Three things I learned...

My husband, Larry, and I were great canoe enthusiasts in our younger years. Having no children, married for a number of years, and free during the summer months, we were canoe pals with two other childless couples. When Royden and Carol, and Gleo and Pam asked us to join them on a canoe trip into Canada's wilds, we gladly accepted. We packed, planned and eagerly looked forward to our adventure. At Wawa, Canada, we parked our cars in the train parking lot and boarded the train..with 3 canoes...which were to carry us to the land of water and wilderness, and LOTS OF FISHING...northward to Lake Wabatongushi.
On a clear sun-shiny day, we disembarked from the train after it made "our" stop along the route to the town many hundreds of miles north. Once the train continued on, we were left surrounded by the vast wilderness and lots of water! Not a sole was in sight..no wild life, no humans...nothing! We had simply made a stop along the vast miles of track tracks to find our camping site "somewhere out there on the shore of the big lake."
We found a site for our tent on an island... Dog Island, evidently where in the past, a man had kept his dogs while training them.
One night when the weather changed from sunny to stormy, and when Larry became ill with a sore throat, we decided to transverse the rough waters to a cabin on the far east side of the lake. The reason for this transverse was simply to "get warm" and give Larry a respite from the cold of the tent! Off we three couples paddled in the canoes. Half way across the lake the storm arrived with waters that became rough..waves that were high and lightening which flashed all around us. Now bear in mind that we had brought our ALUMINUM Grumman canoe with us! NOT THE PLACE TO BE IN A LIGHTENING STORM!! When we arrived at the cabin in the wilderness across the lake, a French couple invited us to enter their one room cabin with wood stove roaring. We stood around the stove shivering with cold and simply looked at our hosts..they couldn't speak English nor could we speak French. But somehow, we were able to communicate that Larry was sick and we needed to get him warm.
After a short time, we decided that this was not entirely a welcome situation so decided it was time to head back to our camp. No wonder the French couple were concerned for our safety when they tried to tell us "NON, NON, ..." when we decided to leave...at the time we couldn't see why we shouldn't go; but we NOW know that you don't traverse a lake in an aluminun canoe when lightening is flashing all around.. We did make it back to camp but in retrospect, we never will do such a stupid thing again..
I imagine the French couple told their story over and over of the stupid Americans who transversed a lake in a storm!