Circling 1,900 km of waterways in a months-long solo SUP journey exploring the benefits of ‘blue space.’ Words :: Dan Rubinstein // photos :: Kath Fudurich.
On my map, it looked like a fairly simple two-day passage. A 50 km paddle northwest from St. Catharines to Burlington on the first day and the same distance northeast from Burlington to Toronto the next. The wind forecast was decent: blowing lightly from the southeast for the first leg and a little stronger from the southwest for part two.
I’d been warned repeatedly about Lake Ontario. But it was early August, the humidity and storms of July had abated and it seemed I’d be more or less pushed where I wanted to go. Setting off from a St. Catharines beach on gentle swells just after dawn, I could see the tempting silhouette of the Toronto skyline due north, but I knew that if I stuck to the plan and edged around the tip of the lake, very little could go wrong.
I was feeling confident because I was already three-quarters of the way through a long paddleboarding journey, navigating a circular route from my home in Ottawa via Montreal, New York City and Toronto. Setting out in June, I’d followed the Ottawa and St. Lawrence Rivers and Lachine Canal into downtown Montreal; the Richelieu River, Lake Champlain, Champlain Canal and Hudson River to Lower Manhattan; plus a couple of outings in the choppy ferry-and-tour-boat tumult of New York Harbour. After lugging my inflatable SUP and three drybags by bus up to Albany, I’d paddled more than 500 km west along the Erie Canal to Buffalo, then a fast, current-assisted run down the Niagara River back to Canada, where I pulled off the water above the falls and was picked up by friends who dropped me off at Lake Ontario this morning. (The final stretch would trace the north coast of Lake Ontario to Kingston and then up the Rideau Canal to Ottawa.)
My expedition was more journalistic than adventuresome. I wanted to immerse myself in blue space—the aquatic equivalent of green space—and explore its ability to boost our mental and physical health as well as our sense of stewardship toward the natural world. I had arranged interviews with dozens of people along the route, from fellow paddlers and freshwater researchers to environmental activists and non-profit leaders dedicated to carving out access to rivers and lakes for people from marginalized communities. These conversations will inform a non-fiction book I’m writing about our collective relationship with water—but just as importantly, the people I met provided crucial support.
Former Olympic sprint canoeist turned SUP racer and coach Tamás Buday Jr. joined me at a lock station west of Montreal, and recommended that I camp on nearby Dowker Island—a tiny, uninhabited patch of rock and trees in the St. Lawrence with a perfect tenting spot facing the twinkling lights of the city.
These conversations will inform a non-fiction book I’m writing about our collective relationship with water—but just as importantly, the people I met provided crucial support.
Lisa Cline, the executive director of the Hudson River Maritime Museum in Kingston, NY, inspired me by explaining how the museum had broadened its mandate from historical preservation to include ecological awareness and social justice—then she drove me to a supermarket so I could restock on peanut butter and instant oatmeal and let me sleep in their air-conditioned boat-building school on a sweltering July night.
A few weeks later in Buffalo, I spent a morning with Joe Stahlman, a member of the Tuscarora tribe (one of the six nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy). Stahlman is a consultant on a project that’s building a replica of the first boat to transit the Erie Canal in 1825, with plans to revisit that voyage in 2025. The original boat was called the Seneca Chief, which raises troubling questions about celebrating a feat of colonial engineering and the attempted erasure of Indigenous peoples whose traditional territories the canal plowed through. Yet while Stahlman feels everybody should understand what their forebears did, he’s more interested in looking ahead. “We’re talking about what’s next, about doing something beyond the bicentennial,” he told me. “We have to find a new purpose for the Erie Canal. We need to help it grow in different ways.”
The work and words of Stahlman and others put my trip in perspective. Sure, I covered more than 65 km some days and paddled for 14 hours a few times, but I was navigating the densely populated heart of North America. My biggest challenge was attempting to look (and smell) somewhat presentable when I stumbled away from the water and into a small-town restaurant. Everywhere I paddled, the kindness of strangers mitigated the risks I faced: They gave me food and water and encouragement and love and hugs and restored in me the belief that when we unplug and drift into one another’s spheres, there is an opportunity for connection across lines that typically divide us.
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The octogenarian owner of a marina near the bottom of Lake Champlain offered me the use of her car, unprompted, so I could drive into town for supplies. Patricia Finnerty, a member of the Beacon Sloop Club—an organization founded by folk singer Pete Seeger that offers free evening sails on the Hudson River—let me crash in her spare room for a couple of rainy nights. And after witnessing a drug deal and getting some hostile glares at the scrubby downtown landing of the small city of Albion, NY, a local woman phoned her brother, who let me camp in his backyard on the other side of the canal for the night. Why were these strangers so generous? The response, when I asked, was usually the same: “I’d like to think that somebody else would do this for me.”
When I departed St. Catharines, cumulative fatigue was my main concern. Then the wind picked up, shifting to a direct easterly, which meant the waves had nearly all of Lake Ontario’s 300 km fetch to develop. Within a couple of hours, they were three, then four and then five feet.
Staying far enough from shoreline to avoid getting slammed into the rocks, I paddled hard on my left side for eight hours. For the first time since leaving home, I dropped to my knees frequently for extra stability but still fell off half a dozen times. Whether standing or kneeling, I had to focus on each wave as it crested, digging in with my paddle to keep the board’s nose pointed in the right direction. By late afternoon I had made nearly 35 km and was alongside Hamilton Beach, a park on the sandbar that spans the western end of the lake. A short canal halfway up the sandbar led to my goal: the sheltered water of Burlington Bay and a marina a few minutes from a friend’s house.
Everywhere I paddled, the kindness of strangers mitigated the risks I faced: They gave me food and water and encouragement and love and hugs and restored in me the belief that when we unplug and drift into one another’s spheres, there is an opportunity for connection across lines that typically divide us.
Earlier, I had spotted two places for pit stops—a protected inlet and a yacht club behind a breakwater. Deciding to rest and refuel one last time, I turned left and aimed for the beach. It was a holiday weekend, and the sand was packed with families admiring the crashing waves. Shuffling toward the nose of the SUP to shift my weight, I caught a swell as it peaked and rocketed down the face, enjoying the ride—and then wiping out as the board flipped over. Dragging my drybags from the surf, I saw a police boat hovering just offshore.
Realizing that I couldn’t get back onto the lake—it would have been impossible to reload my SUP in the shallows, let alone get past the breakers—I began to shuttle my gear toward a bench. When I had finally gathered everything, I was trembling with exhaustion, adrenaline and a small dose of trauma.
That’s when I saw the police officer approach.
“Do you know that boat is out there because of you?” he asked.
“I was kinda assuming that,” I replied.
“People called us. They saw you fall in.”
I explained that I was leashed to my boat and wearing a PFD, so falling in wasn’t a big deal, but conceded that conditions were indeed difficult.
“Should you be out there today?” he asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“What’s the plan now?”
“Call a friend.”
“Good idea.”
After I had showered and eaten, my friend said maybe it was a good thing I had been pummelled: It’s a reminder that we’re not really in control. Which is one of the main reasons why paddlers and other outdoorsy types do all sorts of dangerous things. We want to be humbled and awed and learn once again that the universe doesn’t care about what we want. But the water, despite all the danger and destruction it can unleash, also remains a place where people watch out for one another.
To learn more about Dan Rubinstein’s SUP journey and book project, visit www.waterborne.ca.
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