Manitoba Women Paddling Canada for Cystic Fibrosis
Three women from Manitoba are paddling across Canada to raise money and awareness for cystic fibrosis.
Kendra Hurley, Claire Davis and Rylea McEvoy, also known at the Byway Babes, began their cross-Canada canoe journey a month ago in British Columbia to help Cystic Fibrosis Canada.
Visit here website here to donate and follow their trip.
As of May 24, the three women were coming up on Regina, Saskatchewan. The group has been planning to paddle across Canada for two years, says Davis.
“Kendra and Rylea conceived it over some sangria in an aluminum canoe, and they had thought about it, and asked me if I wanted to join in the adventure,” she said. “I was like ‘why not?’”
“It sounded amazing, and it’s just kind of the right time in our lives to do something like this.”
Davis has a personal reason for wanting to raise awareness for cystic fibrosis, as she was diagnosed with the disease, which affects the lungs, when she was a child. She notes the disease affects everyone differently.
“I’ve always been very active, so I try to keep my lungs in good working condition, which definitely has its struggles at times,” she said. “It does take a lot of effort, and definitely the other do pick up a little bit of slack for me because I can only go so far.”
Hurley adds it’s pretty incredible watching Davis paddle with them on their journey.
“Rylea and I, we have it easy in comparison,” she said. “She has one more thing that she has to deal with. It’s pretty amazing. She’s pretty cool.”
Hurley said their teamwork and paddling skills have improved over the month since they started their trip.
“It’s been going really well,” said Hurley. “We’ve been really working on our communication.”
Their goal is to finishing in Saint John, New Brunswick by October. They plan to enjoy the journey as long as it lasts.
“It’s just great to spend so much time with these women, and just doing such a great cause,” said Davis. “It’s just nice to get a change of pace of life, getting away from cities, and getting out in nature.”
The Planned Route:
Our intention is to paddle the Fraser – yes, upstream – to Hope, B.C. This is what Mike Ranta did in his own cross-Canada paddle. Others have paddled to Chilliwack instead, which is a little closer and will likely be our fall-back plan.
Of course at this point, the difficulty lies in the time-span between attaining Hope and the Bow River breaking up on the other side of the Rockies. Never fear, we won’t be idle. We will be paddling and hiking (as a kind of test-portage) our way across the mountains, essentially doing our last-minute testing before we’re truly up against the clock.
As soon as the Bow breaks up and is free of ice, we’ll be on our way towards St. John! We will travel down the Bow (through Calgary!) to the South Saskatchewan, right to Diefenbaker Dam. Here a portion of water is siphoned off into the Qu’Appelle River, snaking us by Regina on our way to meet the Assiniboine River. The Assiniboine will of course take us to our home city of Winnipeg.
We want to spend some time in Winnipeg, having a brief rest to see family and friends, as well as replace and repair gear.
On our departure we’ll do another CF event, which will an excellent Halfway Celebration for us and hopefully help spread the word about us and CF awareness!
We’ll make our way up the Red River and skirt Lake Winnipeg to the Winnipeg River, where we’ll play leapfrog with far too many dams into Ontario.
The Land-of-a-Million-Lakes (Ontario) will be our biggest challenge in terms of navigation while we make our way through the many bodies of water beween the Ontario-Manitoba border and Lake Superior, which will be no small task either.
Once we’ve made our way along the North coast of Lake Superior to Sault Ste-Marie, we’ll pass into Lake Huron, then take the French River to Lake Nipissing, Pine Lake, Chant Plein Lake and to the Ottawa River.
The Ottawa will take us through Ottawa City, Montreal and Quebec City.
From there, we will be zig-zagging our way down to Saint John, New Brunswick (via the Saint John River of course), enabling us to truly say we touched both oceans.
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