Canoe country has a strong hold on the imagination. The conifers and rock-ribbed lakes of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and neighboring Quetico Provincial Park are still a remote wilderness where Cree, Ojibwe, and voyageurs once traveled in birch-bark canoes, where lynx, moose, and gray wolves still roam. It is a place and a dream, a source of enjoyment for the hundreds of thousands who have paddled--or imagined paddling--a canoe through...