About a year ago someone posted a link to a TV production company that was holding interviews for contestants. The premise was to film a group of people as they paddle through a long stretch of Canada. If the group succeeded there was to be a substantial cash prize.
Anyhow, the trek was supposed to take place in the summer/fall of 2018. If they, in fact, pulled this off I would think the editing would be completed by now and the series should be ready to air soon. I think they were contracted with NatGeo or a similar channel.
I cannot remember what the title of the show is. Anybody recall this?
I don’t think the show was titled at the time but do remember the casting call. Think Roger Mann of WaterTribe and R2AK fame applied and do know that Traci Martin did. She wasn’t accepted, probably because she has rheumatoid arthritis. Don’t know any details about Roger nor have I heard anything about the show. Roger certainly has the skills.
A couple or three years ago I was contacted by a Canadian production company that was exploring the idea of making a show where a person would be given a kayak, paddle, pfd, and allowed to choose a few things to buy and then paddle the BC outer coast from Point A to Point B. Something on the Survivor or Alone in the Wilderness theme in kayaks. They wanted to pick my brain on feasibility, what things they should provide, how many additional things the contestants should be allowed to bring, etc. Conversations continued for a while and then stopped. Never heard any more about it.
Then about 6 months ago a guy contacted me through Instagram. He and another guy had gotten a pretty cool TV gig where they were flown into some remote Canadian locations with a canoe and some gear, given an objective and filmed. Don’t recall his name but there are some videos of them on You Tube. They might be brothers. They had been dropped in a couple of different locations on Vancouver Island and up beyond Bella Coola and Ocean Falls.
A couple who were members of my outdoor club many moons ago did their honeymoon by paddling an 18’ canoe, self-supported, over 1000 miles in the Canadian Northwest (the Mackenzie River, if I recall correctly). When they had their first child a couple of years later, they took the babe, at the tender age of 6 months, on a similar trip on the Yukon. Both were schoolteachers as well as skilled outdoors-folk and they would spend every summer off on such trips. Instead of having to scrabble for “survival” they had the leisure to seek out and engage the people that they were able to find along the watersheds.
They did some great slide shows at our club meetings after those adventures. Among the fascinating tales they brought back of encounters along the rivers was of an elderly native man with whom they spent several days, helping him prepare fish for rack drying for his winter stores. One evening he told them how among the hunting traditions handed down for generations through his family was one for preparing to stalk and kill mammoths (in case they ever returned)! Since it is now thought that mammoths may have survived in remote regions of the High Arctic as recently as 6,000 years ago, it is not irrational to think that such oral traditions might have survived.
Personally, I dislike those contrived “survivor” set-ups and would rather watch a documentary showing experienced and well-equipped folks doing a low impact trip into a wilderness regions. The phony “crises” that are built into those “survivor” shows annoy the hell out of me. And the things that the people involved “have” to do for food and shelter are often environmentally destructive. Plus such shows have the effect of convincing clueless jerks that they should stumble into the wilderness with a bowie knife, a tarp and a lighter, wreaking havoc with their browse bed “shelters” and fish-guts, smoldering campfire and turd field leave-behinds.
@willowleaf
Personally, I dislike those contrived “survivor” set-ups and would rather watch a documentary showing experienced and well-equipped folks doing a low impact trip into a wilderness regions. The phony “crises” that are built into those “survivor” shows annoy the hell out of me. And the things that the people involved “have” to do for food and shelter are often environmentally destructive. Plus such shows have the effect of convincing clueless jerks that they should stumble into the wilderness with a bowie knife, a tarp and a lighter, wreaking havoc with their browse bed “shelters” and fish-guts, smoldering campfire and turd field leave-behinds.
+++++++++++++++++++
I’m with you. I do not like “reality” TV. A show like the one you describe would be much better.
I figure though, that if they have already put this show together, the damage is done and I would at least check out episode 1.
@willowleaf : Agreed 100% on fake “reality” shows. Fortunately, we dumped cable a few years ago & so don’t see much of that on PBS.
If my memory is correct, Verlen Kruger Clint Wadell did Montreal to the Mouth of the Yukon in 26 - 28 weeks. I’d have to pull up my copy of “Never Before, Never Again” to get the dates.
I’m in the process of reading a book I picked up at Half Price Books last week that is the narrative of a small group of paddlers who took folding kayaks (Kleppers, I think) down the Nile from source to delta, back in 1950 (the year I was born!) The dudes were prepared!
I love this kind of book, like Joshua Slocum’s “Sailing Alone Around the World” or “Down the Wild River North” by Connie Helmricks who canoed northern Canada to the Arctic Ocean with her 12 and 14 year old daughters. Now THOSE are true adventures. And by people who did it for love of the waters and solitude, not to “prove” that they could “survive”.
