Maps provided courtesy of Toporama which contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada. I have marked my route in blue and portages in red. 

We woke up to a crisp, cool, 10-degree temperature. After days of 30-degree weather, it felt positively frosty. It was quite refreshing and it made the hot coffee next to the morning fire taste even better. 

After a granola and oatmeal breakfast, we broke camp, accompanied by more fishing boats cruising past the site into the bay. We were happy to be leaving the hustle and bustle. I took a photo of the site as we paddled away from the north side. 

We paddled out of the bay and back into the main channel. By mid morning, the temperature had warmed up considerably in the morning sun. 

We were impressed by some vertical rock faces at the southwest corner of Fourmile Island. 

Rounding the island took us into the south end of Dry Pine Bay, where the shoreline was dotted with cottages. We passed a marina on our left and entered the narrow river again, aided by swifts at the narrows. Within minutes, we could see the railway truss crossing the river ahead. 

This would be the first of two railway bridges that we would paddle under that day. It made me wonder why there were two railway lines situated so close to one another, going in the same north/south direction. A bit of subsequent googling gave me some answers. 

Two rail lines exist because they were built by two separate companies at different times. The Canadian Pacific Railway Company (CPR) were first on the scene, constructing a line through the area in 1884-85 as part of the promised transcontinental railway, a condition on which the province of British Columbia agreed to enter the Canadian Confederation. This rail line was critical in the formation of our nation. 

The Canadian Northern Railway Company (CNoR) built a separate bridge across the river in 1915-17. They merged with other rail companies to form the Canadian National Railway (CNR). As far as my understanding goes, the CNR was a crown corporation created in an attempt to compete with the existing CPR and was cobbled together from a number of rail companies that were in financial difficulty. World War I increased the need for a second rail line due to the demands of wartime production. It was privatized in 1995 and is now Canada's largest railway. 

The first of the two lines under which we paddled was the CPR bridge. 

Once under the bridge, we spotted a small bay on the north shore, known as Supply Post Bay.  It's called that because it's the location of the French River Supply Post and Marina. Go figure. 

Even though it was very early in our day, we decided we would stop in for a snack. It would be our second "store run" on the trip. As I mentioned earlier, paddling the French is not really a wilderness experience, but...hey...snacks are good, too. Right?! 

After a quick chat with the owners and stocking up on some potato chips to enjoy by the campfire later that night, we made our way out of the bay and continued west on the river. Immediately, we spotted both the new four-lane Highway 69 bridge and the older one that I had crossed so many times in the past, now on what is called Settlers Road. 

There is an impressive rock face immediately to the west of the new bridge. Knowing that there were supposed to be some pictographs on the rock, we paddled over to see if we could find them. What we discovered were some red ochre markings, but they had become quite faded over time. 

We paddled under the two road bridges and under yet another span across the river, a very impressive snowmobile bridge. Sledders can take a break on the bridge and get a great view of the French River Gorge from their lofty height. 

The gorge at this part of the French River was formed by an already-existing ancient fault line and glacial ice that scraped through it 12,000 years ago. The area remains seismically active as a part of the Western Quebec Seismic Zone. According to the Canadian government website on earthquake zones in Canada (https://www.earthquakescanada.nrcan.gc.ca/zones/eastcan-en.php#WQSZ), a small earthquake occurs every five days on average. A hefty 6.2 magnitude earthquake hit the Temiscaming area in 1935. I don't suspect paddlers have much to worry about while paddling the French, however; the region doesn't seem prone to the "big ones" like on the West Coast or on the Pacific Ring of Fire. The Temiscaming quake was the largest to hit the eastern Ontario/western Quebec area in recorded history. 

The only Ring of Fire canoe trippers on the French River have to worry about might be the one that occurs after eating too much dehydrated chilli. Like always, when I paddle for extended periods of time, I begin to sing my own version of popular songs. Johnny Cash, anyone?

Chilli is a burning thing

And it makes a fiery ring

Bound by rehydration

No fear of constipation

I fell into a burning ring of fire

Beans went down, down, down, and the bloat went higher

And it burns, burns, burns, the ring of fire, the ring of fire

Hey! Don't judge! I'm allowed to get a little childish on Day 5 of a canoe trip!

Back to the beauty of the French River Gorge...

With Highway 69 behind us, we entered the gorge that I had seen from the bridge all those years ago. It certainly wasn't the Barron Canyon in terms of height by any means, but it was beautiful and thrilling, nonetheless. 

In Anishinaabe culture, rocks hold important power. They are seen to have a living spirit and are often viewed as living entities that possess historical, ancestral knowledge of the land. Paddling adjacent to vertical rock faces such as this, I often feel something that can only be described as awe. I fully understand the Anishinaabe belief in those moments. Respect and reverence for the land and the water are instantly demanded. 

As is often the case in these places of sacred reverence, pictographs can be found. On river right, just a stone's throw from the top of Recollet Falls, we were able to spot a couple of pictographs on a large boulder face. One was faded to the point where it was fairly indistinguishable, but the other was easily spotted. I may be incorrect, but I believe it is a depiction of a Thunderbird -- the storm controller and protector from evil spirits.  

I'm sure its chosen location was purposeful. Being so close to the falls, perhaps the artist wanted to honour the spirit of the thunder of the falls. 

Recollet Falls was busy. When we arrived, there were a couple of guys who had hiked down to the falls and were fishing from shore. A motor boat had bombed in behind us and was darting about above the falls. Thankfully, it didn't stay long, allowing us to approach the take-out.

We were able to use the low-water take-out closer to the falls, shortening our portage. We unloaded on a rock face and made the short carry through some bushes down to a back eddy on river-left. Here is a shot of the falls from close to the take-out. 

 Recollet Falls is named after a group of French missionaries, the Recollet Fathers. They were the Franciscan Order that accompanied Champlain to the New World from France. Their mission was to provide spiritual guidance to the French settlers and to convert the Indigenous population to Catholicism.  I tried to find the original Anishibaabe naming of the falls, but was unable to come up with anything. 

A canoe group of youths came up behind us, and another smaller group hiked in from the French River Park kiosk. We quickly put in to escape the milieu. The currents below this particular set of falls have been problematic in the past. Deaths have occurred at higher water levels. However, with the low water we were having, it was straightforward paddling beneath the falls. 

We thought the fishermen might be on to something, so we tried our luck for a little while both from the canoe and the shore in various spots, but came up empty. Being a popular spot, I assumed there had been a fair amount of fishing pressure on the area.

When we eventually began paddling downriver, we turned to get a wider look at the picturesque drop in the river. 

Below the falls, the French River continued its westward journey through the gorge for the next few kilometeres. 

Within ten minutes, we came to a small drop in the river called First Rapids, which was a shallow gurgle at low water levels. Here is a look back at the rapids after sailing through them.

Twenty minutes past First Rapids, the steep rock walls of the gorge ended, and the river bent to the right into a bay. Cottages reappeared, as did a trailer park camp of some sort on the right shore. The sky became overcast, and it looked like there was some rain happening to the north of us. 

We kept paddling for the next half hour or so until our rumbling tummies reminded us to have some lunch. Opposite Flowerpot Bay, we found a nice rock on the south shore to pull up on and make a couple of peanut butter and honey wraps. We watched four young people in a pair of canoes float past us, going in the same direction. Surprisingly, for August, the two groups we saw in that stretch were the only canoe trippers we encountered between Five Mile Rapids and Pickerel Bay. I would suspect the lure of the French River Delta, further to the west, attracts most of the canoeists coming to the area. 

Five minutes downriver from our lunch location brought us to Little Flat Rapids, the only portage between Recollet Falls and Pickerel Bay, our intended camp location for the evening. We pulled up to the take-out on the left and walked it to scout the rapids. Indeed, we could see an easy channel moving left to right. Here is a look at the rapids from the portage trail. 

It was an easy run that I suspect would be quite a bit more fun in higher water. 

Fifteen minutes past the rapids, we heard a train rumbling in the distance; we knew we were approaching the CNR line. We rounded a bend to witness the train crossing the bridge ahead of us. 

The bridge spanned the river over an island dividing the river into two channels. We kept to the left while paddling past the island. 

Despite the existence of power lines crossing the river, it was a pretty paddle adjacent to the rocks in this channel. It was reminiscent of the Devil's Chute area, further upriver in the Five Mile Rapids. 

Past this section, the river widened considerably as it approached Ox Bay. Many cottages dotted the shores there. We rounded the headland, turned south, and re-entered familiar territory. We had paddled this end of Ox Bay in 2020, desperately looking for a vacant campsite at the end of a very hot day. We made our way into Pickerel Bay and eventually into the small back bay on the south shore, where our booked campsite, site 633, existed. 

At first, we were a little concerned as we approached the site. The bay was rocky and weedy in the shallow water, and we couldn't see any viable tent pads or a fire pit. However, when we walked up the steep slope to a small flat area in a small grove of trees, we were quite pleased. The site was elevated over the water, offering some nice views of an island that dominated the centre of the small back bay in which we were camped. 

We discovered that the site was on a point along a small outlet between the back bay and a smaller pond to the south. The first thing we did was to scramble up on the rocks to get a feel for the lay of the land. 

The overcast skies kept their tears in while we set up camp. In fact, we didn't see any rain until the wee hours of the morning. 

The back of the site had a large rock face that acted as a wall. It was an interesting cabin-like effect that made the site feel homey. The fire pit was on a high rock overlooking the bay to the west. It was lovely. The one drawback of the site, however, was the lack of good swimming and firewood. We scrambled up the rock face in an effort to find some firewood, but didn't find much. As a result, we decided to paddle over to the island, where we found a copious amount of deadwood and swam off the deeper rocks there to wash off the grime of the paddling day. 

The rest of the evening was a fantastic night of sitting by the fire and enjoying the treats we had picked up at the French River Supply Post. The fire provided warmth as the sun went down and the temperature dropped. The sun tried poking through the cloud cover and succeeded just enough to cast a warm glow over the scenery. Magic.