Coming Events

We have a few great events happening at the store in the next few weeks. First off if you have been listening to CBC you know that tomorrow morning CBC Radio One will be hosting Morning North with Markus Schwabe from the store. Jenn and I are really excited, though not so excited about our wake up time.

Also Hap Wilson has a new book out called Trails and Tribulations: Confessions of a Wilderness Pathfinder. Hap will be here in the store on Saturday May 23rd along with Illustrator Ingrid Zschogner and the Band Headframe! The show will start at 7:30 pm on Saturday May 23rd.

Headframe will be opening up the evening with some great tunes, then Hap will talk about his new book. We will have books artwork and Cd's all available to be signed by the artists later on in the evening!

Deep Waters

Our morning routine is pretty simple...get up, have a shower, give the cats some treats(before they destroy the place), pour a cup of coffee, get in the truck turn on CBC radio drive to work...Coffee is the most important step in that sequence, then of course CBC radio with Markus Schwabe.

It being Friday we were able to catch this weeks segment of Airwaves Challenge on CBC, and today's secret guest was none other than James Raffan author of Deep Water.

On the morning of June 12, 1978, 27 boys and 4 leaders from St. John’s School in Ontario, set out on a canoeing expedition from the wharf at Timiskaming, Quebec, headed for James Bay along an old voyageurs’ route. By evening the same day, all four canoes were overturned and floating aimlessly in the wind — 12 boys and one leader were dead. The rest huddled over a weak fire at the base of a cliff, waiting for the light of morning, and rescue.

So begins the story of the Lake Timiskaming tragedy, a tragedy that was quickly flashed around the world on the wire services and that struck fear into the heart of every parent. For who has not watched a child head off on an adventure with some misgivings? What is the right balance of safety and risk that we can live with? And does risk really build character as so many people believe?

Questions such as these are at the heart of Deep Waters, James Raffan’s moving and suspenseful story about a great wilderness adventure gone wrong. Raffan’s meticulous deconstruction of the circumstances leading to the accident is chilling: the hubris of school leaders whose motives may have been good-intentioned but whose practical knowledge was limited; the faith of the parents who played an integral role in St. John’s; the confluence of water and weather on a treacherous lake that fateful day; the lack of proper precautions for a trip that would have taxed even the most experienced of wilderness canoeists. Raffan slowly unfolds the web of events that resulted in such a tragedy and, with the hindsight of more than two decades, shows us what can be learned from such experiences.

We do still have copies of Deep Water in the store! You can usually find it in our local section or in the travel section.