When I started making Echo Paddles back in 1998 I must admit it was a rather modest ambition- to make some high quality paddles in small numbers.  I though I would use them myself and perhaps some friends would ask me to make some.  That was about it.

Almost 20 years and over 1200 paddles later, I am both shocked and honoured to have the support and commitment shown to me by the paddling community.  My latest honour was to make some decorative paddles for the Ottawa Riverkeeper...

This one is going to be a rant.  Something I have needed to get off my chest for a while now: MITH is not the new PAT or MAT!!!!!!  Okay, that feels better.

There has been some (much?) confusion over what MITH is and is not, and what happened to PAT, so I would like to clarify things for instructors and students alike.

MITH is a method to get a canoe to carve a turn.  Period.  It can be done in lakes, ponds, eddies, river current, anywhere at all, but it is ...

The first Echoee prototype has been popped out of the mould.  With gunwales and outfitting it is a wonderfully svelt 30 pounds!  I have had it out for a couple test runs to see what it can handle and how it feels.

I have put it through some proper testing, over ledges, into holes, bumping down some rocky class 4’s, and finding lots of rocks in eddies.  So far it has performed and held up wonderfully.  A few dings and dents, to be sure, but nothing like the...