Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Feb 20/02) - Ever get the feeling that prospectors use searching for gold or diamonds to justify spending summers canoeing?

It's kind of like telling your wife your heading out for another arduous day of water testing as you load your fishing gear into the back of the truck.

A few images presented Sunday served as reminders that many prospectors are closet canoeists.

Chamber of mines president Mike Vaydik was one of the features presenters of a heritage showcase called Mining Memories Now and Then.

Held as part of the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre's Amazing Sundays series, the Heritage Day event celebrated the contribution mining has made to the development of the North.

Vaydik's slide show highlighted the infrastructure and advances mining has brought to the North. It included shots of mines developed throughout the North, from the Polaris mine on Little Cornwallis Island to the old Pine Point mine in the South Slave.

Then he flashed a few slides of the old days. One showed two guys standing near a float plane wearing tweed (the Gortex of the day) and wide grins. A canoe was lashed to one of the plane's pontoons.

"This is an image you see a lot," Vaydik said. "Prospectors would load up with food and supplies and get dropped off at a chain of lakes or river drainage. They would spend the summer prospecting then get picked up before freeze-up."

Flash forward a half century to the upcoming summer. Who would bet against the almost identical photo being taken this summer -- two guys standing by a plane with a canoe tied to a pontoon, wearing the same expression as the proverbial cat that ate the canary?

OK, there will be a few minor differences. In this summer's photos it could just as well be a guy and a girl or two girls. They will be wearing Gortex. Their supplies will likely not include rock hammers.

Prospector, columnist and man-about-town Walt Humphries agrees there are similarities. The two groups share a love of nature and the change of pace.

"When you're in civilization, there's all these petty aggravations that hit you all the time," Humphries said. "After you've been out in the bush for a while they just disappear. You get back to what life's really all about."

Humphries said prospectors generally see more of what's around them than canoeists. In addition to the flora and fauna, they pay attention to the rocks and try to develop an understanding of the forces that shaped them.

And spend a lot more time tromping through areas that would be far too buggy for canoeists.

Regardless of their different objectives, one of the big draws of the North for both canoeists and prospectors is just being out there.