Thunder House FALLS

It’s late in the sunny afternoon when a tailwind fills in, hastening our push towards infamous Thunder House Falls. Back in 1993, a group of five paddlers died after being swept over the falls. As I remove my pack at a wooded campsite along the cusp of the deep canyon, I’m happy to be experiencing Thunder House from dry land. I walk down a steep path to a terraced landscape of angular bedrock scoured clean by seasonal high waters. Dark waters funnel through a narrow canyon and over a series of three to four-metre-high falls; breathtaking from the ridge, but deadly from the water.

Ryan holds a beautiful walleye caught from Northern Ontario’s Missinaibi River.

Conjuring up Some Fish

So far, our need to cover water has meant I haven’t had a chance to wet a line, but with a free evening, our guide Ryan relinquishes his dishwashing duties to join me in some exploratory angling. We launch below Thunder House and paddle upstream where steep walls of rock rise above foam-licked waters. We round a bend to see an angular rock pillar rising 25 metres. I recognize this from photographs as Conjuring House Rock. It's not only a transition point between the Precambrian Shield and the James Bay Lowlands but a significant spiritual location for the Ojibwe and Cree. A powerful spot to catch my first bass and walleye of the Missinaibi trip.

With the river now dropping about six metres every kilometre, it’s an exciting ride to our final destination at Bells Bay. With our final campsite set, Ryan and I return to fish. A floatplane will arrive in the morning to fly us out but tonight as Ryan and I pluck walleye from calm, shallow waters, I can’t help glancing downstream toward the remaining course of the mighty Missinaibi.