By Lawrence Powell

The Spectator

NovaNewsNow.com

Eight paddlers from Halifax County and Southwestern Nova Scotia left Saturday afternoon to retrace the route taken by American Author Albert Bigelow Paine and his friend Eddie Breck in the early 1900s at what is now Kejimkujik National Park.

The event pays tribute to Paine’s chronicles of the trip as told in his book The Tent Dwellers, first published in 1908. The launch Saturday kicks off the six-month-long Tent Dwellers Centennial Festival 2008.

Undaunted by rain and wind, the eight trippers set out from Jake’s Landing and arrived shortly at Jim Charles’ Point where they were to spend the night under the pines, just as Paine and Breck had done with their guides Del (The Stout) Thomas and Charles (The Strong) Charleston more than 100 years earlier.

Intrepid 21st Century paddlers were Sandra Phinney of Yarmouth County, Vicki Healy of Shelburne, Halifax’s Dale Dunlop, Alain Belliveau of Meteghan River, retired Keji warden Bob Thexton, Liverpool resident Colin Gray, Bridgewater’s Brian Braganza, and Eastern Shore resident Peter MacInroy.

The route to retrace the voyage of the Tent Dwellers will cover more than 100 kilometres of lakes, portages, rivers, and woods to Little Tobeatic Lake before heading back to the Shelburne River, on to Lake Rossignol, and back to Keji.

See pictures.