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Kabloona in the Yellow Kayak
By Victoria Jason
McClelland and Stewart, Toronto
298 pp. $27. 1996.
Review by MARGARET PEAKE
Victoria Jason was a fortysomething grandmother who survived two strokes before before she began this epic four year journey. She begins her book recounting the hardships of tripping with the egocentric and erractic Don Starkell. Why she agreed to paddle with him for a second year is a mystery.
Starkell told his tale in his own book, Paddle to the Arctic, and now it's Jason's turn.
Kabloona reads like a Ludlum novel. Each day is a new adventure. Their writing styles are as different as their personalities. While, for Starkell, everything is expressed in degrees of difficulty and personal hardship, Victoria falls in love with the people and the beauty of the north and pays much more attention to the environment around her, especially the weather and where to camp and get fresh water.
It's not just a book about paddling. It's about survival and solitude and the people she meets and the friendships she creates. She buys art from village elders and teaches the youngsters how to paddle her yellow kayak. She absorbs the spirit of giving and generousity and returns it tenfold. Kabloona, which means stranger in Inuktitut, was what she was when she started this journey. She ended up a friend to many.
You seem to know that she will succeed and she has on both fronts - in traversing the Arctic and producing a wonderfully readable book that is hard to put down.
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