Sip on local beer, travel with handcrafted Ontario paddles, glide in Canadian-made whitewater boats and enjoy locally influenced meals with Thunder Bay hot sauce, bread, cheese and meats. Canoe trips where local cuisine and equipment can shine. With an immense amount of local talent in Thunder Bay, it’s easy to enhance our menu while also providing quality gear! Learn which products we use and soak in the local love!
Sleeping Giant Beer
A Thunder bay special
Located on the largest freshwater lake in the world, Sleeping Giant Brewing Company’s craft beers are inspired by Lake Superior and the northern wildness with its rich Canadian heritage. The brewery is just a few minutes from Canada Malting Co., meaning both water and malt are sourced locally.
Since 2012, after much experimenting, tasting and testing, the craft brewery began preparing its magic through carefully considered recipes. Sleeping Giant Brewing Company produces a distinctive line-up of easy drinking, full-flavoured beer with the perfect balance of deliciousness, attitude and northern provenance.
Wilderness North lodges and canoe trips are stocked with sleeping giant beverages! After a long day of canoeing our trip guides cool drinks down in a Wabakimi Lake before serving them up with a delicious appetizer.
Thunder Bay Hot Sauce
Kick it up a NOTCH
Our goal is to get Heartbeat Hot Sauce in to as many hands as possible, while maintaining our small batch process. Our peppers are fermented using traditional methods before being cooked with a few simple, high quality ingredients. We add no water, thickening agents or chemical preservatives of any kind making our sauce as natural as it gets. The result is an incredibly bright, balanced and slightly sweet sauce that truly goes well with anything that needs some heat, enjoy!
Heartbeat hot sauce is the perfect dinner pairing. Our guests love its flavorful kick when served over freshly caught and cooked fish tacos!
Thunder Bay Country Market
The best of Thunder Bay all under one roof.
Over 100 vendors and thousands of shoppers looking for the very best in locally made, baked and grown goods.
Before each trip our WIlderness North trip leaders makes a trip to the market to grab fresh vegetables, local cheese, bread, spreads and jams.
Esquif Canoes
canadian made boats gliding on canadian waterways
Esquif. No politics, no office building, no three-piece suits. Our existence is for the love of canoeing. Yours and ours. To use all our senses: to see the brilliant sunrise and melting sunset, smell the richness of marshland, to listen to waves against the shore or the rumbling of rapids right around the corner.
Each Wilderness North canoe trip travels in the beautiful design of an esquif prospecteur canoe. Made from the latest in materials, T-fromex is the ultimate material for whitewater canoe trips. The shape of a prospecteur is designed to compliment both the quick turns needed in whitewater and the tracking needed while lake paddling.
Fishell Paddles
ONTARIO CRAFTED PADDLES
The Fishell family has been around canoes all their lives. It began with their father Fred Fishell who attended summer camp in Ontario back in the late-forties and early-fifties. Since then whether it was the annual family summer canoe trip or tripping as a camper and eventually staff, a Fishell has been on the water canoeing every year for the past 75 years. The legacy has continued with his sons who have been attending one of Ontario’s premier canoeing camps for 22 years collectively. This same legacy has been true with paddle building. Fred carved his own paddles and passed that knowledge on to his sons. With the help of paddle maker Ray Kettlewell, that knowledge has been honed and improved, and passed on to Greg and Trevor. The vision of Fishell Paddles is to deliver the same quality, beauty and craftsmanship Ray strived for in every paddle he made.
Each guest of a Wilderness North canoe trip receives a complimentary fishell paddle. Hand crafted in Ontario, Canada these paddles are the perfect companion for the flatwater portions of canoe trips.
