I grew up paddling in muskoka area , doing canoe trips first there then elsewhere . I watch Bill Mason films every summer at camp queen elizabeth in the 70's and 80's. I am a canoeist of 44 years because of Bill Mason , Omer stringer , ray kettlewell and Anne Mcknight who i got to learn from in my youth. I love style paddling the most ..
Right on~ I too watched a lot of Bill's vids in my public school in Sault Ontario growing up in 70's...I loved when the teacher said today is film day and it's the canoe man!
Bill Mason was quite a small fellow at only 165 cm. Even so, he whips that 16 feet wood and canvas prospector around rocks and in and out of eddies like it's nothing. What a great hero.
I grew up with these films. My dad I as canoe "artist" lol. Back then I was like oh, no, not again!!! But now I see sic value in it. My brother and I grew up in the bottom of a canoe.
This guy is a lot braver than I am. My dad and I are veterans of 20+ trips into the BWCA. We've paddled some of the bigger lakes along the border and a few in Quetico; we always played it safe and traveled early in the morning on these bigger waters and stayed lee of the islands out of the wind if necessary. A few times we were windbound on the last day of the trip, but sometimes we'd leave right before sunup to make it to the landing. Seemed like once afternoon hit, it was time to be off the big water. We always portaged around rapids, especially after I nearly drowned running some class 2 water that "looked" pretty harmless. Good thing I was with a group (Boy Scouts), and one of the dads with us was able to pry me off a rock I was pinned to. Lesson learned.....and I would do these trips all over again!
Another film that my father wrote the music for, and probably my favourite! He gets the acoustic guitar going bonkers right off the top as soon as the water gets heavy! Wooohooooo!
We watched all of these movies, and the outtakes too, during High School English... Because Ken Buck (the cameraman) was our English Teacher!! I remember Bill Mason and Ken Buck far better than Shakespeare 🙂Go Merivale! It's incredible to realize the original head-cam was a monstrous reel-to-reel camera.... how spectacular it is now, with drones and GoPros 😲 (thank you, Becky Mason)
I met Bill when he was in Salt Lake City on a booksigning tour and showing the Path of the Paddle films back in the early '80's. I was new into solo WW paddling and I was able to corner Bill at a reception where we talked about doing enders in our open boats. I went on to paddle many rivers including the Middle Fork of the Salmon, the Snake, the Green, and best of all the Colorado through Westwater Canyon and the Grand Canyon. Thank you Bill for your inspiration!
Well HOLY wow, I'm swept back to grade 5 in public school in Canada..we went to the library and watched this on the ole film reel! Bill emblemized what it is to canoe to us back then...it was really rare to see in person someone's adventures recorded if you could imagine!
Sorry late response..you still around? Awe man I miss this era so much! I know he paddled around where I live...I think he was up in Wawa also...definitely canoed Lake Superior shore north of Sault Ontario!
My type of guy. We passed him at the Natch when i was a 17 year old doing the May 24 run. Came from the similar YMCA ccamp backgrounds. I still run my rapids witha slower than water technique and its served me well.
Thanks loads for posting this. I would have loved to have met Bill in person. We had nice correspondence before he left us. I lament that. However, oddly enough, I have a friend who now lives in Chelsea.
The filming was done over several years, and included rivers such as the Petawawa and French rivers in Ontario, Canada. A number of sequences were re-fillmed for the final cut, because some of the early filming showed an obviously younger son in the bow than those of him in the latest sequences.
+Stan .Rarick Probably a combination of rivers in or near Pukaskwa Park. Bill Mason favored that area for obvious reasons. The river's egress into Superior in the film looks like it may have been the Pukaskwa River itself.
+TheGbov Am actually currently reading a great book called "Canoe Country" by Roy MacGregor, and it says the Path of the Paddle series was filmed on the Petawawa, all in a wooden canoe no less.
+TheGbov His son Paul estimated they ran the Petawawa 35 times during the filming of the series. I have been numerous times to the north east side of Algonquin fishing and camping. Barron Canyon is beautiful. Have never done the Petawawa though, just read about it. I heard "The Natch" is pretty spectacular.
