To Halls Harbour: The Failed Expedition (Part III)
Read Part II HERE.
Now, accounts from here on out become rather personal as my experience of the rapids does certainly vary from Marla’s, but rest assured that both accounts would be just as accurate overall. It is personal detail that varies significantly.
As we began paddling the rapids, I shouted, at Marla’s request, which side to paddle on as we made our way. At first, while this was not agreed upon by Marla, we were actually doing quite well. The water was rough, no question, but we weren’t taking water, Marla was handling it well and we were making headway through the most intense stretch of the Allumettes; with unusually high waters making it even rougher. For a time, it was impressive.
If only we could have found ourselves on the opposite side of the rapids from the beginning. We may very well have made it through unscathed and I would just be paddling out from Quebec City two days ago, after spending a night with Marla as she would be rolling through on her road trip out east.
Photo of Smith Lake on the Petawawa River system (we didn’t take photos approaching the rapids)
However, no matter how well our handle of the rapids, there was no avoiding the perils of having started the run on the left side of the chute. If ever you find yourself in the middle of whitewater and the current is pulling you alarmingly fast to what looks like a fairly calm section of water, do your best to paddle away from it towards the rougher water.
Had we an eagle’s view of the water, we might have narrowly escaped the coming drop but had we started on the left of the chute and this alarming calm came to view only moments before our realization; we were lost before we knew it.
At seemingly the same time, Marla and I both saw and acknowledged what was ahead. With each an expletive, followed by a pronouncement of love, we shot, headlong, over a drop of several feet; straight down, the canoe went.
The impact, at least in my mind, meant to me that the canoe had broken at least into two piece. This, a near 50-year old canoe cherished by family friends from whom I’d purchased it; I even named it in honour of a fallen member of said family. As what was left of the canoe was filled and whisked away by the current, I (and Marla as well, I would discover afterward) found myself trapped in a whirl of whitewater, where the rolling from the drop meets the flat again and churns mercilessly, taking quite a strong hold.
An earlier point on the Ottawa River, before the going got tough
This is the one moment of the whole ordeal where I honestly thought I may not get out; nearly resigning myself to this fact as fear and shame both charged my senses unforgivingly. However cliched it may be though, I caught Marla’s voice over the roaring waves and, in an instant, had found grounding on a rock below and pushed myself free from the torrent.
Both of us free from the cyclical force, we had yet to face the remaining stretch of rapids. As we found each other over the near-deafening waves, in the brief space we had as wave after wave pummelled us onward down current. I made note that as the air was pushed from my lungs and the water prevented much in the way of breath, my voice hit higher and higher in register, working to communicate: staying together, breathing between waves and, eventually, swimming towards shore.
I recall, in my fear, expressing my hatred for the pounding waves, as Marla was faced forward, seeing what rough water we’d yet to hit and I found myself backwards, watching what waves were pushing us onward and what force from which we had just escaped.
Once we were clear of the whitewater and were simply being carried by the relatively calm current, I could feel nothing but despair, having lost all the trappings of my trip; watching my gear floating all around us, being carried down river towards Westmeath where my uncle was to meet us later that afternoon.
Looking out at some islands just before Pembroke on the Ottawa River
Through my self-pity, Marla’s voice cut, having spotted two figures on the beach of Morrison Island. In less than a minute, two boats were next to us as we helped an understandably shaken and shaking Marla from the water. As the ladder was dropped for me, I climbed aboard and caught the first hint that I had been injured, minor though the injury was, thankfully.
As I placed my foot down on the backseat of the boat, I noticed that it was covered in blood, pouring from what looked like rather deep cuts which I imagine I sustained from either shoving away from the rock in the initial surge, or from subsequent rocks I did feel below as we were tossed into the river beyond the Allumettes.
Our rescuers split up. Two went in one boat to collect gear floating down the Ottawa and the one took Marla and I into shore. To help ease Marla’s panic, we were thankfully met at the dock by Joey, an Australian Shepherd who trotted along to see what the fuss was about. Rod, our escort to the beach, helped us out of the boat and took us to a rather beautiful “cottage”. There, we met Alison, who offered us showers (running water not being a thing either of us particularly wanted at that moment, we declined) and cold beer. We took glasses of water instead and she offered us watermelon and a phone as well.
I took some peroxide to my foot (and a tad to my knee, which had also been scraped) and cleaned the wounds to find them, thankfully, quite smaller than they seemed. Sitting on the upper deck of this massive cottage, we looked out over the Ottawa River towards Westmeath, the expedition in ruins; a failure. As we shared conversation with Alison, I watched Steve and Ben out in the boat recovering what they could.
As they pulled in, dragging my canoe behind them, in one piece, I carefully footed my way back to the dock to take an inventory of what had been recovered and what had been lost, before I made the requisite calls to return home. The inventory nothing more than a delay in what I alone would consider further shame.
A reminder of the beautiful beginning of the adventure on the Ottawa
