Quebec Paddlers Complete 1,500 km Canoe Trip

Six Canadians have completed their 1,500-kilometre canoe trip through northern Quebec and remote Labrador.

The trip was two years in the making and was called Expedition AKOR. The team included Philippe Poulin, Pier-Luc Morissette, Sarah-Jeanne Giroux, Guillaume Moreau, Nicolas Roulx and Charles Fortin.

On June 6, they left from the starting point in Schefferville, Quebec, a former iron ore town in interior Quebec.

They descended the De Pas and George Rivers to Ungava Bay before making their way up the Koroc River and through the Torngat mountains to the Labrador coast.

While in the Torngats, they climbed the 1,652-metre Mount d’Iberville, the highest point in Quebec/Labrador.

The video below shows what the coastline along the Torngat Mountains is like:

After their climb, Giroux and Poulin left the trip as planned and headed home.

From there, the others paddled another 500 kilometres south along the Atlantic Ocean.

On July 12, they finished the expedition in Nain, the northernmost town on the Labrador coast, after a 70-kilometre day of paddling in cold weather.

They updated their social media with, “Here’s a spot we’ve been looking forward to. After a 14-hour 70-kilometre push against winds and tides, our brave adventurers arrived at the final destination of a great expedition at 9 p.m.”

One of their biggest worries was that of polar bears, but over the entire trip they never saw any signs of them.

One of the goals of the trip was to collect wood samples to be tested at Laval University. In total, they collected 50 samples to hand over.

The team will now begin to get their gear ready for the trip home. For more photos and stories visit here.