Canoeing king for more than 50 years

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Jonathan Berger on a canoe trip on a tributary of the Hayes River in northern Manitoba. He co-wrote a definitive river atlas. (SUPPLIED PHOTO)

Jonathan Berger, who is from Philadelphia, has been canoeing the rivers of what he calls the Little North -- from Lake Winnipeg to northern Quebec -- for over 50 years.

During that time, he has paddled for more than five years, if all those canoe trips were lined up consecutively.

Surely, in all that time canoeing uncharted rivers with rapids, cataracts and waterfalls, thousands of kilometres from civilization, he has encountered some mishaps and adventures and learned some difficult lessons.

Well, the last time he had a canoe tip was 1971. He has never had to be evacuated. He has had just two bears in his camp in all that time, and they ran away when he and fellow travellers banged pots and pans.

"I don't know what to tell you," Berger said on a recent stopover in Winnipeg. "I just don't take chances." That's probably the boring secret to how you keep paddling for months at a time every summer for 50 years.

Berger is one of Canada's most ardent river paddlers, even though he was born and raised and lives in Philadelphia. In 2007, he co-wrote the monumental book The Canoe Atlas of the Little North (Boston Mills Press), with Thomas Terry of Sioux Lookout, Ont.

The Little North covers about 10 per cent of Canada, encompassing an area north of Lake Superior, east of Lake Winnipeg, west of James Bay and south of Hudson Bay. The atlas includes 50 large-scale canoe maps with accompanying text. It retails for $95 at McNally Robinson. He was in Winnipeg recently to discuss another potential book with publisher Heartland & Associates.

In addition to co-writing the text, Berger provided sketches of his trips. Manitoba artist Réal Bérard, who is responsible for a series of much-treasured provincial canoe-route maps, has called the sketches "very trapperly." Berger likes that. "Bérard's work is inspirational to me," he said.

In Manitoba, Berger's dossier of rivers paddled includes the Bloodvein, Berens, Pigeon, Throat, Manigotagan and Poplar rivers, and parts of the Hayes and Churchill rivers. And when Berger says he has paddled a river, he means he's paddled it from end to end. He started the Berens and Bloodvein deep in northwestern Ontario.

He paddles virtually every river twice. "The first time, you just go until you get to the end," he said. "The second time... the element of the unknown is gone. The fear is gone and you're more relaxed and enjoy it more."

Berger and with his first wife would take their young children along. They even took an au pair along to look after the children.

He paddled his first Little North river when he was 12. His mother, who grew to love canoeing as a girl at an Algonquin Park camp, sent him to a summer camp at Lake Temagami in northeastern Ontario. That was 1958. They would go on regular canoe trips, stretching longer each time. He cried almost every day the first two summers but by the end of the third summer, he didn't want to go home. He became a camp leader and has been canoeing the rivers ever since.

He has had great wildlife sightings. He once saw a lynx attack a moose. He's seen gigantic sturgeon. He has passed many bears drinking at a river's edge and occasionally wolves.

From 1970-80, he would typically spend two months on Canadian rivers each summer. After his children were born, he scaled back to a month per summer. He has been on a trip 64 days long in the far north of Quebec, and only saw people on two of those days.

He can't name a favourite river. "You're just lucky to be out there, wherever it is," he said, although he adds the Winisk River in northern Ontario "is mind-blowing."

Lake Winnipeg, he says, "is so treacherous. It can change in a moment's notice."

His choice of canoe is a Blue Steel made by Nova Craft in London, Ont. These days, he carries a satellite phone and a GPS spot tracker to signal his locations. He was friends with the late Manitoba long-distance kayaker Victoria Jason. "She was like magic to be with," he said.

Berger, who has a PhD in ecology and environmental planning, taught at university until 1985, and then owned a business in geographic information systems for environmental planning. He's now an information-technology director of a major litigation firm.

"It depends what you want to do. You make sacrifices," he said about dedicating so much time to canoe-trekking. That includes sacrifices both monetary and in terms of professional advancement, he said.

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition August 3, 2012 A6