Former Almonte resident Jennifer Kingsley has won the National Outdoor Book Award for Outdoor Literature (Non-fiction) for her book Paddlenorth, which chronicled a two-month Arctic paddling expedition she undertook with five companions. The Millstone reviewed the book earlier this year.
Jennifer is the only Canadian winner across all of this year’s categories.
In a press release the judges said of Paddlenorth:
Author Jennifer Kingsley tells the story of six friends on a 54-day canoe journey on the Back River of northern Canada. On the journey, they deal with difficult whitewater, long portages, and days of violent winds.
What captured the judges’ attention according to Watters is the way that Kingsley dealt with the interactions between the members of the group.
“On any long wilderness journey the human challenges can be as daunting as the environmental ones,” he said. “How do six people, dependent upon one another and placed in close quarters day after day, get along on such a long journey? That’s where Kingsley’s work really shines. She paints a vivid picture of the give and take, and the concessions each person needs to make to reach the journey’s end.”
