Launched: River of Dreams

     This spring, 200 elementary students from five Red River Basin schools launched 14" cedar canoes on local rivers through our River of Dreams program. Launch events were eagerly anticipated by students, teachers, and staff as they embodied the exciting culmination of the program for 2017. In the classroom this winter, students were introduced to watershed concepts and local watershed geography. They were then tasked with writing a short story or poem and designing their own canoe. A few selected dreams and designs are included below.

     Each subwatershed represented this year – Buffalo, Sand Hill, Clearwater, Middle, and Red Lake – has its own identity, but all share a common bond. Their water eventually flows to the Red River, Lake Winnipeg, and ultimately, Hudson Bay. One of the goals of River of Dreams is to underscore these upstream and downstream connections.
          River of Dreams was inspired by Holling C. Holling’s classic children’s novel “Paddle-to-the-Sea” and has facilitated the launch of over 4,000 canoes in the Red River Basin to date. Canoes are out there, waiting to be discovered and logged in our riverofdreams.org tracking system. I encourage you to explore your local river this summer and keep an eye out for these remarkable canoes around each bend!

-Andrew Ulven, Monitoring and Education Specialist