Paddlers ready to make splash

Guests were treated to some wonderful presentations at the Blackwater Paddlers annual spring meeting and slideshow at Chuck Mobley theatre Wednesday.

Prior to the presentations, club trip committee chair John Havens introduced the trip schedule for the 2008 season which features many historic events.

Quesnel hopes to take the club’s two voyageur canoes, Wannabe and Dancer, to Fort Langley Brigade Days Aug. 1-3 where they will join Fort Langley’s club and travel the Fraser River from Hope to Fort Langley then continue to the Vancouver Maritime Museum.

Havens also mentioned the Fort Langley group has plans for a major trip in honour of the 200th anniversary of Simon Fraser’s voyage. The group plans to travel to Fort St. James down the Stuart and Nechako rivers and arrive in Prince George July 24 for a historic civic event.

They hope to join up with Quesnel paddlers and head south along the Fraser to the Gold Pan City arriving July 26 or 27.

Another special event for the club will take place May 23. Author Stephen Hume will come to Quesnel to promote his new book Simon Fraser: In Search of Modern British Columbia.

The book describes Fraser’s 1808 adventure to seek a navigable route to the Pacific for the North West Company. Hume followed in Fraser’s footsteps and canoe wake for four years. He studied fading maps and diaries in archives across North America, interviewed the descendants of people who aided Fraser and retracted Fraser’s route across B.C.’s vast and varied landscape.

Historical records suggest it was May 29, 1808 that Fraser paddled through Quesnel. It is said their crew camped at what is present day Ceal Tingley Park that night. Fraser’s third in command on that voyage was Jules Maurice Quesnel, a 22-year-old clerk at the time, whom the city was eventually named after. Another member of his crew was John Baptiste Bouchie who has many descendants in the Quesnel area.

Jeff Dinsdale, a member of Museum and Heritage Commission of Quesnel said there will be a ceremony this summer commemorating Fraser’s journey and the unveiling of a plaque honouring Quesnel.

“There is nowhere in the community that says just who Jules Maurice Quesnel was,” Dinsdale said.

“Our group is planning on working with School District 28 to give kids an opportunity to learn more about local history.”

Blackwater Paddlers plan to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Fraser’s journey by traveling a portion of the Fraser river May 29

The evening also featured an amazing presentation by Jeff Dinsdale’s sons Tyler and Tim called Practically Nowhere. A documentary of the pairs journey to find a confluence nobody had ever been to.

“A few years ago I remember Tim and his wife Kristen took me on a drive down Nazko road to visit a confluence point. I had no idea what a confluence point was,” Jeff said.

“When we got to the spot it didn’t look any different than anywhere else. One thing I did notice was all the red pine trees and all the bug-killed trees, at the time I didn’t know that would eventually become a major issue.”

Confluence points are integer degree intersects where lines of latitude and longitude cross. The lines go north and south of the equator and east of the Prime Meridian in Greenwich, Eng. Tyler and Tim hoped to visit the closest confluence to Vancouver that had not been previously discovered which was 51 degrees north (51N) and 124 degrees west (124W). Since the invention of GPS was launched in 1980 people have had the ability to display their exact position on earth. The site www.confluence.org follows peoples journeys to various confluences across the world with photos and stories describing the journeys of each one.

There are 64,000 confluences in the world, however, most are in the ocean and the websites goal is to reach 14,000.

“The easily obtainable confluences in southern B.C. have all been visited already,” Tim said.

“I have kept an eye on this confluence for years, and finally had the time and resources to attempt it.”

They set off on their journey labour day weekend 2007 starting with a 545-km drive from Vancouver to Williams Lake, with Tim picking up Tyler in Boston Bar, then making a quick detour in Quesnel to visit his parents and borrow supplies.

From Williams Lake the pair drove 90-km west to Hanceville, then turned down Nemiah Valley Rd. for another 100-km until they reached the Nu Chugh Beniz campground in Ts’il?os Provincial Park on Chilko Lake. They took a powerboat to the south end of the lake before Canoeing up Edmonds creek for 6 km and then bushwhacking through the terrain to reach 51N 124W.

After three days of trekking through the wilderness they arrived on Sept. 9.

“We all have different reasons for doing this. I like the idea of being somewhere nobody has been before. It’s going off the tourist trail in your own interesting way,” Tim said.

For information on their journey visit www.confluence.org

Upcoming season features historical content