I tried half a dozen times, but was unable to post this trip report in the Trip Reports forum. If you want specifics on anything mentioned here, ask and I'll provide them:

I read an article about a father and daughter who were capsized on Missinaibi Lake in Ontario. The daughter drowned, so naturally I wanted to go. My dad had empty pockets, so we went with the only boats we had, two Sears jon boats and two Sears motors. There were seven of us with my dad, two brothers, a grandpa, and my brothers' two friends.

Nearly everything we had was junk:

The tents were a Coleman tent and a pup tent and my tube tent, which had mosquito netting, but no doors or fly.

Our fishing rods and reels were fiberglass and Zebcos.

Our stove was the standard Coleman two-burner, probably the best thing we brought.

Our clothing was cotton.

Our rain gear was plastic.

Our car was a 1965 Chevrolet Biscayne station wagon, the original Wagon Queen Family Truckster.

Still, what a time to go. We crossed one wide river on a wooden bridge and crossed a much shorter bridge that was just two logs, with two tires on each log. We saw moose on the roads and in the lake. One mother moose and calf came within ten feet of us. I saw my first sex workers in Chapleau and had a man ask me for a sailboat, a Canadian dime. I was confused as to why he thought I'd have a literal sailboat and if I did, why I'd give it to him. We landed a beast and sunk a boat in our excitement. We camped at a ghost town and my dad stripped parts from abandoned cars there to fix our Wagon Queen Family Truckster. One of our two cars crashed into the other and we did a reenactment of Humphrey Bogart in "The African Queen," with a chest and back freckled with leeches. We found our first trapper cabin when we pushed and pulled (literally) up a river. The drying racks were still standing and he had a little window of colored glass, an unexpected touch. My brother and I saw a pike come out of the water like a Polaris missile and it was so big, we fled. We drove down logging roads that petered into trees. We felled trees until there were simply too many to drop and then turned back. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. I even rode my bike home when it was all done.

Whenever I'd trip with my dad, there were snafus. On my first trip north without him, nothing went wrong and it was only then that I realized that it wasn't the north that was tripping us, but my dad. Still, I love my dad for taking for me north the first time and letting me stay so long and see things that are long gone, like wooden bridges and that trapper’s cabin.

I don't think I've heard of anybody mentioning Chapleau before. My ex-wife, her sister, and I went on the driving trip around the north shore of Lake Superior in August of 1977. I wanted to head for the boondocks, so we agreed to head north to Chapleau. It was a gravel highway back then. It was pretty cold, I remember. There was some white stuff on the highway signs, which I though was pretty strange. We stopped, and I ended up believing it was fire retardant foam. We went to a pottery place in Chapleau and turned back to the usual highway around Lake Superior. I think It took us an hour or two of driving to get to Chapleau from the main highway.

Anyway, we got to Oiumet canyon, took a bunch of photos, and turned on the radio in the truck, only to learn that Elvis Presley had died.

Had a bear in our campsite one of the mornings just after we made breakfast, so all three of us hopped into the cab of my truck. Honked the horn a few times. The bear didn't move. Yelled some stuff at the bear too, but it apparently did not speak English.

Tomster

So interesting, MissMolly. It is almost impossible for me to imagine having a family who went camping. I did go to YMCA camp and Girl Scout Camp, but until I met Spartan1 I had never been in a canoe or on a camping trip.

Your adventure sounds like work, sounds like fun, sounds like a learning experience, and sounds like planting the seeds for a lifetime on the water. Thanks for posting.