our story, our dream.

Braiding Rivers has always been about gathering on the river to connect with the land and ourselves — to celebrate and play. Here, our co-founder, Keira Loukes, gives word to our vision.

I have worked as a guide in many different contexts and have traveled through rivers by myself and with many women and men, youth and adults. I have loved these experiences. I feel so grateful to everyone I shared time on the river with and have always felt stronger and more connected with myself, the land, and the people around me.

Still, there has always been an element that I missed from my early days as a Junior Ranger paddling with a group of women on the land. It's something I felt again on a trip by myself down the Petawawa River, and yet again with Ashley and Rachel and 5 other women we paddled on the Dumoine with last summer. It’s hard to explain, except to say that we moved through these spaces differently and in a way that I understood deeper – in a way that resonated more deeply.

The land felt centred, not us.

We completed much the same things as many would, but we moved differently. This is not to say that one way is better than the other, or to ascribe some binary notion of how men do things and how women do things, it is just to say that it felt different.

It felt special, important, and necessary. And that's why I was happy for this project we dreamed up — in creating space where women, including trans women, femmes and all folx who identify as female, could feel that — to learn from the land, to recognize ourselves in the land, and to remember our own strengths and our own power.

This feels extremely important in societies that divide us; that tell us we are not enough as we are; that we need to compete with each other; that we need to look, act, think and feel in certain ways; that we need to apologize for our passions, energy and the space we take up; that we need external validation in order to believe we have value; that we have to work hard to prove our worth.

I have seen and felt that when a community of women are together – and especially on the land together - there are small pockets of space where we start to question the narratives we have been told about our minds, hearts and bodies. We begin to see how shaky and arbitrary these stories are, and we begin to see the cracks in them. We begin to see how insidiously they root in our minds, hearts, relationships, communities and families. We begin to see the ways we perpetuate these harmful stories. We start to pull these strands apart, and begin to remove them.

We see that when we support each other and work together with strength, humility, and a strong belief in ourselves and what we each uniquely have to offer, there is synergy.

Our community becomes much more than the sum of our parts.

While I recognize that this is a brand new endeavour, these are only small and short trips, their cost is not accessible to everyone (yet), and they certainly will not disrupt the multiple intersecting layers of systems of power that we live in, sometimes having a chance to see these small cracks reminds us that it is possible to interrupt these stories —and sometimes even those small cracks are enough space to let in a hell of a lot of light.

As a team of three women, we are much like our namesake. A braid requires (at least) three strands. While each section of a braid is essential and perfect alone, it’s in their interweaving that they become stronger, more beautiful.

As Robin Wall Kimmerer says:

kindness and something more flow between the braider and the braided, the two connected by the cord of the plait.

And so with our own beautiful uniqueness, the three of us were braided together, not by ourselves, but by the river herself. With both the kindness and the ferocity of the land herself, we are here together.

There has been so much love, thought and care put into the formation of Braiding Rivers. We will continue loving, thinking and caring as it grows. In these trips, we aspire to foster respectful, reciprocal and gentle connections with the land and with each other. We hope you will join us.

With love,

Keira, Ashley and Rachel