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. 

I awoke to the pitter-patter of rain on my hammock tarp. It would be the last day of our trip. 

We didn't erect a tarp over the kitchen area the night before, so the first thing I did in the morning was pack away my hammock so we could have some space to sit under my hammock tarp comfortably while we had breakfast. 

The rain stopped long enough to get a fire going and to make breakfast and coffee. It started back up again intermittently as we were breaking camp, but not enough to be a real nuisance. Just as we were departing the site around 10 AM, it started coming down hard enough to make us reach for our rain gear. 

We had an 18-kilometre paddle up the Pickerel River back to our car at Cedar Village and Marina. There would be no portages along the way. While I was looking forward to the paddle because I had never been on this part of the Pickerel before, I did not have great expectations of experiencing anything too sensational; I had an inkling that most of the paddle would be through cottage country. Imagine my surprise when, only ten minutes after leaving the campsite, we experienced the highlight of the day.  

On the north shore of the river, in a weedy little inlet, I noticed an oddly shaped "rock" in the distance. It was a dark rock with a brown spot in the centre. Without saying anything to Dad, I edged the canoe over in that direction to get a closer look; to me, the rock looked a lot like a face. When I was sure I was looking at the face of a bear, I alerted my father with a whisper. 

It was a small bear, perhaps an adolescent. It was intently feasting on something in the weeds. Paddling slowly and quietly, we managed to get quite close to it while it enjoyed its breakfast. Just to make sure it knew we were there, and to get a better look at it, I called out to the creature. In retrospect, I felt a little bad disturbing it because it soon sauntered off back into the trees, either finished with what it was eating or uncomfortable with our proximity. I managed to get some shaky footage of the experience. 

Exhilarated and feeling grateful for that wonderful encounter, we continued our paddle eastward up the Pickerel River. Twenty minutes after meeting Winnie the Pooh, we were approaching the CNR rail line once again. 

The southern shore of the river displayed the carnage of Parry Sound 33, a devastating wildfire that decimated most of the forest between the Pickerel and Key Rivers, and further to the south in Henvey Inlet First Nation in 2018. 

You can see the wide-ranging effects of the fire in the following satellite image. The large brown area is the aftermath of Parry Sound 33. 

Image provided courtesy of https://browser.dataspace.copernicus.eu/ which contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data [2025]' for Sentinel data. I have marked some landmarks in white .

More than 11,300 hectares were destroyed. While that may be relatively small compared to larger fires further to the north, what made this one particularly newsworthy was its location, smack dab in the middle of Georgian Bay cottage country. It was all over the news because cottages, homes, and important ecosystems were lost in Ontario's summertime recreational playground. 

This was, indeed, a tragic and costly fire. It should be noted, however, that at the time of writing this trip report at the very end of 2025, there are a great number of communities further north that have to deal with the constant threat of fire, year in and year out. As is often the case,  when places like the French River Delta or Jasper are affected, the issue becomes a salient talking point on a national level. When fires affect smaller communities in more remote places, they tend to get less coverage. Anyone being evacuated or losing their home to fire anywhere is a tragedy. Large losses of wildlife habitat anywhere are tragedies. In short, in all areas of the country, we need to be more prepared for wildfires. More preventative measures should be put into place, rather than continuing to simply deal with the consequences once they occur. It is undeniable that these fires are becoming larger and more intense. It is a problem that isn't going away any time soon, folks. 

It was determined that a disabled vehicle in a remote area near Henvey Inlet was the cause of Parry Sound 33. When I read this, I was curious what exactly a 'disabled' vehicle is. Does that mean it was in need of repairs and didn't work? Or did it mean that there was something wrong with it that caused the fire, but it went undiagnosed? Or perhaps, the disabled part was the use of the passive voice, and it had been disabled for a reason? Was it parked in an accessible parking space? If a vehicle is, indeed, disabled, how can it start a fire? Does it simply spontaneously combust like a Spinal Tap drummer? 

In the news reports that I perused online, I couldn't find any more details explaining how a 'disabled' vehicle started a costly and devastating wildfire. Perhaps it was something to do with the battery in the 'disabled' vehicle and flammable material in or near it?  Who knows?

Or maybe the vehicle was a Pinto from the '70s, and a chipmunk brushed up against the car's bumper?!? 

Regardless, the explanation for the cause of the fire seemed somewhat enigmatic, in my humble opinion; it simply begs more questions. 

Twenty minutes past the CNR bridge and the many cottages on the north shore, a large, beautiful cliff emerged on river-left. 

The next half hour was spent through a narrower section of the river with steep banks. There weren't many cottages along this section.  The river got very narrow, shallow, and rocky just before reaching David's Bay. Thankfully, it wasn't too windy crossing the wider bay. 

We found ourselves heading on a southward trajectory once we reached the southeastern corner of David's Bay. We paddled up the North Channel, where the river had gorgeous granite banks on both shores. There were a couple of very pretty islands at the south end of the channel. 

By the time we rounded the bend and began heading east again, it was noon, and we stopped on a weedy beach on the north shore to make some lunch wraps and stretch our legs. 

The rest of the journey was paddling through the cottage-laden Twin Narrows and Cross Narrows to our car. We were fortunate to have a tailwind along this section to spur us along. It was not the most exciting paddle, but when things felt a little monotonous, I just asked Dad if he had any dried mango. 

He didn't. 

By a quarter past one, we were paddling under Highway 69, once again.

A few minutes later, we were pulling ashore at Cedar Village and Marina; our canoe trip was over.