The water still calls this icon

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Don Starkell with daughter, Sherri Starkell, recuperating in his home after being badly burned. (WAYNE.GLOWACKI@FREEPRESS.MB.CA)

Don Starkell is 78.

That seems impossible. When you hear Starkell's name you think of a tanned, fit vagabond grinning in a canoe. Starkell became a cultural icon when he paddled the Amazon with his sons. He cemented his image as an adventurer when he was stranded in the Northwest Passage during an ill-fated kayaking trip to the Arctic. The books about his journeys have been published in numerous languages. In some circles, he's a legend.

It's not surprising that part of each of Starkell's fingers is gone. He waves his hands when he talks; in farewell, he uses his elbow for a bump. He's got four toes gone, too, sacrificed to frostbite during the 1990 Arctic Ocean rescue.

He has used up all the lives allotted to a pair of cats.

But Starkell's hardest fight began six months ago when a spark from the stove he used to heat his house hit a sleeping bag he had wrapped around his feet. Before the night was done, most of his prized possessions were gone. Starkell was cruelly burned over his thighs and shins.

After the accident, he vowed he'd be back on the river in a matter of months. He wasn't, not this summer and maybe not in any summer to come.

"I wanted so bad to be back on the water this year but it would have been insanity," he says, stretched out on a Hide-A-Bed in his newly refinished living room. He rubs his legs to relieve the relentless itch of twisted bands of scar tissue.

"There's no way I'm going to be out on the water this year. I never realized those people with burns, how much it takes out of you. It's been the toughest battle of my life."

This setback, one that would have caused the average person to despair, has challenged Starkell.

"I can walk, just not far. But all you'd have to say to me is 'you can't walk five miles' and I'd do it. I know my body better than one in a thousand people does. All my life I've been extremely health-conscious. I didn't smoke and I didn't drink much. I think I smoked one cigar and it made me sick... "

He credits the dedication of his three adult children with keeping him strong and sane.

Yet the man who has paddled the equivalent of three times around the equator had to rethink his vitality. Last summer, he was on the river about 120 times. That's quite a feat in a five-month season. This year? It wasn't possible at all. He's a few steps slower. Most of that is the fire. Some of it is plain age.

"Last year wasn't bad for an old man," he laughs. He's a small man, made smaller by the 25 pounds he lost after the fire. The bushy beard people remember is replaced by scruffy stubble. His mind is sharp and, while he tends to take a story through several twists and turns and back again, you suspect that's probably always been the case.

Starkell talks in upper-case letters. His words to live by are Imagination, Respect and Reality. The latter two got him through an adolescence spent in foster care. His second foster home allowed him the chance to try the river. He lived with that family until he married.

Imagination? Well, that's what drove the adventures. But Reality fed the engine. He had always been a good saver, putting away 20 per cent of his salary when he was a sales rep at CPR, when he was a cashier and when he was an office boy. When it came time to paddle a dream, he had the cash. When he needed to spend $100,000 to repair his damaged house, he had that, too.

(Starkell cancelled his house insurance 10 or 15 years ago, convinced the company wasn't properly covering his valuables).

Stretched out on his living room bed, he's philosophical.

"It (the adventures) makes people look at me and think 'why can't I do that?' I've motivated a lot of people. Most people don't believe in themselves."

He doesn't want to sound big-headed. It's been a great ride. He just doesn't know what comes next.

"Inside my body I feel quite good. My energy level is low. But I can stand straight-legged and put my fists on the floor."

His daughter, Sherri Starkell, backs him up. If the senior stands on the stairs, she says, he can put those abbreviated hands one step down. That's how flexible he is.

There are some medical issues to get past and maybe a few concessions to age on their way. But Don Starkell has few regrets.

"I'm an oddball but in this world there are a lot of people who are afraid to be themselves," he says. "I was always myself."

And if you tell Don Starkell he'll never get on the water again, odds are he'd drag his scarred, chopped, aged self down to the river. He's a stubborn cuss, Don Starkell is, but he's more determined than most men you'll ever meet.

Golden years, be damned. You can't count Starkell out. Not yet. Not ever.

lindor.reynolds@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition September 17, 2010 A3