Stand-Up Guy

The first thought that crossed my mind when I picked up Dan Rubinstein’s Water Borne: A 1,200-Mile Paddleboarding Pilgrimage was to question whether pilgrimages can even be real anymore. In an age of living out loud and creating personal brands through the internet, this skepticism stayed with me as I followed the author’s four-part circuit: Ottawa to Montreal; Quebec to New York City; Albany to Toronto; and Toronto back to Ottawa.

Where religiosity is a more common way of life, a pilgrimage is a physical journey of faith — a commendable act that strengthens an individual’s relationship with a deity and hopefully leads to personal transformation. It is meant to be private in nature. Today, in a more secular society, a desire to leave behind daily life for weeks or months to embark on a fill-in-the-blank voyage is more likely to fill some of us with guilt that demands an explanation. Rubinstein admits that, as he neared fifty, his pilgrim passage was a...