Sean Groves has been to some pretty tough places and done some tough things during more than three decades in the army as a combat engineer.
Now retired following multiple overseas deployments including short stints in Afghanistan, he readily concedes his experiences have shaped him in ways both seen and unseen.
And it’s that quiet, no-nonsense kind of strength that his teenage son Will admires and hopes to one day emulate as the two of them embark on an extraordinary journey together.
The father-son duo are part of a small expedition — some of them veterans — that struck out on Monday to paddle almost the entire length of the Ottawa River, beginning in its headwaters at Lac des Outaouais in northern Quebec.
It’s a planned five-week, more than 1,000-kilometre odyssey through largely untouched wilderness, dodging rapids and living rustically.
On paper, they’re doing it as a fundraiser for Wounded Warriors Canada and the resilience programs offered by the charity.
Groves said he’s “honoured and actually pretty impressed” that his son volunteered to join the expedition.
“He had other options, and he chose us,” said Groves, who views the fundraiser as a chance to give back to the veterans community.
And then there’s the bonus of sharing the experience with his son.
Will Groves said he knows there are easier ways to raise money for charity, but for him that’s not the point.
“I want to do something hard in my young life just to put stuff into perspective as I get older,” he said. “So 10 years down the line I can look back, when I’m doing something difficult, I can be like, you know, what I’m going through right now wasn’t as hard as this little canoe trip I did back in 2025.”
The teenager said he has no illusions about the gruelling physical journey ahead, paddling eight to 10 hours a day. You can train for that, but it’s reaching inside to find the strength to keep going that he believes he has to work on.
“I’m 18 and pretty fit, but where it’s going to be a challenge for me is on the mental side of things,” he said. “I feel like I’m not as mentally tough as some of the guys joining us on the trip, or as my dad or Mark himself. They’ve gone through a lot more than I have, but I feel this is a good start for my mental resilience to begin.”
The expedition, which will be broken up into five different legs, was conceived by Mark Gasparotto, a former combat engineer who fought in Kandahar. He said beyond the fundraising, there’s a wider message they’re trying to convey to Canadians.
“We’re in challenging times and many people are struggling,” Gasparotto said. “And my key message is that resilience is a skill that can be taught and it can be practised. So you can learn to struggle well, and the first principle of struggling well is doing hard things — hard things physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually.”
As a frequent paddler on the Ottawa River, he said the idea of canoeing the length of the waterway came from his cousin.
Gasparotto and the Groves form the nucleus of the expedition, which will be augmented by up to a dozen other volunteers who will join for shorter legs.
Throughout much of Canada, it has been a brutal wildfire season and Gasparotto said the team understands the risks they’re assuming.
“Currently there are no bans in the areas that we’ll be paddling, so Quebec for the first 400 kilometres and then really it’s along the Ontario-Quebec border,” he said. “There are many things that we can’t control, wildfires being one of them, so we’ll just have to adapt should certain portions of the river become closed.”
