Hello everyone! We’ve been working really hard, along with GeoTourism Canada and North Woods Canoe, to get ready for the York boat expedition! Just wanted to quickly update you on how it’s been going.

Teresa arrived at the “York Boat Factory” a little over a week ago, to have her first look at the boat. It was awesome! It was great to actually see it — she had been trying to picture the sheer size of it, but once she saw it, it wasn’t actually as overwhelming as she thought it would be. Over the next several days, she helped with a few small finishing tasks on the boat, which was a very neat opportunity. Unfortunately, we can’t upload any photos at this time, but GeoTourism Canada has lots of photos here.

The rest of the trip planning has been going well. An emergency plan is in place, as well as a meal plan. The crew will be feasting on dried moose meat, potatoes, carrots, turnips, oatmeal for breakfast, and “cracklings.” This is a fatty food, essentially just ground pork. It should be interesting! We will sleep with wool blankets, and wear our Yorkmen/voyageur costumes while we row and jackets made from Hudson’s Bay blankets in the evenings.

One reason for this update is to let you know that we have an opening on the crew! One of the men had to cancel (he has very good reasons we won’t disclose here, and he was very disappointed he can’t come). So, if you are interested, please fill in the form here as soon as possible! We start training this week, which, ideally, you can come for, but even if you can’t make it for all the training, or the whole trip, please apply. We know, it’s quite a long trip — June 1 to 18 — but if you can do half or so, please let us know! We can even accomodate 2 more people, if there’s a couple out there that would like to join us, or you’ve got a friend who would be keen!

We’ll try to update you more after we do the first lake trials this week! Stay tuned…