hosting a contest, um, that it's called the classic Canadian adventure.

But if you win- and anybody in North America can win- you and your three buddies, um, go seven days with me and we go to Ottawa, we go whitewater rafting, whitewater kayaking, we go flying through Canyon in the balkan park with the M&R turboplane, um, so, yeah, we go to bonus share park and all these other things. So it's kind of a neat contest and, um, so some scouts might be interested in that. Let me make sure I understood exactly.

Where do we find the contest? But if you just go to my blog, there's, um, there's a right up on it with a video.

Hey, I'd love to do this again sometime, no problem, and actually, uh, we, we can even um, if I'm in a balkan park on a canoe trip, I can actually do the same, this same thing. Oh, no, kidding. Yeah, it's called a begin. It's a satellite system that a company let us let us borrow. Wow, I do a lot of uh TV stuff like that or radio stuff around.

I'm actually uh live in the park and they even do it by way of video so you can actually see me in the park. Are you going out at all in the winter? Yeah, in January. I'm doing a winter trip in the end of January in a, in a gawk one actually. Oh, that would be really cool. Yeah, it'd be fun.

So, Kevin, thanks so much for joining us. Uh, had a had a great time talking to you. Hope we interested some people into uh checking out canoeing up there in Ontario. Oh, no problem, Clark, thanks a lot and I hope to see you out there on the portage or portage, or portage or whatever you want to call it.

How about this, how about this? Next time I'm up there, I'm going to find you and we'll head over to um. Tim Hortons cup of coffee, maple dip- I owe you one. That sounds good. Thanks very much, music.