During a kilometre-long portage into a small brook trout lake in Lake Superior Provincial Park, my 19-year-old daughter, Lillian, stoops to pick fiddleheads along a damp and mossy stream bed. I continue, canoe on my shoulders, toward the waters that appear through a break in the thick and shapely shoreline cedars.

I don’t often get time alone with my daughter. Although it is a priority, it’s one that is often thwarted by the great whirlwind of work and responsibilities that blows through our lives. But today, as I tread carefully down a slight incline towards the lake, the storms of life have abated; Lillian has a few days off from her new fire fighting job in northern Ontario and we manage to grab our dog, Simpkin, and steal away for a little father-daughter overnight adventure.

Part of Lillian’s firefighting training is carrying heavy loads for extended periods of time, and this works out quite well for a father who is used to doing the bulk of the carrying over the portage trail. By the time I slide the canoe off my shoulders and set it down on the collection of boulders and beaver-chewed wood at the side of the lake, Lillian is arriving with the heaviest pack and a few handfuls of fiddleheads.

We load the canoe and paddle along a steep shoreline, where angular boulders and waterlogged wood disappear into the depths of tea stained water. Above the waterline cedars, birch, and maple cower below tall white pine, permanently bent against the prevailing winds. We brought food for supper, but as we troll lures up to what looks like a great campsite, I catch a 16-inch brook trout.

Typical of her species, she is gorgeous, with dark hide, ivory-tipped fins and dappled with yellow and red spots within bluish halos.