Discussion about Trips, Events, etc.

After meeting just outside Angus, they helped me unloading my canoe. When everyone arrived, Mary Bernadette and Gary organized the shuttle.
Luckily it was only very short.
We were with 9 canoes with 2 or more people in it and 8 Kayaks/solo canoes. We were there with 26 people. A very large group for a cloudy, drizzling day.
After decorating my canoe with orange flags, as it was in the Netherlands a national holiday, King's Birthday we took off.
Helping each other getting in the muddy river. A creek with lots of turns and lots of flooded area next to the river. Lots of birds we heard, but didn't see that many up close, beside the Red wing black bird.
at one point there was a split so we all waited to figure out which direction to go as Gary and Geri were scouting both sides out.
We turned left near the forest. Here the flooding was even bigger, and sometimes it was hard to find the river. Danny suggested to follow the junk.
After a short break in the water and having a quick snack the group moved on.
We saw a big Bald Eagle scouting the river out and moving from tree to tree, an excellent opportunity to get some amazing pictures. But the group fell further apart and we had to make sure that the people in the back didn't loose sight of the front part.
Going through the forest was an amazing experience, the water level was so high, that even the look out points for the hunters were on water level.
At one point we broke through the forest onto a field, it turned out to be a flooded corn field, the wind was strong here, and the water level was getting lower and lower and some boats got stranded.
We moved some of the kids into other boats to even out the weights, but it was still very hard.
At that point after contacting the leader with a message, we decided to go back to the forest and find the river.
It was an amazing river, unfortunately much longer then anticipated due to the high level of flooding, but that also gave us some amazing picturesque sights.
At the end it was really cool to see that although the water level was extremely high, that the water level had dropped already more then a meter.
We all made it safely to land and had a great time.
Thank you Mary Bernadette for organizing and looking after us.
and thanks to Gary James leading us.
and special thanks to Daniel Aufgang to find our way out following the river using his GPS
I had a great time
Emmy

The pictures below are from Franklin Cockshutt

This is a link to all my pictures

https://plus.google.com/photos/104477673238900710374/albums/60096558460…

Well we sure had an exciting day. Not our usual calm float down the river. The river was the highest I have ever paddled it and to top it off we had an obstacle course of sweepers. At least the weather cooperated except for some strong wind gusts in the afternoon. We had 11 boats and 22 paddlers with all boats and paddlers in good spirits/condition at the end despite some bumps and bruises and soggy clothes. This definitely was a tough paddle for novices and I apologize to those who were expecting something a bit tamer. It usually is!!

We put in at the Caledon Golf Course (with permission of course) and went down to Glen Williams. There was no rapid at the bridge at the golf course....normally a drop of several feet. However, you did have to duck as you canoed under it. All our canoe upsets were caused by being pinned against or trying to avoid sweepers. There were many narrow passages caused by trees down in the water particularly between Boston Mills Road and Cheltenham. There were also tricky openings between trees nearing Terra Cotta and down by the Sheridan Nursery. The final drop at the second bridge into Glen Williams was quite a big wave, which had to be done on the left side, because of a tree down blocking the right side (which would have been much smoother).

We finished the day with a pot luck dinner at the home of Janet Kuzniar where people had a chance to relive the exciting moments and get to know each other a bit better.

This year was our fourth Fall Hiking weekend and once again we had great fun. We had 13 hikers complete a soggy 16 km hike in the Kolapore Uplands on Saturday. We met a fellow WCA member in the Kolapore parking lot who was arriving to do some maintenance work on the trails and told us we were lucky to be missing hunting season which was to start in two days. Sunday saw much better weather and we did a shorter hike on the Bruce Trail in the Osler/Petun area. On Sunday we were able to have a quick lunch at the farmhouse (all the delicious leftovers from Saturday night) before heading home. We missed Rick, Mary, Bruce & Beth who were unable to come due to illness.

Latest Adventure in Agawa Canyon is up!
Very pic heavy.
http://www.myccr.com/phpbbforum/viewtopic.php?f=108&t=42127

Just posting the link is much easier than doing it again with all the pic links.

Jeff

At a WCA Board meeting earlier this year, we discussed the importance of growing our membership through attracting and conserving new members. It was recognized that many people who are new to paddling do not have paddling partners or even canoes when they first get involved in the sport. We felt that it was very important to make ourselves welcoming to new paddlers, and increase their opportunities to become active with us. Often outings organizers are contacted by such new members, who are anxious to get out on outings but lack the requisite partner or boat. The organizer will try to help the person out. If there is another would-be participant who also needs a partner or gear, the organizer will suggest they get together. However, that process acceses only a very limited pool of prospects. Plus it puts the onus on the organizer to be a matchmaker, which is a responsibility not everyone wants.

Consequently, we are exploring the idea of adding a subsection to the Outings section of this website called tentatively the Outings Partners Match Program.This would allow members hoping to team up with other potential participants the opportunity to advertise their need more widely. The member would fill in an electronic form that would include the outing name, and a full profile of what the person was looking for. For example, that Bill needs a canoe and stern partner to do the April 5 Black River trip. Submitting this would post the name and date of the outing under the Partner Match Program list. Other members interested in the outing and wanting to team up with another paddler could click on the entry and get the full details. Responders could reply to the person's email address or phone number,as preferred.

Once the date of the outing was past, the posting would be deleted, both to remove outdated material and to preserve the poster’s privacy.

This program is designed to increase accessibilty and participation in the WCA Outings Program. Members looking for partners for private trips, would continue to post on the Bulletin Board.

Such an enhancement to the website is a significant job, and our outside IT consultants who manage our website have quoted us a possible cost of $800. To be safe, let's work on the assumption it may cost us $1000.

To help us better determine if such an investment may be reasonable, assuming funds were available, we would appreciate your feedback on such an additon to the club's outings program.
Could you see yourself personally using this?
Do you think it would be widely used?
Do you see it as a signficant value-added benefit for members?
Would it increase our attractiveness to new members, and improve retention and participation level of current members?

Your thoughts on this would be very much appreciated, and will help us serve you better.

Thanks,
Bill Ness
WCA Outings Committee

See Fall Nastawgan page 13 for article on the Ashton family outing on the Grand River.

We had another wonderful weekend at the Madawaska Kanu Centre. I will discuss the whitewater events and post some pictures sent to me by Dave Robinson. Hopefully someone else can post on the flat-water and hiking events.

Friday night saw people arrive and share conversation around the fire. On Saturday following breakfast the whitewater gang set off to paddle the lower Madawaska. The weather was great and we had good water levels, which made for a fun day. We returned in time for sauna and snacks before a lovely supper. Before and during supper a DVD made by Matthew Eberly from a summer trip on the Chapleau River entertained us. Following supper we gathered to honour two recently deceased members - Jay Neilson (tribute by husband Frank) and Bob Bignell (tribute by Allan Jacobs). William Sleeth did an excellent presentation on the Moisie River, a trip he recently completed in Sept 2013. The next day, the whitewater gang paddled the middle Madawaska. This time the weather was not as cooperative but I think everyone still enjoyed the paddle despite being rather wet by the end of the run. Thanks to Jon and Dian (the organizers) and MKC for making our Fall meeting so much fun.

So far, there has been four wonderful day outing trips on the Lower Madawaska River located east of Quadeville in Renfrew County in central Ontario this year. I would hope that I will be able to continue to lead more of these trips in the upcoming years since there have been so enjoyable with lots of humour spraying around after each of these day outings. Some have capsized with entertainment including rare sincere jokes and stories that we never heard of. With our last one, we tried something different in order to save gas, "wear n' tear" and maybe time on our shuttle? Its so rare to see a regular vehicle with three boats on top with the highest loaded kayak at least eight feet above the ground as we looked like the Beverly Hillbillies. Well anyway, here`s a unique photo of three quarters of our group. I`m the minus one for taking this image. Posing are Erica Cresswell, Janet Kuzniar and Dave Tourchin. The missing one is myself (Andrew Craig). There is still one more posted day outing trip on the Lower Madawaska on Saturday, August 17th for this year.

Hi WCA members:

I am a Guelph Ontario resident and I have an interest in Aboriginal issues and the promotion of Aboriginal Culture and the "building of bridges" between our two worlds.

As part of this vision, myself and the Southern Ontario Aboriginal Diabetes Initiative (SOADI) and most recently, the Innu Integrated Diabetes Initiative (IIDI) in Labrador as well as Guelph Diabetes, are working toward forming a partnership to promote a program called PADDLE (Paddle Against Diabetes Display Love for Earth).
There are two components: one is to promote community paddles.
This aspect of PADDLE would be similar to walks or runs for diabetes or cancer etc.

The second is to raise awareness and to help out on a local level. This is what I would like to address at this time.

Last summer, I initiated my first PADDLE and canoed (solo) the Kattawagami River to James Bay and went over to Moose Factory. I managed to raise a small amount of money for the Weeneebayko Diabetes Unit in Moose Factory.
This summer, I am once again going solo and taking on the very remote Notakwanon River and Atlantic Ocean in northern Labrador. I will be attempting to raise money for the Innu of Labrador and the Natuashish Diabetes Health Unit. I am (with help of course), constructing a website for this PADDLE and for future PADDLE's.

I would gratefully request that you please take a look at the "still under construction" website:

paddlingagainstdiabetes.wordpress.com

I would ask that you consider possibly donating to this cause, through the Pay Pal Donation button. We are in the process of designing a T-shirt and every donation $25 or over will receive a T-shirt, acknowledging your support and the journey.
I am meeting again with my webmaster and we will be designing levels of donation packages.

I would also appreciate it if you could link me up in any relevant websites and please feel free to pass this on.

Thanks for your attention to this.

Any advice etc will be appreciated.

What a fantastic weekend. Thanks to Andrew for organizing it. Here's a link to a little slideshow I made of the weekend on Kayaking For Women dot com.

Emmy I'd love to see that video of our water fight (where I was unarmed!). I'll also post the video Mary made of you and Janet on the Mad.

Check out the photos: http://www.kayakingforwomen.com/blog/wca-weekend