Wild Waters: Canoeing Canada's Wilderness Rivers

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

It is a pleasure reserved for the able and a daring few: canoeing on wild, white water in wilderness country. It can be dangerous, as many deaths and injuries have proved; itcan certainly be rewarding and exhilarating beyond measure, as these photo-essays on explorations of wild rivers by eight “seasoned canoeists and modern day adventures” attest. One of the rivers celebrated here is lost already, tamed and harnessed by humans: all rivers are at risk in this voracious age, and that fact is the chief concern of the editor and writers. “In destroying the rivers, we destroy an irreplaceable part of our heritage.” What could possibly be worth such damage?

Chapters on the Coppermine (James Raffan), the Hood (Bill Mason), the Bonnet Plume (Ned Franks), the South Nahanni (Wally Schaber), the Clearwater (Rob Henderson), the Missinaibi (Sara Harrison), the Kazan (David Pelly), the Mosie (Fred Gaskin), and the now-ruined Liard (Tom York) are an exciting introduction to a part of Canada’s wilderness heritage known only to an intrepid few. Each chapter is illustrated by full-page color photographs of exceptional beauty.