Iona Canoe Trips

Embracing Ontario’s Wilderness

What is the Iona Canoe Tripping Program?

Canoe trips help campers develop canoeing, portaging, and camping skills while also providing a great platform to practice creativity, resilience, and type-2 fun (it’s a challenge, and that’s what makes it fun!).

Trips run for 5 days and 4 nights from Monday to Friday. There will be two staff and up to 8 campers, which makes trip a smaller program that allows campers develop tight bonds with their peers and leaders.

Trippers will paddle across rivers, bays, and lakes between campsites. While on site, they will swim, play games, build fires, and help the leaders cook meals. Campers will learn how to work together to set up and tear down tents. They will also learn key trip skills, like setting up a campsite, filtering water, and trip cooking.

  • On all canoe trips safety of our campers is our top priority. All trips run with two experienced Trip staff that are lifeguard and First Aid certified. The Head Tripper is also trained in Wilderness First Aid, and there is an emergency plan tailored to each trip. The trippers also use a SPOT device to communicate location or begin an emergency evacuation.

  • Campers will be wearing lifejackets whenever they are on the water. We encourage participants with varying abilities to come on a trip, but do encourage participants to be able to swim for the sake of their experience. Please reach out to talk about your camper’s swimming level and what that means for trips.

  • On trip, our goal is to unplug completely - plus we don’t have access to electricity to charge our devices! The trip leaders will be carrying their cell phones and a GPS locator device to communicate with the camp office for safety purposes while on trip.

    You are more than welcome to send bunk notes to [email protected] that campers will receive upon arriving back at camp!

  • Camp will supply all required gear, including lifejackets, canoes, paddles, food, kitchen equipment, and dry bags to pack all our gear into.

    If your camper has gear they want to bring, please be in touch so we can talk about it together.

  • A detailed packing list will be sent out to registered trip campers leading up to the summer.

    However, the best items to have are good closed-toed water shoes, a full brimmed hat, wet clothes, dry clothes, and a water bottle.

  • No! Our trips are catered towards participants of all experience levels to ensure that everyone has an extraordinary experience.