The Old Man and the Lake

Rick Conroy

The Wellington Times

He’s a man driven to paddling. He’s driven to testing himself and measuring his capabilities against the elements. Carrying only what he was able to stuff into a 17’ kayak he pushed out of Belleville marina last Monday morning and embarked on a fourday round-the-county trek – alone.

The stated purpose of Bernie Gray’s 170 kilometre-long adventure was to judge the feasibility of holding a race around the county. Three days of being beaten by waves as high as 2 metres may have caused him to reconsider his plan, it has not dampened his enthusiasm for kayaking in Prince Edward County. “While I demonstrated that it could be done,” said Gray. “Honestly, it was so rough – I think you would only get top-notch paddlers. The logistics of safety would be enormous. Nevertheless it was a tremendous experience. I have paddled in the Caribbean, in the Atlantic and out west – but going around the County was beautiful – as beautiful as anyplace I have been. Plus there are no sharks or dolphins.”

Defying most preconceived notions of an elite adventurer and athlete, Gray is neither svelt, nor is he a twenty something, or even a thirty-something-keener. Moreover, Gray lacks the arrogance and self-satisfied air that characterizes many endurance athletes. In fact, the former Scot and current Bellevillean appears as though he would be more comfortable in a dark little pub sipping on a wee dram of Glenmorague rather than sitting in a wee little boat with five metre waves pounding him in darkness in the middle of Lake Ontario. Gray is used to the comments and the confused looks that come his way. “Particularly in the US, they are so friendly they always come up and ask questions,” says Gray.” Quite often they will chat for a while, go away and then come back and say ‘My goodness, you’re old.’ As if they had just discovered it and should let me know in case I hadn’t noticed.”

In a previous expedition Gray traveled by kayak from Belleville all the way to Key West Florida – by way of Manhattan. “It was on of the proudest moments of my life,” said Gray “I pulled in the New York City harbour at the mouth of the Hudson River with my Canadian and Scottish flags on my boat.”

Along the Georgia coast, Gray encountered a commercial fishing boat whose crew mocked him as he was bouncing between the waves. “Well, later on I tied up and this big guy came up to me and wanted to know if I was the Canadian he saw coming down the shoreline earlier, I said: ‘Yes.’ He explained that he was the captain of the ship that had passed me that day. ‘You know, we are out there in our big boat and you’re out there in that thing – all I can say is that – you must have balls the size of melons.”

In his most recent adventure Gray proceeded down from Belleville to Big Bay and thenover to Long Reach, down to Picton Bay, through Adolphus Reach to Prinyer’s Cove. Gray had been unsuccessful in making lodging arrangements so he looked for a place to camp. “I had tried to make arrangements but it was too late in the year for many of the places that I knew of,” said Gray. “Fortunately I saw a couple of kayaks that I recognized on the shoreline, boats that I had sold, so I wandered up and sort of cried and moaned a bit and they were kind enough to put me up for the night.”

“I got up early and headed out into the lake,” continued Gray. “I headed for Point Traverse, I traveled point to point – if you tried to stay to the shoreline it would take you much, much longer.”

From Point Traverse Gray traveled along the south of Prince Edward County towards Point Petre. “I stopped early on and tried to sleep on the beach. But it was cold and I was wet – so I decided I would do a little night paddling. I got back out on the lake but you know it gets kind of eerie when you’re out there all alone at night – especially in a kayak. I came back on shore about an hour east of Point Petre and got a couple hours of uncomfortable sleep.”

The next morning Gray rounded Point Petre and crossed Soup Harbour. “I crossed the Sandbanks and that was really rough – it was something else. From there it was straight up to Wellington.”

In Wellington, Gray stayed at Suites-on-the-Lake as the guest of Joanna and Stewart McFarland. On Wednesday morning, the McFarland’s helped push Gray off into Wellington Bay. Though it was calm as Gray left, weather forecasts had been predicting the arrival of rain and wind sometime before noon. “Less that a half hour out of Wellington, I had the wildest ride of my life. I mean, I’ve been out on the Atlantic but this was tough. It took me over three hours to get over to Huycks Point (a relatively short 15 kilometres from Wellington). The whole ride was bouncing, bouncing, bouncing. Then the rain came and eventually I got to the canal about fourish and from there to Carrying Place and home.”

You get a glimpse of what inspires Gray to push himself this way when he describes the hazards that surround a lone kayaker on Lake Ontario. “When I was paddling I kept thinking about he sailors on those shipwrecks around Point Traverse and Huyck’s Point,” recalls Gray “A lot of the shoreline is treacherous – if you come too close to shore you’re in trouble. I kept thinking that it’s really about man against the elements.”

So far Gray remains master of the elements and commander of his wee boat.

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