During the summer of 2023, Pat Lewtas and his two sons, aged five and nine, canoed from Tadoule Lake, Manitoba, down the Seal River a short ways, then up the Wolverine River to Lac Baralzon. Lac Baralzon lies just within the barrens and straddles the Manitoba-Nunavut border. Then Pat and his sons returned by the same route. But not quite. Pat's presentation details the “not quite”.
Pat began canoeing seriously in the mid-1970s and took up winter-camping a couple years later. He has journeyed the north country, in all seasons, ever since. Pat worked as a lawyer, first for aboriginal organizations in Sioux Lookout, Ontario, then for a corporate-commercial law firm in Toronto. He left that life in 1996 to earn his PhD in philosophy. He then joined the philosophy faculty of the American University of Beirut in Beirut, Lebanon. He expected to stay there till body or mind gave out. But the collapse of the Lebanese economy forced his premature retirement in 2021. He still researches and publishes philosophy, but otherwise tends to his two kids while his wife teaches high school.