Tent Dwellers festival continues with Rivers Day paddle

Forty two enthusiastic paddlers took to the water June 8 for a Tent Dwellers Festival paddling experience of their own.

They celebrated Canadian Rivers Day and the 10th anniversary of the Shelburne Canadian Heritage River by paddling a section of the river that was part of the canoe trip from the 1908 book, The Tent Dwellers.

The Albert Bigelow Paine book chronicles a wonderful canoeing and trout fishing trip through the interior of southwestern Nova Scotia in the early 1900’s. This public paddle builds on the momentum of the Tent Dwellers canoe trip re-creation that took eight paddlers a week to complete in May.

“It’s so exciting to have such great participation for the paddle. Rivers Day is a chance for us to stop and appreciate our rivers, and today was a celebration of both the river and the book,” said Leif Helmer, Protected Areas Coordinator with the Department of Environment and the paddle organizer.

The 42 started their morning with a short presentation linking their excursion to passages from The Tent Dwellers. “How absolutely blessed we are to have this magnificent gift of Mother Nature sitting on our very own doorstep,” commented Region of Queens Municipality Mayor John Leefe, one of the day’s participants.

Canadian Rivers Day was proclaimed in 2003 and is celebrated every June 8 on waterways across the country, this year with the slogan, “Rivers are the veins of Mother Earth.”

For information on upcoming

Tent Dwellers Festival events, visit www.tentdwellers2008.com.