On April 26, 2025, Club members will have a new setting for their AGM, including the benefit of hearing from a Canadian best-selling author. Adam Shoalts, Canadian canoeist, hiker and adventurer has written five outstanding books about our vast geography and his travels. He is coming to Georgetown’s Gellert Centre to talk about his 3,400k solo journey from Lake Erie to the Arctic.
($20 early bird tickets go on sale starting today and until Feb. 17 for members only. After Feb. 17, tickets increase to $25, and non-members can also buy tickets.)
Adam is called Canada’s modern Indiana Jones and for good reason. In his book Where the Falcon Flies, he takes us with him on his odyssey starting from his St. Williams home on the north shore of Lake Erie. On a whim, Adam ponders the flight of a peregrine falcon and the bird’s summer nesting spot in the Torngat Mountains, at the tip of Labrador and eastern Quebec. He decides to follow its migration path on a route that takes him from Lakes Erie and Ontario, the St. Lawrence to Quebec City. From there, Adam left his canoe for the hiking part of his journey, north through the Laurentian Mountains and beyond.
Author Spends Three Months
To Find Nesting Falcons
After Adam’s long hiking portion of his journey from Quebec City to Labrador City, he bought a canoe and re-started his paddle to the Arctic from Little Wasbush Lake. Spoiler alert: the author had spent three months to find the nesting falcons and he wasn’t to be disappointed. “It was the kind of thrill that I felt sure would always give me a smile whenever I though of it. Any time I saw a falcon again, I’d picture this awesome place and feel transported back to it,” he writes.
As readers, we are transfixed by Adam’s courage and resolve to continue on through all types of adversity, particularly his long days outdoors, as he faces tremendous weather challenges and unforgiving geography. He survives mostly on a modest diet of protein bars and freeze-dried dinners. He physically endures more and risks everything to get to his final destination. Yet, we are uplifted by reading about his daily, weekly, and monthly accomplishments.
He is impressed and thankful for the goodness of the people he meets along the way, who provide places to camp, food or help with broken equipment. Adam is a wonderfully descriptive writer. He integrates into his story-telling the history of the land. He draws us closer to nature. He makes us understand the vastness of the land we call Canada and the need to protect our ecosystem. One of his lasting messages is to get outdoors ourselves: “Too much time spent cooped up inside staring at digital screens is apt to make us a little to cynical about the world. But getting back outdoors with some old-fashioned travel is a pretty good cure for that.”