It is pretty easy to picture a mountie: red jacket, big black hat, horse; but how often is a mountie pictured in a canoe?

10 years ago Ed Hill, staff sergeant of the Gibsons RCMP helped organize and participate in a big paddling event: Vision Quest. This event involved RCMP officers and native communities working together to travel via ocean-going canoe down the coast of BC. It was a huge undertaking, with stops in each native village along the way, and a great success. Due to the appreciation of the participants, and the positive effect on the community’s youth, a subsequent event was planned, and in 2001 over 100 paddlers took part in Paddling Together along BC’s Fraser River.

The first Paddling Together journey took place from Yale to Gibsons, BC, and included the RCMP, West Vancouver and North Vancouver Police and many at risk youth from the native communities. An extreme honour was provided by the Squamish and Tsawwassen First Nations who each brought their Nation’s canoes to pull along with the contingent. In 2001, and for all the following years of Paddling Together, a man named Chris Cooper made the journeys possible. Chris Coopers’ Wilderness Adventures Unlimited supplied the canoes needed to make the journey possible, as it was close to impossible for the event organizers to find enough on their own. Chris Cooper provided the canoes free of charge, and it is a fact that the first journeys could not have happened without his generous and experienced assistance.

Ocean-going kayaks are a popular pastime for many visitors to the West Coast, but there is a more traditional precursor to them: seafaring canoes.

Thousands of years before powerboats and jetskis, the First Nations people of the North and West Coast used dug-out canoes made from cedar logs to travel down rivers and across the ocean. The peoples used them to travel, fight, and trade with each-other, although with the introduction of European influence the use of traditional dugout canoes dropped down to almost nothing. Today there has been a rekindling of interest and appreciation for the traditions of the First Nations people, and with events like Tribal Journeys (late 1990s). For each of the Pulling Together events native communities have participated with their own traditional dugout canoes. The canoes are carved and painted by modern native artisans, but the weight of the boats are still so heavy they need a team to carry them.

The 2008 Pulling Together event is titled “Return to the River”, and will see police and native communities from all over BC working together again to develop stonger and better relations. Pddling Together is a great idea for team spirit, and wonerful modern take on rekindling traditions thousands of years old.

For more information see: www.pullingtogether.ca

Or contact: Ed Hill, (604)886-3979 or edhillart@hotmail.com