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An Incredible life
NOSLEEP
Member Posts: 4,526
You likely have never heard of Don Starkell. He is from Canada.
He passed away from cancer on Saturday Jan 28. He paddled his canoe out of Winnipeg on a 20,000km adventure. This is a little coverage in the news today.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/01/30/great-canadian-adventurer-don-starkell-takes-his-final-paddle/
Don Starkell slept beside a fireplace on a rollout bed in his living room for much of his life because it reminded him of being nestled on a riverbank with only the moon and stars above and the promise of another day's adventure ahead.
Beyond the bed and the fireplace the room was cluttered with curios, trinkets and clues that hinted at the nature of their irrepressible owner's improbable life.
"Don's room looked like an old explorer's cabin," says Chris Forde, a Starkell family friend.
"There were gold ingots that Don had found, paddles from Amazonian tribes, antique medicine bottles, necklaces and old rings.
"I think it was Don's way of feeling like he was out in that world."
Out in a world where the only limit was your imagination, and where a divorced father with two teenage sons could pack his boys into a red canoe - with a Canadian flag imprinted on the bow - and paddle away from Winnipeg, Man., in the spring of 1980 and, two years later, paddle into the mouth of the Amazon River.
It was an epic, 20,000 km adventure - the longest canoe trip ever undertaken. The Starkell name would find its way into the Guinness Book of World Records and onto Canadian bookshelves with the publication of Paddle to the Amazon, Mr. Starkell's account of the trip.
"Don always seemed superhuman, and thus, immortal, too," Doug Gibson, the book's editor at McClelland & Stewart said in an email interview with the Winnipeg Free Press.
www.PaddleToTheAmazon.com
Don Starkell
."Yet Don, very strong in body and immensely strong in determination, not only planned it, he pulled it off, despite all the obstacles that high seas, drug-runners, alligators, piranhas and ill health could throw at him."
Immortal though he seemed, not even the legendary Canadian adventurer was a match for cancer. Mr. Starkell died on the weekend. He was 79, and had been ill for two years. His family is not conducting interviews at this time leaving friends, and former editors, to talk about a man who, in many ways, was born not before his time but after it.
"People always said Don was born about 300-years too late," says Mr. Forde, who is working on an educational documentary about Mr. Starkell's life. "He kind of likened himself to the great explorers of our time. He was a great history buff."
He was also an orphan, an insecure kid, who discovered his freedom and found his confidence - in a canoe -in the midst of a Manitoba catastrophe.
Massive flooding drowned Winnipeg in 1950. Mr. Starkell would paddle residents from spot to spot, delivering groceries to the stranded.
"Paddling changed my life," he says in a clip from Mr. Forde's film. "Everything I have done has come from that."
www.PaddleToTheAmazon.com
Don Starkell with son Dana
.He and the boys, Jeff and Dana, spent a decade hiking, mountain climbing, paddling, walking and planning their Amazon trip before pointing their bow south and shoving off.
It was a goal to push for, together, and, amid the push, it was a way for a father to stay close to his sons. When it actually appeared as though they might actually go relatives would invite Jeff and Dana to dinner - independent of their father - and plead with them to abandon the idea, telling them their father was nuts.
And maybe he was. Maybe they all were.
"That two kids, at 18 and 19, would leave all their friends, their [garage] bands, their girlfriends and commit themselves to going away for two years - that's the greatest honour I've ever had in my life," Mr. Starkell says in the documentary.
The Amazon was only the beginning. The next impossible dream was to solo-kayak the Northwest Passage. Mr. Starkell set out in 1990, paddled for three years and fell short when his boat and - nearly his body - became entombed in ice just shy of his goal. He lost all his fingertips and parts of his toes to frostbite.
"I sat in that kayak for 25 hours," he told The Journal of Canadian Wilderness Canoeing a few years ago. "I felt that, yes, I'm in agony. I'm in pain and I'm dying, and all that, but so many times I was fighting with myself - should I release myself and go into my final sleep?
"I said to myself that I don't care how painful, but my life is going to have to be taken. I am not going to release it."
He wrote another book, and kept finding new adventures, new limits to test: paddling from Iowa to New York; down the Mississippi and, in his later years, daily on the Red River right outside his back door.
Cancer was a different challenge, an unequal fight. Cruel. Relentless. The disease beat the septuagenarian down, sapping his strength, leaving him unable to paddle for the final 18 months of his life.
Jeff and Dana Starkell are planning a cruise on the Red River this summer as a memorial. Memories will be shared. Stories told and a great Canadian adventurer's ashes scattered, to be caught up by the current and carried on toward the sea.
He passed away from cancer on Saturday Jan 28. He paddled his canoe out of Winnipeg on a 20,000km adventure. This is a little coverage in the news today.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/01/30/great-canadian-adventurer-don-starkell-takes-his-final-paddle/
Don Starkell slept beside a fireplace on a rollout bed in his living room for much of his life because it reminded him of being nestled on a riverbank with only the moon and stars above and the promise of another day's adventure ahead.
Beyond the bed and the fireplace the room was cluttered with curios, trinkets and clues that hinted at the nature of their irrepressible owner's improbable life.
"Don's room looked like an old explorer's cabin," says Chris Forde, a Starkell family friend.
"There were gold ingots that Don had found, paddles from Amazonian tribes, antique medicine bottles, necklaces and old rings.
"I think it was Don's way of feeling like he was out in that world."
Out in a world where the only limit was your imagination, and where a divorced father with two teenage sons could pack his boys into a red canoe - with a Canadian flag imprinted on the bow - and paddle away from Winnipeg, Man., in the spring of 1980 and, two years later, paddle into the mouth of the Amazon River.
It was an epic, 20,000 km adventure - the longest canoe trip ever undertaken. The Starkell name would find its way into the Guinness Book of World Records and onto Canadian bookshelves with the publication of Paddle to the Amazon, Mr. Starkell's account of the trip.
"Don always seemed superhuman, and thus, immortal, too," Doug Gibson, the book's editor at McClelland & Stewart said in an email interview with the Winnipeg Free Press.
www.PaddleToTheAmazon.com
Don Starkell
."Yet Don, very strong in body and immensely strong in determination, not only planned it, he pulled it off, despite all the obstacles that high seas, drug-runners, alligators, piranhas and ill health could throw at him."
Immortal though he seemed, not even the legendary Canadian adventurer was a match for cancer. Mr. Starkell died on the weekend. He was 79, and had been ill for two years. His family is not conducting interviews at this time leaving friends, and former editors, to talk about a man who, in many ways, was born not before his time but after it.
"People always said Don was born about 300-years too late," says Mr. Forde, who is working on an educational documentary about Mr. Starkell's life. "He kind of likened himself to the great explorers of our time. He was a great history buff."
He was also an orphan, an insecure kid, who discovered his freedom and found his confidence - in a canoe -in the midst of a Manitoba catastrophe.
Massive flooding drowned Winnipeg in 1950. Mr. Starkell would paddle residents from spot to spot, delivering groceries to the stranded.
"Paddling changed my life," he says in a clip from Mr. Forde's film. "Everything I have done has come from that."
www.PaddleToTheAmazon.com
Don Starkell with son Dana
.He and the boys, Jeff and Dana, spent a decade hiking, mountain climbing, paddling, walking and planning their Amazon trip before pointing their bow south and shoving off.
It was a goal to push for, together, and, amid the push, it was a way for a father to stay close to his sons. When it actually appeared as though they might actually go relatives would invite Jeff and Dana to dinner - independent of their father - and plead with them to abandon the idea, telling them their father was nuts.
And maybe he was. Maybe they all were.
"That two kids, at 18 and 19, would leave all their friends, their [garage] bands, their girlfriends and commit themselves to going away for two years - that's the greatest honour I've ever had in my life," Mr. Starkell says in the documentary.
The Amazon was only the beginning. The next impossible dream was to solo-kayak the Northwest Passage. Mr. Starkell set out in 1990, paddled for three years and fell short when his boat and - nearly his body - became entombed in ice just shy of his goal. He lost all his fingertips and parts of his toes to frostbite.
"I sat in that kayak for 25 hours," he told The Journal of Canadian Wilderness Canoeing a few years ago. "I felt that, yes, I'm in agony. I'm in pain and I'm dying, and all that, but so many times I was fighting with myself - should I release myself and go into my final sleep?
"I said to myself that I don't care how painful, but my life is going to have to be taken. I am not going to release it."
He wrote another book, and kept finding new adventures, new limits to test: paddling from Iowa to New York; down the Mississippi and, in his later years, daily on the Red River right outside his back door.
Cancer was a different challenge, an unequal fight. Cruel. Relentless. The disease beat the septuagenarian down, sapping his strength, leaving him unable to paddle for the final 18 months of his life.
Jeff and Dana Starkell are planning a cruise on the Red River this summer as a memorial. Memories will be shared. Stories told and a great Canadian adventurer's ashes scattered, to be caught up by the current and carried on toward the sea.
Comments
Interesting character.