Carol and Bruce Hodgins began leading canoe trips in 1957 for Camp Wanapitei on Lake Temagami in Northern Ontario, initially to the great rivers of that region and on into Quebec. Their first venture north of 60 found them on the South Nahanni, soon to be followed by the Coppermine River, and by the 1990s their annual tripping took them to the Soper River on Baffin Island. included with their richly descriptive accounts of wilderness travel with groups of people, are kayak adventures in Baja California, Mexico, and the Queen Charlottes, paddling in and near the Everglades and explorations on Heritage rivers in the Maritimes and along the coast of Newfoundland.

Few have personally experienced the breadth of wilderness travel in Canada as have the Hodgins husband-and-wife team. Their fifty years as "paddling partners," a legendary achievement, is a story of shared joys, challenges, triumphs and mishaps, delightfully told and augmented by excerpts from daily logs, historical insights and the tidbits of experience gleaned over the years.

Bruce W. Hodgins is professor emeritus of history, Trent University, and recipient of the Canadian Historical Association’s Clio Award for the North, 2000.

Ute Lischke teaches German and film studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. She is co-editor of Walking a Tightrope: Aboriginal People and Their Representations (WLUP, 2005).

David T. McNab teaches Native Studies at the School of Arts and Letters in the Atkinson Faculty of Liberal and Professional Studies at York University, Toronto, and is a public historian who has worked for more than a quarter century on Aboriginal land and treaty rights issues in Canada. He is co-editor of Walking a Tightrope: Aboriginal People and Their Representations (WLUP, 2005) and editor of Earth, Water, Air, and Fire: Studies in Canadian Ethnohistory (WLUP, 1998) for Nin.Da.Waab.Jig. He is also author of Circles of Time: Aboriginal Land Rights and Resistance in Ontario (WLUP, 1999).

Bruce W. Hodgins' profile page

Carol Hodgins has lived in Peterborough since 1965 and ran the Wanapitei's trip stores (Sangego) from 1967 until 1987, and wrote two books on wilderness nutritious cooking.

Carol Hodgins' profile page

A Memoir, a review of Canadian history, a guide to planning trips as well as excerpts from daily travel logs, Paddling Partners shares the Hodgins lifetime together across the backdrop of the open water.

Mosaic Magazine