Canadian National Film Board New Boys – old school 1973 canoeing

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Everyone gets their fifteen minutes. Nothing in life weirds me out more than knowing I will forever be trapped in a 1973 film about St. John’s Cathedral Boys School. The Canadian National Film Board produced a half hour documentary on the school for a Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) series called West. You can now watch The New Boys online.

The new boy trip was also known as the English River trip – a wet and cold 350-mile canoe trip starting in Western Ontario and ending in Selkirk, Manitoba. September in Canada is October in North Dakota. Rainy and windy. Unpleasant.

There were two canoe brigades in September of 1973, made up of grade 8 through 10 St. John’s new boys. The film crew focused on my brigade. They were only able to film when they could get access to the brigades – where there were roads. We met at convenient points and food box drops, which were few. Much of the film shot at the school. The shots of us canoeing are at places like Seven Sisters (one of the many power plants on the Winnipeg River), Traverse Bay on Lake Winnipeg, Grand Beach (where we woke up on the final morning) and finally the meandering, muddy, methane producing, always flooding, north-flowing Red River.

The instantaneous immersion was akin to boot camp. We arrived at school a Sunday. We were given haircuts, issued clothes, laundry numbers, canoe gear, and assigned a chore / duty. We boarded an old yellow rented school bus on Tuesday morning, four canoes in tow, driven about 350 miles east of the school. I learned how to sleep sitting up on that school bus.

The trip took about two weeks. It rained incessantly, and we were “wind blown” (unable to canoe because of the wind) on too many occasions to count. My canoe dumped twice, once while shooting rapids.  Misters Arthur, Kleinhaus, Weatherbe, and someone from the CBC crew led the brigade.

There were no tents. Each of us had a heavy plastic dropcloth, a mess tin, a spoon and whatever else we could cram into a duffel bag, which was often soaked, always damp, and never dry.

This rite of passage immediately socialized you with your peers and the school. Hours of paddling, bad food, and exposure to the elements took their toll on each of us in different ways. By the time the trip was over, the spartan conditions at the school seemed outright luxurious.