MOUNTAIN LIFE - Blue Mountains | Fall 2020

18 UPFRONT In June 2020, when Mario Rigby set out from Hamilton to kayak the length of Lake Ontario, it wasn’t really what he planned on doing this summer. Just like the rest of the world, COVID-19 completely disrupted his plans. He was scheduled to hike the Auyuittuq Trail on Baffin Island. “We were going to do a short film about that,” he says. “The trail was to get some cool visuals, but the real story would come from the locals on how climate change is affecting their communities.” Rigby, a Torontonian, is a member of the prestigious Explorers Club and a fellow at The Royal Canadian Geographical Society. He’s a full-time explorer and has previously cycled across Canada and walked the entire length of the African continent. But he’d never camped or hiked until he started training for the African expedition, and he’d never been in a sit-in kayak until he set off from Hamilton. He flipped over a half-dozen times, sometimes swimming and dragging his boat to shore, other times self-rescuing. Depending on weather, he’d paddle anywhere from 20 to 50 kilometres a day, staying in hotels, guest houses or just wild camping on the shoreline. He steered a wide berth around the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station, about a kilometre offshore in fairly wavy conditions. But he was pleasantly surprised at how clean Lake Ontario looked. “I did a walk from Toronto to Montreal before and that took me 14 days,” he says. “I saw a lot more garbage on that trip. But along Lake Ontario, I saw very little. The worst you’ll see is a plastic wrapper, maybe a bottle along the shore, but never a pile-up, never an area that was full of garbage. I was really surprised.” Rigby’s expeditions are as much about the environment as they are about social justice. “I think you can’t have environmental justice without social justice.The two are intertwined together. That’s why I advocate for both.” The Lake Ontario trip was a fundraiser for MyStand, a program dedicated to providing mentorship to at-risk youth. Being a person of colour Rigby understands the prejudices that minorities can face. His foray into the outdoor industry hasn’t been easy. “Looking for sponsors in 2015 for theAfrica expedition was pretty much MARIO RIGBY: PADDLING FOR SOCIAL & ECO JUSTICE