Nipissing District

By paddle: 214km; By air: 189km.

We paddled under the railway bridge at Mattawa, leaving our cheating days behind us, and turned left into the Mattawa River. After the expanse of the Ottawa River, the intimacy of the Mattawa is comforting—stretches of narrow river, densely lined by predominantly pine trees, interspersed with small lakes and punctuated with portages. This is how we thought all Canadian rivers would look.

The Mattawa River, Lake Nipissing and the French River provide a waterway "bridge" linking the Ottawa River and Lake Huron over the highlands in-between. Though many portages are required to ascend the Mattawa, they aren't as daunting as you may think—they are mostly short, well trodden and signposted (literally)—a refreshing change from the "bushwhacking" you may have experienced on the Ottawa if, like us, you occasionally lost the trail. There are two exceptions. The lichen-covered, rounded boulders that pave the Portage des Roches (and gave it its name) become slippery ankle-breakers when wet, and the Portage de Talon, which climbs steeply over a rocky mound overlooking the Talon Falls, could be treacherous if you lost your footing, though there is a small path which skirts behind the rocky mound, avoiding the precipitous dangers.

On the historic fur trade route from Montréal to the Athabasca region, there were three big portages. The first was between Dugas Bay on Trout Lake, at the top of the Mattawa River, and Lake Nipissing. Actually, it was a series of smaller portages linking together barely canoeable creeks and ponds and the La Vase River, collectively called La Vase Portages or The Mud Portages. We found instructions, maps and GPS coordinates on the internet explaining how to follow the historic route, but trails that were clearly marked on these maps just weren't there and after trying to hack our way through the scratching bush, five hours after starting the portage, we decided to retreat. A construction company owner who gave us a six kilometre lift into North Bay pointed to a lake on one of our maps and said "you can't canoe on that any more—we filled it last year, quarrying stone for a new section of highway." Hopefully he was wrong, and we just missed the trail.

Lake Nipissing is the first large body of open water on the route and exercises those skills that you need for all open water, primarily cautious judgement. It has a reputation for unpredictability and, true to form, we experienced strong wind, torrential rain, blinding sun and gentle calm in the two days we spent on the lake (it would have been one had it not been for the wind and rain!) But it's not a long way from North Bay to the lake exit, even if you circle around the southern shore.

Just saying the words The French River in front of a knowledgeable canoer (and there are a great many of those in Canada) usually brings to their faces a wistfully nostalgic look of summer days gone by spent canoeing with friends or loved ones, and even if they haven't canoed down it, they probably know someone who has. It is a popular canoeing river, especially with beginner groups, and seems to have a little of everything that canoers enjoy: plentiful rapids, most of which can be run by skilled paddlers (but easy portages for the rest of us); long and straight flat sections for gentle current-assisted summer cruising; good camp sites, except near the bottom; some open lake areas for variety; a small waterfall in a modest canyon; strong historical associations; and the jewel in the French River crown—the voyageur channel. The Western Channel of the French River breaks into many smaller channels as it flows over one last ledge before entering Georgian Bay. The most direct channel, reputed to have been the one used by voyageurs, with its steep, smooth, convexly rounded stone slab banks, seeps around small islands, flows over miniature rapids, and gushes through chutes, most too narrow for a canoe. It has the same aesthetic quality as a bonsai tree. There is one long and narrow, but canoeable chute, runable even by modestly skilled paddlers, that leads, before you know it, into the anticlimactic delta with Georgian Bay. You've passed through paradise before you knew you were there.

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