Les Stroud, Survivorman
Could you last a week alone in the desert, the jungle or the Arctic-with no food or shelter?
By Susan McClelland

Reader's Digest
March 2007



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It's February. Les Stroud sits by the wreck of a bush plane near Temagami, in northern Ontario, 50 kilometres from a hunting lodge that could offer refuge. Soon it'll be sundown, which could bring wind chills of -45°C. "You either adapt quickly and survive," says Stroud, 45, shivering into his video camera, "or you die quickly."

All right, that may be overdramatic. For one thing, he wasn't in the red and white two-seater plane when it crashed -it's a wreck from a past accident that killed two men-and, as an outdoor survivalist, he's in excellent condition. He's taping an episode of Survivorman, the popular series on the Science and Discovery channels in the United States and OLN (Outdoor Life Network) in Canada. Airing since 2004, each episode documents Stroud spending a week stranded with no food, water or survival gear. (He brings a two-way radio for emergencies, but so far he hasn't needed it.)

"What is the No. 1 priority of survival?" he says, his piercing hazel eyes directed into the camera. "In the desert, it's water. In an exposed area, it's shelter. Here in the Canadian North in the dead of winter, get a fire going as soon as possible."
Stroud then does what he does best: He turns garbage into a priceless tool. In the swamps of Georgia, he used a credit card, some rope, a discarded spring and bubble gum to make a float to catch a fish. On this trip, he uses the plane battery and wires to spark a fire. He then wraps the plane's aluminum siding around the cockpit to block the wind. He settles in for the first of four nights, waking every 15 minutes-a survival skill he's used so often it's habit-to stir the fire.

Stroud, wearing a homemade wool coat, spends the days collecting firewood and trying to catch rabbits using wire from the plane-a snowshoe hare turns out to be his only food for the week. On the fifth day Stroud treks 50 kilometres towards his crew, all the while repositioning his two cameras. "Sometimes I think my production team is waiting for the chance to film my failure to survive," he says on the seventh day, as he walks out of the bush, looking haggard, "perhaps hoping they'll be there to catch Survivorman face down in the snow, frozen solid, one hand on the camera-tape still rolling."

Not this time. Stroud joins his family-wife, Sue Jamison, and kids Raylan, 11, and Logan, nine-in their home outside Huntsville, Ont. But the reprieve won't last. When Stroud isn't taping Survivorman in the Sonoran Desert, Costa Rican jungles or the Arctic, he's usually on the media circuit. As one of Discovery's hottest stars, he's appeared on Larry King Live and The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

Survivorman, boast his fans, makes the series Survivor look like a camping trip. But Stroud's daring lifestyle-seven days with no supplies (not even a first-aid kit or sleeping bag) in the world's most treacherous places-isn't the show's only appeal. Stroud teaches his audience in a calm, inviting manner to respect nature, and what to do if stranded in a life raft or in a plane crash. In the Utah canyonlands, Stroud couldn't get down to a stream for water, but then he discovered a puddle that formed overnight from ice that had melted in a rock crevice. To eat, Stroud devised a trap using a stick, a leaf and a leftover energy bar he found in his pocket to lure his only food for the week: a squirrel. "In the midst of all these contrived reality shows about survival," says Steve Burns, executive vice-president of production for Discovery Networks in the States, "Stroud is an authentic hero, out there doing what viewers may one day be called upon to do.

Les Stroud was born in 1961 and raised in Mimico, a working-class Toronto neighbourhood. As a child, he didn't show much talent for anything in particular. "In high school, all I was good at was smoking pot and drinking beer," he jokes on a sunny May day near his Huntsville property. Despite growing up a city boy, for Stroud, nature held a special appeal. Summers, he played survival games in the woods, where his family rented a cottage. "It was about chasing frogs and pretending I lived alone in the forest. I'd be sad at night because my parents made me come in to eat and sleep."

It was music, though, that dominated his life for more than a decade. He took up the guitar and songwriting and went to college to study music-industry arts. In his 20s, Stroud worked at Much Music and Champagne Motion Pictures making videos for Corey Hart, Jane Siberry and others. In the mid-'80s Stroud's band, New Regime, was asked to sign with BMG. But because of musical differences with the lead singer, Stroud quit. New Regime went on to make two albums, while Stroud lost interest in music. "Something dark was going on with me. I didn't feel good about my songwriting. I asked myself, Now what?"

What caught his eye were adventure courses. He took trapping, sea kayaking, flatwater and whitewater canoeing and first aid. As he gained certificates, he became sure he'd found his calling. "The first night I spent in a shelter I built, I got giddy," Stroud reminisces. "It was like when I was a child at the cottage. But this time, I didn't have to come in at night."

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By the late 1980s, Stroud, now married to his first wife, was eager to work in outdoor adventure. But his wife and parents wanted him to get a mainstream job. He was a garbage collector and then a truck driver, but neither satisfied him or his family. His marriage unraveled after a year. Stroud started a company taking people on canoe and kayak trips in northern Ontario. Then, during a winter survival course in 1990, Stroud met Sue. "She believed in my confidence to pursue a life off the beaten track," he says.

Sue also grew up in Toronto, spending summers in Muskoka. She worked in advertising, but yearned to be away from the city. In 1990 she quit her job and enrolled in survival courses, eventually working for Stroud's touring company. "I always knew I wouldn't marry a nine-to-five guy and live in the city," says Sue, 46. "I wanted someone who shared my love of the outdoors. It was either that or go solo."

The duo were married in 1993, on a dogsled by a beaver pond, and embarked on a year-long honeymoon in a remote area north of Thunder Bay. They hunted their food and built their home using moss, bark and logs. With his filmmaking experience, Stroud recorded their sojourn, which became the award-winning documentary Snowshoes and Solitude.

Then, in 2000, an idea Stroud had during an adventure course came back: to be flown to a remote location with no supplies and film his survival. He'd research the location's environment and talk with locals to find out what he'd be up against-weather conditions, predators, what vegetation was safe and what was poisonous. The timing was right: CBS's Survivor had become an international sensation. "I made a cold call to Discovery Canada and told them, 'In me, you have a survival instructor and a filmmaker. You won't find this combination anywhere else,'" Stroud recalls. "They said they were thinking of doing something like this but didn't have anyone to do it." The episode, taped in Boreal Forest, in northwestern Ontario, was a hit. Stroud did a follow-up winter episode, and the newly dubbed Survivorman became a series.

While the show takes Stroud from home for long periods, for Sue, a stay-at-home mom to their two children, it's a small sacrifice. "I'm really proud of Les. He's showing people that life is short. In the mad rush, so many have lost touch with what's important."

Stroud looks at his watch. "We're late!" he exclaims, jumping up from the table at The Cottage Bar and Grill in Huntsville, where we've just had lunch. He's due for a haircut, but as he makes his way to his pickup, fans swarm. "Saw you on Larry King," says one. "Caught a rerun of Survivorman last night," another cuts in. Stroud chats with each admirer.

Stacey, his hairstylist, isn't amused when Stroud finally slips into her chair. "If it were anyone but you..." she says, tapping her foot. He hands her his debut CD. After he and Sue were married, Stroud took up music again. In 2005 he joined the band The Northern Pikes; this spring, they'll release their first CD, Stroud and the Pikes.

He's also developing Stroud's Legends, a series for Discovery's Science Channel: He'll spend one week each in the shoes of great explorers-Lewis and Clark, Ernest Shackleton and Henry Hudson-traveling the same trails, wearing the same clothes and eating the same foods as his predecessors. On top of it all, he's overseeing the renovation of his home, a compound of buildings run by solar power, rain harvesting and wind generation. He's making a documentary about it called Off the Grid. "It's not about being back-to-the-land hippies," he says. "It's about being as close to nature as possible."

Stroud stands barefoot, in T-shirt and shorts, on a rock looking over the Atlantic on a remote Costa Rican shore. He sighs as the blue sea kayak he used to get here is pulled out to sea. Stroud explains to viewers that this could happen to them. "You borrow a kayak from a beach resort for the day, head out a little unprepared," he says, shaking his head. "Then, when you're not watching, the tide takes away your only link to survival."

After four days on the beach, Stroud starts on a three-day walk through the jungle hoping to find civilization. He'll have to dodge reptiles and poisonous spiders. Worse, he has a blister on his foot and his sandals are rubbing against it. But in the show, he seems such an expert; it's like he grew up in the jungle, knowing what plants to avoid and how best to construct shelter (about a metre off the ground). But the only time he ever spent in Costa Rica was just prior to taping, when he met with locals to learn about the area.

Even with this knowledge and all his experience, spending a week anywhere, with no supplies is still daunting-as in the plane-shelter episode. Stroud wanted to start walking out a day before he did, but freezing rain stranded him in the wreckage. "Even after all your planning, you never know what you're going to have to face," says Stroud. "Adaptability and ingenuity are what survival is all about."