Exploring the healing power of “blue space”: A Paddleboard Expedition

Water Borne: A 1,200-Mile Paddleboarding Pilgrimage: Not what I expected.

Had I read the author’s first book: Born to Walk: The Transformative Power of a Pedestrian Act (ECW Press, 2015), I might not have been surprised by Dan Rubinstein’s new volume: Water Bourne. Pleasantly surprised that is. I really enjoyed Water Bourne. Rubinstein, an Ottawa-based journalist, is a fine writer and a good storyteller. And I’m partial to books that use a journey to illustrate something important. That, to me, is good travel writing.

I equate Water Bourne to Bill McKibben’s Wandering Home and to several of my hero, Robert Macfarlane’s books, including his latest Is a River Alive? and my favourite, The Old Ways. My recent book: 40 Days & 40 Hikes: Loving the Bruce Trail One Loop at a Time,  also combines a journey with learning – in my case need to protect the Niagara Escarpment.

Water Bourne gives you a sense of the challenges of paddleboarding for 1200 miles, but it’s more about the water projects he visits along the way and their role in building or re-building communities. Interesting as Rubinstein’s paddleboarding adventures are, they comprise the “narrative arc” – the structure that carries the narrative about the healing power of water.

Rubinstein’s journey forms a loop, which appeals to me, of course. Starting in Ottawa, he journeys to Montreal and then crosses the border into the US. His route takes him the length of Lake Champlain until he eventually reaches the Hudson River, which he follows into New York City. Rubinstein then doubles back to the Erie Canal and paddles it for most of its 584-kilometre length to Buffalo where he finds his way onto Lake Ontario and crosses the border back into Canada. Next up are Burlington, Toronto and Kingston, where he turns left, heading north up the Rideau Canal back to Ottawa. The way he cobbled together these waterways reminded me a lot of how I link various trails to create circular routes in my Loops & Lattes hiking guides.

There were several things that surprised me about Water Bourne. First and foremost is that the book is less about the journey – though I learned a lot about paddleboarding – and more about his quest: to explore the healing power of “blue space.” The term blue space was new me. It’s the watery equivalent of “green space.” What affect does being around water have on people and, as was more of his focus, on the communities that are on lakes, rivers or other bodies of water that incorporate or reintroduce their blue space into their communities.

Rubinstein’s descriptions of some great initiatives made me think of the village where I live. A small river flows through the village centre. There are two small dams and a pair of millponds that team with cattails, fish and other critters. The stream once powered several stone mills, three of which remain and are now an upscale hotel, an artists’ centre and a private residence (my home). But despite the prominence of this river, it’s almost hidden from public view. Within the village proper, there is no public access or infrastructure on the stream. There’s no swimming hole, no gathering place, no benches for residents to just sit and watch the bird life, mink and beavers at work and play. Nowhere to fish.

Based on Rubinstein’s research, were my village to develop public access to our stream and/or mill pond, it would strengthen community ties, bring us together as neighbours. This is the theory Rubinstein sets out to prove and he makes a convincing argument for villages like mine to get going on blue space initiatives.

Rubinstein focuses mostly on US projects (possibly because there are more of them), especially along the Hudson River and Erie Canal. He meets with community/project organizers for dozens of initiatives as he paddles from town to village to city. These are meetings he’s set up in advance of his voyage. I imagine most of the people he encounters would have been happy to meet with him to describe their project, but I’m certain that having him arrive by paddleboard overcomes any resistance there might be to spending time with some Canadian journalist. Curiosity would surely sway them.

My takeaways from the book include learning the term blue space and finding out about how central they are to a community’s health. Continuing that theme, I thought about how few of the myriad villages around where I live have incorporated their streams or rivers into the community. Locally, the objective seems to have been to keep these streams naturalized which has discouraged initiatives that invite communities to incorporate them into town life. Maybe it’s time for that to change.

Water Borne, by Dan Rubinstein, ECW Press, Toronto, 336 pages, 2025

For more information and to pick up a copy of Water Bourne (or Born to Walk), go to Dan’s website.