DISASTER ON THE RIVER

__ Two canoeists struggle to keep themselves—and their friendship—afloat

- Nathan Munn

I was sitting at my desk when my phone buzzed. It was a text from Angus Menzies, my best friend since childhood. Our plan to go canoeing near our hometown of Ottawa, Ontario, was a go.

“Got a brand-new canoe for us to use,” he wrote. “What’s your ETA?”

I replied that I’d leave work early to catch a bus to Ottawa that afternoon in July 2017. As I had arranged with my wife, Cornelia Mars, I would only be gone for 24 hours, a mini-vacation that seemed impossibly exciting after many months spent close to home helping care for our 2-year-old daughter.

I felt invigorated on the Greyhound bus a couple of hours later as it rumbled steadily onward, the forest a blur outside the window. It had been a year since I’d seen Angus. But as kids, then teenagers and into our 20s, we were inseparable, more like brothers than friends. Although we’d seen each other infrequently in recent years— both of us busy with our families and living in different cities—he never felt out of reach.

Angus was waiting in the parking lot of the run-down Ottawa bus station when I stepped off the bus into the hot sun. We hugged and climbed into his blue pickup, punk rock blasting.

He drove and we shot the breeze. I felt the mix of comfort and apprehension that develops when you’ve known someone for 30-plus years—comfort at knowing the person in some ways better than you know yourself, apprehension as you wonder if you still have anything in common. But within minutes we had settled into an easy back and forth.

If Angus was the leader of our group of friends as we navigated our teens— the rest of us paying close attention as he defeated bullies and attracted the prettiest girls, inspiring the rest of us to try to be greater versions of ourselves— then maybe I acted as a sort of consigliere, a trusted adviser.