I was lucky enough to have begun tipping in the days of wood
and canvas canoes and wool blankets. Then, as aluminium canoes became
more common, I remember wishing we had them.
One season we came across a fellow named Ohio from Tennessee -- a giant
of a fellow who liked to sing "What's high in the middle and round on the
ends: O-HI-O." We were crawling down a portage on the lower Missinaibi
at Thunderhouse Falls when we heard this chant accompanied by a lot of banging.
Along came Ohio with a Grumman aluminum, dragging it behind him on the flat
parts, and kicking it in front of him down the steep parts. We were
pretty impressed. Later we saw him take a similar approach to running
rapids – he'd just ram on down through, with none of this namby pamby eddy
hopping sissy stuff that we had to do due to the fragility of our boats.
At the end of our trip in Moosonee we spent a couple of days earning train
fare by moving freighter canoes from a compound on the outskirts of town to
the train for a fellow with a camp at Moose Crossing. In the evenings
we were pretty tired, and simply flaked out in one of the box cars, wrapped
up in our blankets and nestled warmly together. Ohio turned up one evening,
heaved his boat on top of ours in the box car, and talked loudly at us for
several hours as we tried to rest. Since he had a sleeping bag rather
than a blanket, he chose not to bundle with us, and instead stretched out
a few feet away, closer to the canoe pile. Eventually he quieted down, only
to begin snoring extremely loudly at us.
Now I don't know exactly what caused it to happen, but in the middle of
the night Ohio's poor abused Grumman slid off the pile and landed on him.
I can't say if it was vibrations from the snoring, or if the canoe did it
deliberately out of revenge for being mistreated on the river, or if one of
us helped things along, but the result was certainly satisfying.
The trip back on the train was quite relaxing. Although it was a freight
train, it had a passenger car with wooden benches and exposed platforms at
each end. We spent the day riding along either dozing on the benches or hanging
out on the platform watching the black spruce go by. Didn't hear a peep
out of old Ohio either, though I expect that locking him in with his aluminum
monstrosity in the boxcar at the other end of the train had something to
do with it.
Once season we did get some aluminum canoes, but shortly discovered that
they were either too cold or too hot, were always noisy, and handled like
slugs. So much for progress.