Downeaster Canoe Guide Paddles the Boundary Waters: A Mainer’s Tale
Chuck the Mainer Paddles the Boundary Waters
Chuck Alexander is a canoe guide and carpenter who lives in Maine. He’d long aspired to paddle in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. It took meeting a longtime paddler of the BWCA, Tim Cochrane, to make that dream come to fruition. Before embarking on a multi-night trip to the wilderness, the podcast team had a chance to meet Chuck, including a fishing trip to the Boundary Waters. This is the story of how paddling connects us, from Maine to Canada to Minnesota.
This episode is supported by Cascade Vacation Rentals and Sawbill Canoe Outfitters.
Reporting on Canadian Wildfires and Smoke in Minnesota
Journalists from World Press Institute Paddle with P&P
Ian Froese covers the Manitoba Legislature and provincial politics for CBC News in Winnipeg. He reported on wildfires that burned in Manitoba this summer. Some of the smoke from these wildfires drifted down to Minnesota throughout the peak of the summer tourism season on the North Shore and across the BWCA.
The smoke prompted U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber and other lawmakers from Minnesota and Wisconsin to write a letter sent to the Canadian government requesting them to take action to “mitigate wildfire and the smoke that makes its way south.”
“In our neck of the woods, summer months are the best time of year to spend time outdoors recreating, enjoying time with family and creating new memories, but this wildfire smoke makes it difficult to do all these things,” Stauber and the other members of Congress wrote.
The letter was mocked by many across Canada in the U.S., with Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew calling it a “timber tantrum.” Ian Froese paddled on Poplar Lake Sept. 17 and spoke with Joe Friedrichs about the timber tantrum letter and other news relevant to the border waters of Canada and Minnesota.
Pushing the River: Video Podcast with Frank Bures
Video Podcast with Minnesota Writer Frank Bures
Minnesota writer Frank Bures has a new collection of essays, Pushing the River. The essays are set on waterways that stretch from Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness to the Mississippi River—including a history of the state’s iconic Paul Bunyan Canoe Derby.
Frank met with Joe from the Paddle & Portage Podcast to talk about writing, media coverage of outdoor news across North America, and paddling in the BWCA and beyond.
More about the book, from the publisher:
In this collection, award-winning writer Frank Bures tells true stories as varied as the waters, weather, and rhythms of a canoe trip. From the terror of two kayakers who barely escaped the 2011 Pagami Creek Fire in the Boundary Waters to two young campers who experienced a supernatural scare in Canada’s Quetico Provincial Park in the 1970s to the author’s own miraculous rescue, Bures shares varied takes on what happens when you push the river.
The heart of the book is a telling of the lost history of the Paul Bunyan Canoe Derby, an annual 450-mile race run on the Upper Mississippi in the 1940s and 1950s that gave canoe-racing legend Gene Jensen his start—and which changed the course of modern canoeing. The tale includes the dominance of racers from the Leech Lake Indian Reservation, including many members of the Tibbets family, and the unacknowledged contributions of Ojibwe canoe builders Jim and Bernie Smith, whose design features are now part of the modern canoe-racing landscape.
Pushing the River is an essential read for anyone who loves what legendary canoeist Bob O’Hara called “the sense of perpetual adventure” that comes in the seat of a canoe, where you never quite know what you will encounter around the river’s next bend.
Paddling the Canadian Shores of Lake Superior
Podcast Video Discussion About Paddling Lake Superior
Erin Walker is a frequent contributor to Paddle and Portage media. She also appears regularly on the Lost Lakes YouTube channel. In this interview, Erin talks with Zack Kruzins, an outdoor wilderness guide and experiential education instructor around the world, most specifically on Lake Superior.
In 2018, Zack launched Such A Nice Day (SAND) Adventures, allowing him to live and share his passion for paddling and the outdoors with others.
Zack has led/organized many sea kayak expeditions on Lake Superior since 2006. Additionally, he has worked all over the world as a sea kayak guide, outdoor educator and instructor with many seasons at Outward Bound schools and other organizations under his belt. When he can, Zack now spends a good portion of his winters guiding kayaking programs on an expedition cruise ship in Antarctica with Polar Latitudes. Zack is very passionate about water and its importance in our lives. He feels the more time one spends on, in or near water, the greater the connection becomes to the world around us, as he shares with Erin in this P&P interview.
This conversation was recorded at Canoecopia 2025 in Madison, Wisconsin. It is supported by Bending Branches Canoe & Kayak Paddles.
Subscribe to the Paddle and Portage YouTube channel here.
Empowering Women in the Wilderness: Yoga, Portaging & the BWCA
Yoga, Paddling, Portaging, and the BWCA
The intersection of paddling, yoga, and self-reliance carries us into the BWCA Wilderness in this episode of the podcast.
Boreal Bliss Yoga Retreats is a Minnesota business owned by women who bring together themes of self-reliance, seasonal living, and the transformative power of time spent paddling and portaging in the BWCA Wilderness and surrounding area. They’ve been in business since 2017 and have hosted more than 60 retreats focused on this theme. For their BWCA adventures, they partner with Birchwood Wilderness Camp and Ashley Bredemus.
We travel to the end of the Gunflint Trail, South Lake, and Rose Lake in this episode of the podcast.
Music in this episode from Upstream Drifters and Ian Tamblyn.
This episode is sponsored by Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness, Chik-Wauk Museum & Nature Center, Northstar Canoes, Borderland Lodge.
BWCA Adventures: Get Out and Make It Happen
BWCA Adventures: Get Out and Do It
Paddling the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness
Journey in the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness
We head west in this episode, to the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness. M Baxley joins a group of paddlers who came together under the leadership of Jordan Taylor and Sandra Newbury to travel on the Salmon River in Idaho. One of the great rivers of the West, the Salmon rolls through the Frank Church, the largest federally managed wilderness in the United States outside of Alaska. Confluences River Expeditions provided the group with rafts and raft guides while the other boaters traveled the river via canoes and kayaks. Join us as we head to the river of no return.
This episode is supported by Bent Paddling Brewing Company, Sawtooth Outfitters, Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness.
The Glossy Marketing of the Wilderness
Marketing the Wilderness: Author Talk on the Podcast
Joe’s book pulls back the curtain on the outdoor recreation industry, on the glossy images, the feel-good branding, the well-meaning campaigns, and asks, “What’s being left out?” It traces how the idea of “wilderness” in the U.S. was built through marketing strategies that romanticize land as empty and pristine, while erasing the Indigenous people who’ve always been there.
Joe discusses the concepts he raises in his book on this episode of the podcast.
Watch the video option of the podcast in the YouTube post below.