"Everywhere you go, you meet people who tell you all about the dragons, " referring to the way mediaeval maps proclaimed that dragons lay beyond the map boundaries. "Learning about the dragons was almost a rite of passage. In the spring one would hear the local legends of doom before setting out. Everyone has their own dragons for their own particular backyard and they are fiercely jealous of them" Donaldson had his share of slaying dragons by the time he finished

Navigating along the remote unpopulated east coast of Lake Winnipeg, a feat which was rarely attempted even by the voyageurs, the dragons almost slew Donaldson. A surprise storm during the night swamped his camp washing away five weeks supply of food and fillng his canoe to the gunwales with tightly packed silt and sand. Too heavy to dump out, it had to be painstakingly emptied with a saucepan. This tedious chore took Donaldson all day, then almost finished, waves thundered ashore filling his craft again.

This frustrating drama recurred the next day. It was not until the third day of frantically bailing that he was finally able to turn the canoe over. An accomplishment that made him euphoric. "It was like I'd just been given a million dollars," he said. "Lake Winnipeg was the worst; Lake Superior was foggy, cold, dangerous, and violent, but gloriously majestic. Winnipeg was a windy, muddy unpredictable spoiled child constantly in tantrums," he reflected. Donaldson attributes Divine Providence to the fact that his paddles which were swept out on the great lake as a three day storm continued unabated, were found three days later washed up on the beach.