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Fraser Baker to suggest any additional links or to correct entries.
... and to any others who have felt the thrill of the back country and still long to explore what might lie just around the next bend. I know of no better way of doing just that, than having a fine canoe under one's seat, a sleek paddle in one's hand, a little bug dope in your pocket, and a harmonica near the top of your pack.
Book dedication from Kenai Canoe Trails by Daniel Quick
To canoe is to be moved.
Doug E. Bell
It is difficult to find in life any event which so effectually condenses nervous sensation into the shortest possible space of time as does the work of shooting, or running an immense rapid. There is no toil, no heart-breaking labour about it, but as much coolness, dexterity, and skill as a man can throw into the work of hand, eye, and head; knowledge of when to strike and how to do it; knowledge of water and rock, and of the one hundred combinations which rock and water can assume- for these two things, rock and water, taken in the abstract, fail as completely to convey any idea of their fierce embracings in the throes of a rapid as the fire burning quietly in a drawing-room fireplace fails to convey the idea of a house wrapped and sheeted in flames.
Sir William Francis Butler,
(key figure with the North West Mounted Police)
from The Great Lone Land: A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America (1872)
Love many, trust few, and always paddle your own canoe.
Marc W. McCord