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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Starkell statue
It is a shame that while so many Winnipeggers put this city on the map, globally, the city is reticent to mark such legacies. Legendary paddler Don Starkell is among the many renowned deserving a marker at memorable sites. The city would do well to join in on the proposal by a small group hoping to see him commemorated.
Mr. Starkell, who died earlier this year, is best known for the paddle to the Amazon with his sons, Dana and Jeff, in 1980, in a canoe crafted by the late Winnipegger Bill Brigden, once Canada's best-known canoeist. The two-year trip to Belem, Brazil, was at times harrowing, and its length of 19,600 kilometres earned Don and Dana (Jeff bowed out in Mexico) a spot in the Guinness Book of Records in 1986. The book Paddle to the Amazon inspired people around the world and was followed by Paddle to the Arctic, a trip that saw Mr. Starkell rescued amid ice and slush and on the edge of death by helicopter near Tuktoyaktuk, N.W.T.
Frostbite took his fingers and some toes. Yet, indomitably, he paddled until shortly before his death. Don Starkell was a man of extremes; he did nothing in half measure and his reputation was almost as large as his life. Yet nowhere in Winnipeg is there a testament to this man whose spirit is imprinted on the paddling community here and far beyond.
He began his paddle to the Amazon near Bronx Place, on the banks of the Red River at Senior Citizen's Park. That would be a fitting place for a life-sized bronze of this man, carrying his canoe to the water's edge. But the long stretches of the Red were his second home; there is ample room for a marker. It is time to get it done, a start on recognizing those who left their marks.
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition June 15, 2012 A12
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