His name is Jim Olding, a guide in his spare time, a sheep shearer by trade, but a builder of his own kayaks in the time most precious to himself.

We've spent the morning at a kayaking clinic on John Island, one of the larger islands in the channel, and having honed our newfound chops we've joined a pod of kayakers on an leisure­ly half-day paddle exploring the environs. The rain has finally let up, after nattering on through the night and into the morning. Now. there's a narcotic calm to the world; the water's surface is a glassy shimmer that merges seamlessly with the horizon, reflecting the solid. slate sky perfectly.

Jim is the grizzled veteran hype. a vigorous-looking 40 or 50­something with short. kinky grey hair and an athletic if weather-beaten face. He cuts a gorgeous line in his boat, an advertisement for the kayak, and its innate ability to merge gracefully with the water-line. Contrary to the hardbitten stereotype, he's friendly and talkative, in his soft Kiwi lilt.

A custom made strip kayak is about $ 6500

He started kayaking at the ago of seven in New Zealand when his older brother built a softskin kayak; later, as a teenager he'd construct one of his own, just to get himself out on the water. When he first arrived in Canada, he worked on farms in Southern Ontario before drifting north when he met his future wife and fell in love with the landscape around Huron. There be realized how well adapted the area was for exploring by modern, fibreglass kayak. "So, not being able to afford one. farmer that I am, I thought I'd build my own. Ten years of thinking and three years of building later..."

Knowledgeable about the North Channel's trails, both liquid and solid, from where the Huron meets Superior and cast to Killarney^-. Jim talks passionately about the waters and rock for­mations that attract paddlers and sailors to the region. The part of the channel we're. paddling now, named Whalosback, is studded with quartzite islets which resemble the bump of the great mammal sliding in and out of water. Guano-stained from the gulls and many other area birds - eagles, osprey, ravens and hawks - these isets feature lonely wind-bent pines that put your head in the middle of a Group of Seven canvas.

Jim waxes blissful about Fox and Benjamin Islands, not far from here, which extend cast into the Bay of Islands and the La Cloche shoreline.

"The islands are rounded by glaciation. it's quite spectacu­lar. Crystal clear blue-green water you can see down 20 feet. When you cross the Bonjamins the scenery becomes more dramatic. It's more of the same but you start to see long ridges of sculpted granite., but you also get shear-offs where it just stops. and pines twisted by the weather. hanging on by their toenails." Outfitters use the islands as camp sites for more detailed exploration of the area.

To the east, just as Jim describes it, the rocks gradually emerge out of the water with greater altitude into the La Cloche mountain range - a chain of while quartzite and pink granite ridges. speckled with pine and spruce like balding heads - that extends across the breadth of Killarney Provincial Park.

While this area, the rough waters of the channel and the open water of Huron beyond it, are best suited to the kayak, Killarney itself and the its string of crystalline lakes and low-lying bogs may be best navigated by canoe and on foot. Paddle and portage the day away among crystalline lakes, stopping to scramble up various ridges for a view of the area. Outside of Killarney proper there are aboriginal immersion trips that involve hiking ancient trails, and paddling, while within it there is the Silhouette 'hail - a 100-kilometre tramping circuit through the heart of the La Cloche that will take you about a week to complete - and any number of backcountry canoe routes that will get you good and lost in the wilderness for days at a time.