Bruce Kirkby: Finding Freedom on the Water

The moment Bruce Kirkby's paddle enters the water, everything comes together. “You just feel this really solid connection to the water, and then your board leaps forward,” he says. “It's addictive.”

Video: https://www.onelightfilms.ca/

For Tourism Kimberley's November video series, we join Kirkby on St. Mary's Lake to discover what keeps drawing him back to the water.

An internationally recognized adventurer, photographer, author of three bestselling books and keynote speaker, he's crossed Arabia's Empty Quarter by camel and descended Ethiopia's Blue Nile Gorge by raft. He's hosted television programs, including Big Crazy Family Adventure, which followed him, his wife Christine and their two young sons on a 21,000-kilometre journey from Kimberley to a remote Himalayan monastery.

Kirkby knows how to move through wild places. Yet, for someone who's travelled through more than 80 countries, it's remarkable how much of his life now revolves around a lake just outside of town.

“Water is a central pillar of my life,” he says from the banks of St. Mary’s River. He grew up in Toronto, dreaming of summers at friends' cottages. Later came years guiding rafts on rivers and sea kayaks along the coast. In 2004, Kirkby moved to Kimberley for practical reasons: he was looking for affordable housing, an airport, and a ski hill. The Sullivan Mine had recently closed, and Kimberley seemed to offer an unlikely combination.

What he hadn’t anticipated was the community.

He found people who valued time outdoors and experiences more than money. The pace of life slowed. Beyond town, an enormous stretch of wilderness waited to be explored. “It was really one of those fortuitous moves I made on an impulse that changed the entire direction of my life,” he says.

When he first tried paddleboarding, something immediately clicked. There was the balance. The unusual perspective of standing above the water. The physical sensation of moving across its surface. “You spend so much of your life sitting,” he says. “And I was standing.”

In his mid-forties, a severely herniated disc left him struggling to walk. Paddleboarding offered something unexpected: a way to move again. He could paddle hard, for long periods, without aggravating his injury.

 “I've always been super attracted to the surf lifestyle,” he says, describing its freedom and youthful joy that can disappear with age. But living in the mountains, he missed the ocean. Paddleboarding offered something close to surfing for someone living inland.

Soon, he was exploring every stretch of water he could find. With friends, he paddled rivers from their headwaters toward the American border, lakes along the Rocky Mountain Trench as far north as Golden, and waterways extending into the Rockies and Purcells.

There were no guidebooks. 

His curiosity has taken him well beyond the Kootenays. In 2013, when stand-up paddleboarding was still a relatively unfamiliar sight, Kirkby crossed the Strait of Georgia on an inflatable board, travelling 150 kilometres from Vancouver to Victoria over four days. The journey became The Questions We Ask, a short film directed by Kalum Ko. A meditation on adventure and uncertainty, it was a finalist at the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival.

The board became something more than a recreational pursuit. “The paddleboard was a tool or an opportunity, a vehicle for exploring this incredible wilderness that surrounds us.”

Today, Kirkby's paddling encompasses everything from whitewater and recreational outings to racing, speed training and wilderness expeditions. Expedition paddling, in particular, has become central to his work. He believes people have yet to fully appreciate the possibilities of exploring remote places standing on a board rather than sitting in a canoe or kayak. Looking down into the water, he sees fish, beavers and submerged logs.

“Kimberley's set in a really magical part,” he says, “tucked in between the Purcells and the Rockies.” And beyond town, wilderness stretches in almost every direction. “I think it's really easy to miss how wild the area is just on the outskirts of our little town.”

But for all the places he's explored, one lake keeps drawing him back. “My home waters are St. Mary's Lake,” he says. “So really the place I think where my heart is.” In spring, he paddles there as often as six days a week, building endurance and refining his technique. “Mastery is a never-ending journey,” he says. After a decade of paddleboarding, he's still learning. Still chasing the sensation of a perfectly placed paddle and a board accelerating beneath his feet.

Some of his favourite moments have been the quietest. By October, the landscape has changed. “All of a sudden you're just in this magical kind of arena of fall colours,” he says. “It's just an incredible time to be out.”

Kirkby is equally enthusiastic about introducing others to the sport. He believes many people overestimate how difficult paddleboarding is. A wider board, a calm day and a sheltered lake can make it accessible to beginners. Around Kimberley, he points out, there's an extraordinary range of opportunities, from small, protected lakes to whitewater that will challenge experienced paddlers.

He wants more people to discover what he's found here.

There's a bumper sticker on Kirkby's truck: “Slow Down. This Ain't the Mainland.” He says he'll replace it when it wears out.

A reminder, perhaps, that there's no need to hurry through a place like this.

Author - Jeff Pew

Images - Lukas Nemeth