Sevareid’s Example Still Sending Paddlers North
2 May
It’s been 78 years since Eric Sevareid and Walter Port pushed their 18-foot cruiser canoe off the Mississippi River’s banks in Minneapolis and into the waters that would ultimately take them to Hudson’s Bay.
On the trip, famously recounted in Sevareid’s book Canoeing with the Cree, the newly-minted high school graduates paddled some 2,200 miles from their Minnesota hometown to York Factory.
Sevareid, who was recently honored for his subsequent career as a journalist with a U.S. postage stamp, and Port are still sending young men north. This week, two recent high school graduates from the Twin Cities area again pointed a canoe for Hudson’s Bay.
Interestingly, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune’s Nick Coleman wrote, HERE, about Sevareid and his trip last week. He came back to the subject this week, HERE, when he learned that Sean Bloomfield and Colton Witte were pushing off on their Canoeing with the Cree-inspired trip last Monday.
KARE Channel 11 in Minneapolis also ran a segment on Bloomfield and Witte HERE.
Back in 2005, THESE Sevareid/Port acolytes re-traced the historic 1930 trip as well.
