Like many kids, my son Cade was infatuated with fire. At the end of a Magpie trip, a client approached me about giving him a potentially dangerous present.
“He’s eight, Joel.”
“He’s got a knife,” Joel responded.
I had given Cade a small pocketknife before the trip to wear on his belt. If he cut himself, it would be taken away.
“I watched him with the torch all week,” Joel continued. “He’s pretty cautious.”
No bigger than a child’s squirt gun, the torch erupted in a powerful three-inch blue flame when you pulled the trigger, capable of starting a fire in a downpour or causing a nasty burn.
The Fire Starter
The following year, the other guides and I were lining the boats around the first falls on the Magpie while guests waited upstream. It was a cold, dreary day, and I was concerned that waiting around they’d be freezing. When we were finished lining the boats, I went up to get them and they were happily chatting around a blazing fire.
“How’s everyone doing?” I asked, surprised and relieved.
“Great! Cade saved us,” was the response in unison.
“I suppose it’s worth bringing him along just to start fires,” said Steve, one of the guides, when I told him the story. “And he doesn’t eat much.”
Out of the Wilderness
Later on that trip, our rafts and gear were flown a mile down to a lake at the bottom of the unrunnable Magpie Gorge, while the group hiked around. Cade and I were the first to emerge from the dense boreal forest.
“What’s that, Dad?” Cade asked, pointing to a structure on an island in the lake a few hundred yards away.
“I have no idea,” I said. After a decade of guiding week-long wilderness expeditions and seeing nothing I was stunned. The structure wasn’t big, but it stuck out in the middle of nowhere.
We were running a conservation awareness trip in two weeks and the participants had been told there wasn’t a single structure along the entire length of the river. Participants on the conservation trip included, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC Radio), National Geographic Adventure Magazine, and environmental activists from Canadian Greenpeace, Sierra Club, and Fondation Rivières, a group working to protect rivers in Quebec.
Through the Eyes of a Child
The other two guides, Steve and Greg, arrived with the rest of the group. Steve was my close friend and Earth River’s partner in Tibet. His wit and charm had guests clamoring to ride in his boat. Greg was more serious and, unwittingly, played the straight man to Steve’s humor.
“What the???” Steve said, as he exited the woods.
“Possibly a new hunting cabin,” Greg suggested.
We set up lunch, and Steve, Greg and I, and apparently Cade, went up the trail a ways for in impromptu guide meeting to discuss the options for the conservation trip.
“Cade, why don’t you wait with the group while we talk?” I suggested when I realized he was trailing us. Although his ears weren’t physically big, he didn’t like to miss anything. “Look,” I said, as the three of us huddled together, “I personally told everyone coming on the conservation trip that they wouldn’t see anything on the river for a week.”
“One of the many reasons this place deserves protection.” Steve added.
“We could skip the hike and fly people around to the far side of the lake past the house.” Greg suggested.
“Yeah, until they look out the window,” Steve countered.
“What if we cover the plane windows with cardboard?” Greg suggested, “like the float and company does to protect the windows from the frames and oars when we fly in.”
“It’s a large group, at least 5 flights.” I said.
“They’d be short.”
“Unfortunately they charge a 50 mile minimum every take off and landing. It’s would cost thousands. I never budgeted for that and I don’t want to ask John for any more money.”
John was a guest from Connecticut who had done the Magpie with his two sons the year before. We were camping below Magpie Falls when a local man with a canoe and a dog dropped in and told us about the proposed dams. John generously offered to subsidize half the cost of a conservation awareness trip. The Magpie was among the wildest, most scenic whitewater rafting rivers in North America, yet few Canadians had heard of it or were aware of the plans to dam it. The dams would flood Magpie Gorge and 80 foot Magpie Falls, the scenic heart and sole of the river.
“I’m just going to have to tell the conservation group this structure wasn’t here last year so it’s not a shock,” I said, resigned to the situation. “I just prefer it wasn’t in their faces as they paddle out from here.”
“Dad, I just thought of something,” an elf-like voice piped up from below. Up to this point, Cade had been all ears. I hadn’t even noticed he had worked his way into the middle of the scrum.
“Not now, Cade. Tell me later,” I said, brushing him off distractedly. “We have to deal with this right now.”
“That’s what I’m talking about, Dad,” he countered.
“Okay, what?” I said impatiently.
“Instead of coming out of the woods here where you see the house, why don’t we just make the trail down the lake past the bend, and get in the boats there?”
“Jesus Christ, Greg, why didn’t you think of that?” Steve teased, though feeling frustrated with himself for not having thought of it himself.
“It’s an interesting idea,” Greg said, ignoring Steve. “They’ll be out of view of the house when they come out of the woods.”
It was simple and brilliant. I could hire a couple of locals to hike in, cut the dead stuff out of the way, and mark a new trail.
“Eric, you should bring this kid on every trip,” Steve said, as we were heading back to the group. “Yank him out of school if you have to.”
Cade’s eyes lit up.
“How old are you, hid, anyway?” Steve asked, Cade.
“Nine.”
“Even with a century on you, the three of us old fogies couldn’t figure that out. Actually, I might have thought of something if Greg hadn’t gotten me all discombobulated about covering damn plane windows with duct tape and cardboard.”
“I have an important question, Dad.” Now I was taking him seriously, actually, we all stopped to listen.
“Sure, Cade, what’s that?”
“Now that I saved you so much money with the plane, could you raise my allowance?”
“Jesus Christ, Eric, you did a hell of a job raising the little capitalist!” Steve blurted out, laughing.
Participants on the conservation trip were told about the cabin but never saw it from the new trail, as Cade had envisioned. The conservation trip, along with a subsequent press conference in Montreal, were successful in bringing attention to the plight of the river, and the dams at Magpie Gorge and Magpie Falls were shelved.
The Magpie River Today
Cade, now 35, has been running Magpie trips for nearly three decades and leads Earth River’s expeditions on this wild Quebec river. The proposed dams at Magpie Gorge and Magpie Falls have been stopped, and in 2021, the Innu Native Regional Council declared the Mutuhekau Shipu (Magpie River) a legal person, granting it certain rights, including the right to flow, maintain biodiversity, remain free from pollution, and to sue. This designation will ensure that the river remains in its wild, natural state in perpetuity.
By Eric Hertz