Is a River Alive?

In Part 3, Macfarlane recounts his transformative journey down the Mutehekau Shipu River in eastern Canada, a waterway threatened by hydroelectric development and at the center of an unprecedented legal battle for river rights.

Macfarlane traveled to the remote Quebec-Labrador border region with his friend Wayne Chambliss, a restless geographer and geomancer whose unconventional background includes being buried alive for experimental purposes and carrying a wooden chest of talismanic objects wherever he moves. Wayne had recently lost his close friend Paul to cancer and hoped that the river journey would provide some form of spiritual encounter or healing. Their expedition included expert river guides Danny Peled and Raph St-Onge, both deeply connected to Quebec’s waterways, and Ilya Klvana, a Czech-Canadian fisherman who impulsively joined the group with just hours’ notice.

Macfarlane frames this journey as more than recreational adventure—it represented a pilgrimage to understand a river that Indigenous communities and environmental groups have legally recognized as a living being with fundamental rights. Central to the narrative is Rita Mestokosho, an Innu poet, activist, and traditional healer from the coastal community of Ekuanitshit. Mestokosho spent years fighting against Hydro-Quebec’s plans to construct additional dams on the Mutehekau Shipu. Mestokosho’s work is a fusion of traditional Indigenous knowledge and contemporary legal strategy.