People

Image and article from www.kirkwipper.ca.

We are organising an event whereby the many friends, colleagues and former students of Kirk, as well as people who care for our planet like Kirk did, may show their love and respect for a “true Canadian”. As well as paying tribute to Kirk we would like to raise funds for the Kirk Wipper award at UofT and the Canadian Canoe Museum which he helped establish. The essence of the tribute is portaging a canoe from Hart House at UofT to the Museum, in Peterborough in his honour.

The event will begin on Thursday April 28/11 at Hart House and finish at the Museum on Sunday May 1/11 at 2p.m. which will coincide with a memorial already planned at the Museum. We will be portaging approximately 40 Km/day on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday and the final leg will be 10 Km on Sunday. The route will be divided into 13 sections of 10 Km each and will essentially follow a Google map walking route from Hart House to the Museum with some tweaking. In order to ease the organisational aspect we are looking for an additional 12 section leaders who will take responsibility for a particular 10 Km section (please see attached Section Leader form).

Above all we are looking for friends of Kirk who would like to demonstrate their respect for him by taking responsibility for portaging the canoe 500 metres each. It would be fantastic if each portager would/could raise a minimum of $100.00 each (more would be even better) that will be donated to either the Kirk Wipper award or the Museum (see attached form).

Please note that some of you may not have the capacity to carry the canoe but that’s not to say that your children, relatives or friends could not do it on your behalf. Creativity is more than welcomed. Please feel free to contribute any additional ideas for this fun event.

One suggestion that has been made is that individual sections could be portaged by specific groups of friends of Kirk. This could be an individual PHE graduating year or a group of campers or camping staff.

If you are able to be involved in this please email Neil Sorbie at wipperportage@gmail.com and indicate if you wish to be a section leader, portager, spotter or other (or all of the above).