Sports & Recreation Outdoor Skills
Deep Waters
Courage, Character and the Lake Timiskaming Canoeing Tragedy
- Publisher
- HarperCollins Canada
- Initial publish date
- Jun 2010
- Category
- Outdoor Skills
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9781443400275
- Publish Date
- Jun 2010
- List Price
- $11.99
Add it to your shelf
Where to buy it
Description
There are few writers who can take the facts of an actual event and transform them into a compelling story that captures the mind and the heart. James Raffan is that rare author, proving with Deep Waters that he is a masterful storyteller who has not only penned a story that is by turns harrowing and poignant, but is also a powerful investigative work that sensitively explores the nature of courage, risk and loss.
On the morning of June 11, 1978, 27 boys and four leaders from St. John’s School in Ontario set out on a canoeing expedition on Lake Timiskaming. By the end of the day, 12 boys and one leader were dead, with all four canoes overturned and floating aimlessly in the wind. This tragedy, which was first deemed to be an “accident,” was actually, as James Raffan explains, a shocking tale of a school’s survival philosophy gone terribly wrong, unsafe canoes and equipment, and a total lack of emergency preparedness training. Deep Waters is a remarkable story of endurance, courage and unspeakable pain, a book that also explores the nature of risk-taking and the resilience of the human spirit.
About the author
James Raffan is a prolific writer, speaker, and geographer, and the author of numerous books, including the bestselling Circling The Midnight Sun; Emperor Of The North; Bark, Skin And Cedar; and Fire In The Bones. He has written for a variety of media outlets, including National Geographic, Canadian Geographic, Up Here, Explore and The Globe and Mail, and produced radio and television documentaries for CBC Radio and the Discovery Channel. His work has taken him all over the world. He is an international fellow of the Explorers Club, a past chair of the Arctic Institute of North America, and a fellow and past governor of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, service for which he was awarded many medals, including the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal. From 2010 to 2013, he traveled through the Arctic Circle, spending time in Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Alaska, Canada, and Greenland, as he researched and wrote on culture and climate change in the North. He lives in Seeley’s Bay, Ontario. Visit him at JamesRaffan.ca or follow him on Twitter @raffjam.
Other titles by
Ice Walker
A Polar Bear's Journey through the Fragile Arctic
Circling The Midnight Sun
Dazed but Not Confused
Tales of a Wilderness Wanderer
Fire In The Bones
Bill Mason and the Canadian Canoeing Tradition
Emperor Of The North
Sir George Simpson and the Remarkable Story of the Hudson's Bay Company
Bark, Skin And Cedar
Reflections on the Canoe in the Canadian Experience
Tumblehome
Meditations and Lore from a Canoeist's Life
Emperor of the North
The Lure of Faraway Places
Reflections on Wilderness and Solitude
Every Trail Has a Story
Heritage Travel in Canada