Nothing comes close to connecting to outdoors

Camping and canoeing grants freedom from city life and the food seems to taste better out there too

- JIM RANKIN

Jim Rankin’s view of Ragged Lake in Algonquin Park, from his 16-foot Prospector canoe. Michelle Shephard paddles, while Parker, their Labradoodle, settles in behind her.

With the first paddle stroke, the city life of noise, screens and stress immediately dissipates, giving way to the call of the loon, the soothing lap of water on canoe hull and a kind of serenity that I’ve found nowhere else on earth.

That is, until Parker, our Labradoodle, decides quite some distance from the next portage that now’s a perfectly good time to find that ball, tucked somewhere within the bags of gear, food, drink and books, wedged between stern and bow of our 16-foot Prospector canoe.

No, we did not tip, but imagine an excited 50-pound fur face inspecting every nook and cranny of said Prospector.

But there was that one time when Parker — who joined me and my partner Michelle as a constant and rather unhelpful canoe-mate nine years ago — just fell overboard.

We were on Smoke Lake, a large and often windswept access lake to interior lakes in Ontario’s Algonquin Park, when Parker, wearing a life-jacket with a handle and an awkward rigid back, lost her balance, and sploosh!