In this episode of Explore, host David McGuffin sits down with lawyer, conservationist, former senior aide to Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, and one of Canada’s most accomplished Arctic paddlers, Ted Johnson.

For more than two decades, Johnson and a remarkable group of friends, including diplomats, journalists, cabinet ministers, and occasionally Pierre Trudeau himself, set out each summer to canoe some of the most remote rivers in northern Canada. 

From the Hood and Coppermine rivers to little-known rivers on Banks Island and Ellesmere Island, Johnson shares stories of first descents, close calls, vast caribou migrations, and landscapes few Canadians will ever see. Along the way, he reflects on a changing Arctic, the evolution of wilderness travel, and what it was like to paddle and camp alongside one of Canada’s most transformational Prime Ministers. 

This captivating episode explores a remarkable era of northern exploration and the enduring pull of Canada’s wild rivers.

Ted Johnson is a lawyer, conservationist, pilot, and former senior advisor to Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. An Officer of the Order of Canada and Fellow of both the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and the Royal Geographical Society, he has spent decades exploring Canada’s North by canoe, helping document and promote some of the country’s most remote wilderness rivers.

To learn more about the paddling adventures of Johnson and his friends, Sing Louder, Paddle Harder, edited by his colleague Robert Fowler, contains hundreds of images and stories from across the Arctic.