"Paul Skoczylas" wrote in message news:zLhKb.82839$6b2.59240@edtnps84...
"magoo_ns" wrote in message
om...

A fine effort and a great website!
A minor quibble: You can't start in Montreal and "cross Canada".
You've missed four of the ten Provinces. As a Maritimer, I see this
claim made quite often.

If the goal is to reproduce the work of the old explorers, as was implied in
the original post, and not simply to paddle across Canada, then there would
be no need to start further east than Montreal--since you could get there
(from Halifax, St. John's, or Europe) by any decent sailing ship in those
days. Getting much further was difficult in those days before any locks
(not to mention the railways) were built, so Canoes were pretty important...

-Paul


Well, that's the trouble. The goal, as stated by the paddlers
themselves on their website, is to paddle "across Canada" from
Montreal. It's wonderful that they're also going to retrace the
original canoe route, but it didn't cross Canada either. Quite simply
you cannot cross anything by starting in the middle. If they would
take out the "cross Canada" reference, it would in no way diminish
their great achievment, and would erase the unintended snub to
Atlantic Canadians.
I'm not suggesting that one would have to touch all provinces to cross
the country, but I believe Terry Fox had it right; start at the
Atlantic coast of the Easternmost province and finish on the Pacific
coast of the Westernmost.