Canoeing With The Cree

I reread this book for the first time in about 25 years. If anyone is looking for a good read I’d highly recommend it. I assume alot of the folks on this site know the story but it’s worth another read.

For those that don’t know the story, it’s about 2 young men from Minneapolis that graduate high school in 1930 and canoe from Minneapolis to Hudson Bay. They had little to no experience but took on the adventure anyways. Its pretty remarkable what they accomplished.

That is a great book and it was part of my inspiration to paddle the 200 mile BWCA border route a few years ago

Matt Moen wrote:

I reread this book for the first time in about 25 years. If anyone is looking for a good read I’d highly recommend it. I assume alot of the folks on this site know the story but it’s worth another read.

Absolutely a terrific book. It is difficult to imagine the mindset of boys of that era, the confidence (and sometimes overconfidence) they had, and of just how little was known about the far north in 1930.

This book gives a vivid picture of Minnesota in the 1930s, the description the headwaters of the Minnesota river at Brown’s Valley were especially interesting to me having grown up in this area.

BTW, the author of Canoeing with the Cree was Eric Sevareid. He went on to a fascinating career in journalism. Only 10 years after the canoeing adventure, Sevareid was the last American journalist broadcasting from Paris as the Nazis stormed the city. He had a harrowing escape from Paris to England with his wife and newborn twin sons. In London he joined Edward R. Murrow and many of the movie newsreel clips you see of England during the war have Sevareid’s voice.

My favorite book – I’ve read it 2 or 3 times. It’s a great deer stand read, you can get through it in a day if the action is slow. But it’s a first-hand story of two boys becoming men and beating the odds. And Yes, Sevareid went on to have a LOT of adventures in his later career. I borrowed my copy to another hockey dad about 5 years ago, and then he and his wife got divorced and I’m not even sure where he’s at these days, but I never got it back. I’ll have to buy a new copy.

My dad borrowed me this book this past fall, great read!

Thanks for the tip. I think I’ll order this for my son to read.

lindyrig79 wrote:

Thanks for the tip. I think I’ll order this for my son to read.

Yes! this is a great one for kids to read. It’s not terribly long and very engaging for adventurous young minds.

ThunderLund78 wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>lindyrig79 wrote:</div>
Thanks for the tip. I think I’ll order this for my son to read.

Yes! this is a great one for kids to read. It’s not terribly long and very engaging for adventurous young minds.

How about old minds with short attention spans?

Dutchboy wrote:

How about old minds with short attention spans?

It will make you feel young again! (or at least wish you were)

Just ordered a copy. I have never read it but it sounds like it’s worth the $12.

For young children, a favorite adventure book of ours was:

Paddle to the Sea
by Hilling C. Holling

Purchased the book based on the above reviews. Great book to read on these bitter cold days. Any other recommendations out there for books?

buckybadger wrote:

Just ordered a copy. I have never read it but it sounds like it’s worth the $12.

I just did the same!

hartridge wrote:

Purchased the book based on the above reviews. Great book to read on these bitter cold days. Any other recommendations out there for books?

I’m usually more of a fiction reader…lot of war and spy novel stuff. Vince Flynn is great. John Sanford is a local crime author that are easy reads.

I just ordered Call of the Wild by Jack London. I’m gonna give that a read again.

TheFamousGrouse wrote:

Paddle to the Sea
by Hilling C. Holling

Thanks just ordered Canoeing with the Cree and Paddle to the Sea for Dad the boys.

buckybadger wrote:

Just ordered a copy. I have never read it but it sounds like it’s worth the $12.

Mine arrives tomorrow! Thanks

reminder you can get just about any book at your local library for free. on top of it being free, you don’t have a stack of books piling up on a bookshelf at home.

I just wait for the movie to come out

Gitchi Gummi wrote:

reminder you can get just about any book at your local library for free. on top of it being free, you don’t have a stack of books piling up on a bookshelf at home.

I’m an old nostalgic dinosaur. There’s something about a good book sitting on a shelf next to the fireplace that makes for good house decor.

buckybadger wrote:

I’m an old nostalgic dinosaur. There’s something about a good book sitting on a shelf next to the fireplace that makes for good house decor.

I totally agree, but eBooks open up a whole world of fascinating books that are out of print, out of copyright, difficult to find, or expensive to buy.

Here’s one of my favorites in the Canoe Adventure genre:

The Arctic Prairies: A Canoe Journey of 2000 Miles
by Earnest Thompson Seaton

In this book, Seaton goes on an epic canoe journey in the Canadian Arctic at the beginning of the last century.

The area he traveled in was rarely visited by white men and still relatively unmapped except for the elementary routes of the major rivers. This is old-school exploring when the opportunities to do so were already rapidly disappearing.

BTW, Seaton is also the author of the much-better-known, Wild Animals I Have Known. Also an excellent read.

This book is out of copyright and as such can be downloaded from a number of sources including OpenLibrary. Some of the open-source versions of this book were very poor OCR scans so you may have to download several versions to find one that’s readable.

If you have a Kindle, a much better version is available as a free Kindle download from Amazon.

buckybadger wrote:

I’m an old nostalgic dinosaur. There’s something about a good book sitting on a shelf next to the fireplace that makes for good house decor.

I agree to a certain extent. I draw the line at one book shelf. Once that’s full, its time to recycle. If you’re a quick and frequent reader, your collection can grow to an absurd amount in no time at all. They take up a lot of room and collect dust.

Okay, I can’t stop. Here’s another one for you fans of far-north canoe adventures.

Disappointment River: Finding and Losing the Northwest Passage
By Brian Castner

In this book, Castner follows the canoe route of Alexander Mackenzie’s 1789 trip down the river that now bears his name.

There’s an odd juxtaposition in this excellent tale because the namesake of the river considered his expedition an utter failure. The huge river did NOT go where Mackenzie hoped it would–to the Pacific Ocean. Therefore, the greatest prize of North American exploration–finding the last missing link in the Northwest Passage had slipped from his grasp. But to know this, Mackenzie had to journey by canoe and foot for thousands of miles and eventually end up at the Arctic Ocean in utter disappointment instead of the hoped-for Pacific.

This book is full of Minnesota connections and references because Mackenzie passed through today’s Grand Portage and many of our favorite border lakes.

Castner’s modern-day expedition is an interesting one in itself, but it just highlights the different cloth from which the early explorers were cut. A fascinating read.