by Tanya Johnson-MacVicar

If you’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting my grandfather, Valerian Marshall “Smokey”, it’s probably because he may have drove you to a medical appointment, maybe seen you on your worst day and probably ended up making you laugh before he got you home from that doctor’s visit or maybe you heard he was an Expo 67 paddler.

My grandfather will be 89 this June and for as long as I can remember my grandfather was always a medical carrier driver not a secret paddling rockstar, driving here and there and everywhere in between. It was on one of those trips that I learned that he had paddled from Potlotek to Montreal and it was quite the trip!

I first remember my grandfather talking about the paddlers and his Expo 67 canoe trip while travelling to Halifax with my grandparents and cousin. My grandfather talked about this canoe trip, and I was mesmerized! He talked about leaving with very little notice, how my uncle arthur fell out of the canoe and almost drown, talked about a baseball game in New Brunswick that they won and about a pet bear someone had near or in Kahnawake.

If I close my eyes now, I can still see my grandfather talking about his trip and pointing with his lips at the Northumberland shore and remembered out loud that it felt like it took forever just for them to get to this spot from Potlotek, days if I’m not mistaken.

I remember thinking, my grandfather paddled to Montreal by canoe, they paddled by canoe, two canoes in fact, t ...