God's Paddlers

In 1958, an earnest group of amateurs started a school which spawned Anglican-affiliated schools in Manitoba, Alberta, and Ontario. Hoping to radically reform Canada's education system in their 5O-year existence, they sent over 5,000 boys on arduous snowshoe treks and 600-mile canoe expeditions throughout Canada. Their masters taught poetry, history, and voyageur French amidst frequent beatings, all aimed at building character. They left casualties in their wake - 13 dead in a 1978 canoeing disaster alone. Backed by dozens of original interviews and a horde of internal school documents, God's Paddlers exposes a bizarre world run by zealots who thought they knew better. In a 45-year international career, journalist Stephen Riley produced stories in print and broadcast media for daily newspapers, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the British Broadcasting Corporation, and UTV, a popular Irish station. Raised in northern Canadian mining towns, he knows the bush, but now lives at the edge of a small village in Northern Ireland with his patient wife Mavis.