The Great Lakes Heritage Coast is a wild and majestic landscape that includes 1.46 million hectares of coastline and islands of the north shore of Lake Superior, Lake Huron, and Georgian Bay. It has been recognized by the Ontario Government as a natural resource to be preserved, with the first priority being the protection and restoration of its coastal ecosystems. As champions of Canada's wilderness, Gary and Joanie McGuffin vowed to support this project by paddling the coast and reporting on their adventure.

For three months in the summer of 2002, they travelled the entire length of the coast, with their three year old daughter, Sila, and their Alaskan Malamute, Kalija, from the Pigeon River near Thunder Bay to Port Severn on Georgian Bay in a twentyone foot cedar-strip canoe. They carried the communications equipment necessary to share the adventure through weekly radio broadcasts, newspaper stories, and a Web site.

Their journey took them along the most magnificent freshwater coastline in the world. Through Joanie's passionate narrative and Gary's evocative images, the McGuffins share with readers the experience of paddling with Woodland caribou, gliding beneath towering cliffs, discovering ancient red-ochre pictographs, camping where people have camped for thousands of years, finding fossils of the earth's earliest life forms, and exploring geological wonders laid bare by retreating glaciers ten millennia ago.

Paddling over the same waters traversed by voyageurs and fur traders of the past, the McGuffins take us on an epic journey, describing the exhilaration of traversing the greatest expanse of freshwater in the world, the warmth of campfires on cool nights, the brilliance of the stars and the northern lights, and the peace and solitude of being immersed in the beauty and mystery of the natural world. This book is a tribute to that beauty, and an inspiration to those who would protect it.

Great Lakes Journey, Exploring the Heritage Coast © 2003 by Gary and Joanie McGuffin. Distributed by Gary and Joanie McGuffin AND Chrismar Books.
11" x 8.5" Hardcover 144 pages with 105 colour photographs, 1 map ISBN 0-7710-5539-0.

At present, to order autographed copies of this book, link to www.chrismar.com and click on Chrismar Books.