Introduction by John Rich:

The famous American writer Ernest Hemingway got his start as a staff writer for the Toronto Star, a weekly newspaper in Canada. Hemingway is known as an adventurer, whose exploits include service in World War I, the Spanish Civil War, D-Day in World War II, and an African safari where he almost died in a plane crash. He was an avid outdoorsman. One of the columns Hemingway wrote for the Toronto Star, is titled "Before You Go On a Canoe Trip, Learn Canoeing". That advice which he gave 90 years ago, still applies to canoeing today. That article is reproduced in its entirety, below.

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''Before You Go On a Canoe Trip, Learn Canoeing''
by Ernest Hemingway

"We are going on a canoe trip up to Algonquin Park," writes a lady to the editor, "two girls and our husbands.As we have never been in a canoe and have only been motor picnicking, what advice can you give us for our trip?"

	Ernest Hemingway 1899-1961

The first thing a beginner at canoe cruising should do is to spend as many afternoons as possible between now and the time of his departure, on the Humber, learning what a frail, tippy, treacherous and altogether delightful craft a canoe is.

He should learn to handle his canoe in wind and wave, and should practice paddling it loaded with three people in it, as a loaded canoe is even trickier than a lightered one.

If your experience of outings has been restricted to picnics by motor car, then you are in very grave danger as a canoeist. For the first and last thing about canoe cruising and camping is the necessity of reducing baggage to the absolute minimum.

Put it this way: as nearly all canoe trips involve portages, you must get all your belongings into as few packages as possible, and yet you must be able to carry those packages comfortably for distances ranging from 500 yards to two miles.

The ideal cruiser, the half-breed guide of the north bush, makes a portage in one trip. He carries his canoe on his head, and all his belongings in a pack on his back.

There's your standard. You will in most cases have to make two trips to a portage, the first time over with your canoe, and the second trip over with your dunnage. If that dunnage is in a score of separate pieces, instead of being packed neatly and economically in a dunnage bag, you are going to have your trip ruined. I have seen many a haggard and fed-up camping party struggling over the portage trails with
unmanageable dunnage. When they pull their canoe ashore, it is laden with loose gear. Pots and pans are shoved up under the decks or lying loose on the baggage. The tent, damp and therefore loosely and largely folded, is taking up half the space of the craft amidships. Poorly packed bags and heaped up, with
blankets, clothing and stuff, and wooden boxes of grub are perched periously on top of all. They dump all this junk out and carry the canoe over the trail, then come wearily back for the baggage, which is more than a load, not only because it is more kit than they should have brought on a canoe trip, but because it is poorly packed, in small places, instead of in one or two large pieces that can be comfortably toted on the back.

Even on a fairly long camping trip, your dunnage should be no heavier nor bulkier than you can comfortably carry on your back. You can determine this before you set out.And by dunnage is meant everything except the canoe and the paddles - tent, food, blankets, pots and pans, and personal baggage.

Put everything in bags. Take no boxes, no bottles. The brown canvas dunnage bag about three feet long and a foot in diameter, is the best size, commodious and handy. One blanket, one change of underwear, a rubber sheet, a light raincoat or slicker, should be all the clothing taken. If the weather is chilly, sleep in your raincoat and extra socks.

If two are in a canoe, one man should take the tent in his bag and the other should take the grub in his. This means cutting personal kit down to the bone. The pots and pans, of the smallest size and fewest number, should be equally divided between the two bags, and small canvas sacks should be made to put these dirty utensils in, or about the second day they will be found constituting a part of that bunch of disagreeable small junk, which usually includes axes, fishing rods, cans of food, boots and cameras, which litters the bottom of the canoe, and makes every portage a blasted nuisance.

The ideal canoe is this: there are thongs on the thwarts into which the paddles fit for portaging. The axe is hitched snugly under the floor board.Amidships, side by side, lie two dunnage bags, with their tump lines attached. One six-foot fishing rod is stowed ready for sport under the thwarts. Not another thing, unless it be the knee cushions, are loose in that canoe.

If food absolutely must be taken which won't go into the two dunnage bags, be sure that it is at least in a bag, and as small a bag as possible. For food is the heaviest thing to be taken.

A side of bacon, cakes of dried soup, butter in a tin, jam in a tin, tea and sugar in small salt bags, condensed milk if you must have milk, then cans of beans, meat, etc.A box of patent pancake flour is a good thing. Empty it into a tin. Take no glass. If you can't get bread along the line, take what you will need in a separate bag, and make it a regrettable separate bundle on the line of march.A cotton flour
bag makes a good bread bag. A general rule covering grub is to seek that which is in the smallest and most keepable form. Many foods spoil when opened. If you are going into the far bush where bread is not within a day's paddle, better learn to make biscuits from mother, take along a small tin folding reflector oven and a bag of flour and "burn your own."

Motor campers have no conception of the need for economy in kit in canoe cruising. The great point is - cut, cut, cut. Weed out something from your kit every time you look at it in preparation. Go easy on the clothes. You will sleep in them anyway, most likely, and you, must wash linen as you go: Wash at night and dry by the camp fire.

A warning about canoes: A lot of dish-shaped pleasure canoes are being made nowadays which are murder on a canoe trip. Be sure to rent a good, wide-bellied canoe that will carry a load in wind and wave. Rented canoes are often old fellows that have been painted so often they have about 50 lbs. of white lead on them. Pick the lightest and roomiest 15 or 16-foot canoe available.

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© The Toronto Star. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or
distribution is prohibited without permission.

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