One of the founding fathers of Pontiac’s outdoor adventure industry has announced a new generation of whitewater enthusiasts will be taking the reins at the Ottawa River rafting business he founded over three decades ago.
In a a Feb. 24 Facebook post, Esprit Whitewater owner Jim Coffey shared that he had sold the rafting portion of his Mansfield-based business to two former Esprit rafting guides, Danny Peled and Ty Smith, who Coffey himself trained on the river many years ago.
After many years of guiding at Esprit, Peled founded another Outaouais-based whitewater adventure company, Boreal River Adventures, in 2008, and today continues to work there, along with Smith. The two will take over the management of Esprit’s rafting program, with big plans to transform it into something not yet offered on the Ottawa River.
“Our plan is to offer something completely new that nobody’s doing on the Ottawa River which is rafting but also wilderness camping,” Peled said. “Other companies have really great one-day trips. So we’re going to focus on multi-day programs with a wilderness campsite.”
Coffey, for his part, said this partial sale will allow him to focus on developing other aspects of the business.
“This is far from retirement on my part,” Coffey said. “It was a sale of a portion that takes up a considerable amount of space as far as time and effort goes, and that allows me some more free time to explore and expand.”
Since 1992, when Coffey first launched Esprit in Davidson, it has offered canoe trips, riverboarding and rafting on the Ottawa River, as well as e-bike rentals and various water rescue and wilderness first-aid training courses. For much of this time, the business was the Pontiac’s only counterpart to the whitewater industry that developed on the Ontario side of the river.
Coffey grew up canoeing, participating in canoe and kayak racing before becoming a guide at 18. Now 60 years old, he said that this sale will allow him to focus on developing the multi-day canoe trips, canoe outfitting services and water rescue certifications Esprit already offers, with ambitions to expand the company’s international programs beyond Mexico and Costa Rica, where it already runs trips.
While doing that, Coffey also hopes to advocate for the waterways in the Pontiac.
“I hope in the future to be able to truly promote locally, nationally and internationally the wonders that are right at our doorstep in the Pontiac for overnight expeditions.”
Of his new buyers, Coffey said the duo are a part of an elite category of Esprit guides.
“I’ve known Danny and Ty since they were young teenagers and they grew up becoming guides with Esprit,” Coffey said. “They became part of sort of an inner circle of what we refer to as our ‘Esprit Jedi guides.’”
Peled said Coffey was a mentor who became family.
“We’re friends and we’re colleagues, but we’re also, in many ways, kind of like family.”
Coffey said that when his health was in trouble, it was Smith that stepped in to take over his operations.
“In 2020, when I was diagnosed with cancer, Ty took the summer out of his regular schedule of going to work and came to manage Esprit for that summer while I was sick,” Coffey said. “Our roots are very tightly connected. It’s hard to describe whether it’s a business relationship, a friendship, or a brotherly situation between the three of us.”
The business has suffered its fair share of challenges over the years, including the loss of its base camp and bar in Davidson to a fire, and industry-wide challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2024, Coffey started looking into moving the whitewater operation from its base in Fort Coulonge to his site on Calumet Island, where Coffey has traditionally ended his rafting trips.
“I think that in the hands of new owners with a lot of enthusiasm for developing something on Calumet Island, there’s an incredible potential for eco-tourism,” Coffey said. “It’s going to require a lot of innovation and effort.”
Peled said Boreal River Adventures will launch its full operation in the Pontiac in 2026. In the meantime, it will be business as usual for Coffey this summer, who will continue to run the rafting program and introduce a new project called pack rafting which involves an individual inflatable kayak.
‘Not a lot of places like the Pontiac’
Both Peled and Coffey agreed that the Pontiac offers some of the best opportunities for rafting and canoeing in the world.
“The Pontiac offers such an incredible inventory of eco-adventures,” Coffey said. “We have the Ottawa River, the Chutes Coulonge, we have incredible intact forests. There’s not a lot of places like the Pontiac left.”
Peled said that this was an incredible opportunity for their business to continue to grow. They started talking about the logistics of selling in August 2024 and finalized the agreement last week.
“What’s amazing about the Ottawa River is that it’s a world-class rafting river but it’s relatively accessible to major cities,” Peled said. “This opportunity is really once in a lifetime for our business.”
He said that going forward, they hope to offer a one-of-a-kind experience in the Pontiac.
Peled started working in canoe tripping at 16 and spent summers working with Esprit and winters traveling as an international rafting guide in Costa Rica, Mexico and Chile. When he started Boreal River Adventures with his wife, Letha Henry, in 2008, it began with a multi-day rafting trip on the Magpie River, about 16 hours north-east of the Pontiac that requires a helicopter or float plane to access.
He said the partial-acquisition of Esprit will make it possible for Boreal to expand the diversity of outdoor adventures the company offers to include multi-sport activities including hiking, swimming, fishing, and riverboarding.
“I think it’s going to open up the possibilities for a lot of people who might have previously gone rafting on the Ontario side,” Peled said. “I think people, when they haven’t been to the Pontiac, are often shocked with how beautiful it is on the Quebec side of the river.”
