With a paddle and a pack, this B.C. MP meets his constituents where they live

Paddling solo for 174 kilometres down the Kispiox and Skeena rivers in northwestern British Columbia each summer, NDP MP Taylor Bachrach encounters rapids, storms, grizzly bears and a spectacular landscape in his unusual effort to connect with constituents.

It's nothing like the summer BBQ circuit that occupies many of his parliamentary colleagues once the House of Commons rises. Bachrach said that, for him, it's a chance to celebrate the wilderness with the people who sent him to Ottawa.

«I think we have a lot of opportunities for meetings under fluorescent lights in boardrooms … and that's important. But when you sit on the bank of the river, and you talk about this place we call home, yeah, there's something extra special about it,» he told CBC News.

With a population just under 90,000 (a third of it Indigenous) spread across more than 325,000 square kilometres, Skeena—Bulkley Valley is one of Canada's most thinly populated federal electoral districts.

It's also home to one of Canada's most beautiful and isolated landscapes, where communities still see the rivers as the lifeblood of their communities.

«Each year I drive up and down the highway probably 50 or so times and I'm always looking at the river and thinking about years gone by,» Bachrach said.

«A couple years ago, I had this idea that I could visit those communities the old way, by river, and that it would be a neat way to connect with folks.»

Bachrach said he's always looking to bring a little bit of himself to his role as an MP, and since canoeing has always been a passion, a tradition was born.

His first journey was in 2022; the summer of 2024 was his third. Each year he puts into the Kispiox River, a tributary of the Skeena about 25 kilometres north of Hazelton,