Kathy and Scott Warner

I’m Scott – A 63 year old that still thinks that he can do the same things that he did when he was in his forties – and in some cases I can. Kathy is the forty something five feet ten-inch reason that I stay so young at heart.

I began canoeing in my thirties as a way to spend part of my vacation time, which at that time was a lot of tent camping. We used the canoe to get away from the campground and spend the day exploring, swimming and fishing.

That became an exploratory 3-day trip in Killarney Park and a 7-day trip on the Restoule Route.

We joined the Wilderness Canoe Association and my son and I got involved in some of their weekend trips. We did the Credit, Nottawasaga and Salmon Rivers as day trips and the lower Magnetawan from Wawashkesh Lake to Highway 69 including running all of canal rapids.

That led to my son and I branching out on our own to lead three trips down the Spanish River. As part of that we took people to Palmer’s Rapids to do some basic whitewater instruction. This would have been in about 1977.

In the meantime we discovered the Gogama area through my digging around in the files of the Ministry. Those were the good old days of open offices at Queens Park and routes that were maintained by the Junior Rangers.

Those discoveries led us to the Sakatawi route, the Aux Sable Lake Route and the 3M Circle Route.

I met Kathy in the fall of 1984 after having spent several years solo canoeing – all in the Gogama area. Naturally by the time the canoeing season rolled around in 1985 we had planned some excursions.

You see, Kathy had done some canoeing also and so she was not unfamiliar with the basics.

We still laugh about our first trip – really an extended weekend – I took her to Schist Lake, a place I’d been before so I knew that the campsites were good and the swimming and fishing would be good. We arrived at our intended campsite. A nice site with an open area for lazing about and a nice steep rocky drop off for swimming. We unloaded the canoe and decided to place the tent out on a grassy spot where we could get a nice view of the water and of the night sky. Nature supplied the instruction later in the weekend as we were in the tent holding it down in a thunderstorm.

Kathy started her own company in 1988 and I lost my job of 27 years in 1990 so our vacation time was quite limited. We still managed to get away to our old haunts by scheduling some time around a long weekend.

Over the past few years we’ve had the time to devote to getting out for longer jaunts; including ten days to do Little Missinaibi, two weeks in the Gogama area and two weeks this year on Kipawa Lake.

Kathy has now hired an assistant so that she’ll have more time to devote to our summer canoeing and winter sunning vacations.

We both take physical conditioning seriously and work out about seven or eight times a week. Kathy’s work is near a gym so she’s there for aerobics on a regular basis. I usually do three or four weight workouts as well as five aerobic workouts every week. Some of my aerobic workouts are running and I enter a few 5 and 10k races each year. Through attrition I’ve gotten to the point where I now place in my age group.

All that was to tell you that we are not typical for our age groups. We are in very good shape and have plans to increase our workout schedule to meet the demands that an extended trip will place on our bodies.