by Glenn Taylor
Northern News Services

NNSL (Oct 17/97) - When Kim Hafez of Morocco paddled into Tuktoyaktuk a couple of weeks ago, he completed a canoeing adventure that navigated hundreds of obstacles, thousands of kilometres and most of Canada.

It wasn't a moment too soon. Winter was in the air, and Hafez was buffeted by high winds and searing cold as he neared Tuk. Windbound for nine days in a row, just 25 kilometres from Tuk, it didn't look promising.

But the 27-year-old former French Foreign Legionnaire had been there, done that many times before on his journey, which began March 13, 1996, in Ontario.

Since then, he's traversed dozens of rivers and lakes. He's run out of food and become gravely ill several times during the trip. This last obstacle was anti-climactic in comparison, he said.

"I didn't have any intention of canoeing the whole country," said Hafez, who came to Canada from France last year to canoe the

Mattawa River, near Ottawa. "My goal was just to do this river, and go for adventure. Later, I decided to go for a challenge."

Hafez decided to canoe all the way to Tuk, something he says a soloist has never achieved before. By the end of that first summer, he had reached all the way to The Pas, Man., having paddled a multi-marathon journey: the Mattawa, Lake Nipissing, the French River, Georgian Bay, Lake Huron, Lake Superior, Boundary Water, the Lake of the Woods, Winnipeg River, Lake Winnipeg and the Saskatchewan River.

When he arrived in The Pas on Oct. 20, the river highway he'd been travelling on froze solid 10 days later.

After spending the winter there doing odd jobs, he put in again this spring, travelling upriver for a gruelling 1,000 kilometres on the Sturgeon, the Weir and the Churchill. The water level was high, and most of the way he had to walk beside his canoe, sometimes up to 18 hours a day. The longest portage was 20 kilometres.

Hafez then took the Clearwater River to Fort McMurray, and then jumped on the Athabasca, the Riviere de Rocher, Slave River, Great Slave Lake and finally, the Mackenzie River. All told, Hafez canoed 4,000 kilometres this year.

Needless to say, Hafez found God on the journey. It happened when he was asked to say grace at an Indian reserve, after crossing Lake Winnipeg. "It struck me that, yes, I had to thank God for this food," said Hafez. "I had run out of food before, and I know how important it is to have simple things, like food."

"All along the way, I was looking to find a balance between the physical and the mental," said Hafez. "But I found a balance between the mental, physical and spiritual instead."

His plans now are to return to Ottawa, where he will host a slide show of his journey. "I want to try to make a living from this trip," he said. He hopes to give numerous presentations of his photography, and later to write a book.

"I have a much deeper reason to write this book than just to describe the waterways and nature," he said. "I want to share this spiritual message I've received with other people."

Hafez is already planning a second trip, perhaps kayaking the Arctic Ocean. But "it's too soon to say ... there's so many places to go."

Hafez wants to thank the people of Tuk for the hospitality he received during his two-week stay there.