“It was a bizarre idea. Pleasure vessels—other than the occasional canoeist—simply don’t travel the length of the Mackenzie River. At over 1,700 kilometres it’s the longest in Canada. It flows north through one of the largest wilderness areas in the world before spilling into the Arctic Ocean. Its extensive drying flats and sandbars shift throughout the ice-free season from May to October. The few isolated villages, mostly from the Dene and Inuvialuit nations, are typically hundreds of kilometres apart with little sign of human presence elsewhere. In places, striking high bluffs and dry distant mountain ranges frame the river but mostly the shoreline is low and monotonous and lined with spruce and willow trees. More black, grizzly and polar bears, plus caribou and muskox inhabit this region than humans. Hungry hordes of blackflies, mosquitos and no-seeums can drive a person insane….”
