Meryl Grandy

Tobique Canoe Camp

The Toronto Reference Library has a huge collection of rare books in their archived stacks. While waiting around for some medical appointments, I quickly popped in and checked out a hard to find canoeing book now out of copyright - Camping and canoeing : what to take, how to travel, how to cook, where to go by James Edmund Jones (1903). It was actually published here in Toronto and features some grainy photos of the author's style of canoe tripping.

A particularly engaging photo is one of a canoe shelter camp on the banks of the Tobique River in New Brunswick. Poles rigged up with a tarp over the canoe hull provide a minimalist shelter with logs piled up in front for a reflector fire. The guide poses with his paddle on the right.