Paddling South: Winnipeg to New Orleans by Canoe

Fall 2007

Paperback 121 pages

Non-Fiction

Shortlisted for the Alexander Kennedy Isbister Award for Non-Fiction at the Manitoba Book Awards (winners announced on April 26, 2008)

Listen to Paddling South online! Click here for an excerpt of Paddling South, read by Rick Ranson, and click here to find out how Ranson's true adventure became a book.

In the Fall of 1969, Rick Ranson and John Van Landeghem, both barely out of high school, took on the might of the Red and Mississippi Rivers to paddle a canoe from Winnipeg, Manitoba, to New Orleans, Louisiana. Combining high drama with hilarity, Ranson tells how the duo ducked bullets in St. Louis, avoided a whirlpool, worked on a Mississippi tow boat, sailed a yacht through a barge-congested Cairo, IL, and spent a few days in the Fargo City Jail, all while meeting an eclectic array of unforgettable characters. Paddling South tells the incredible tale of how they survived the three month trip on the often treacherous rivers, beset by snow storms, hurricanes, monstrous waves, and unseen dams.