On a Cross-State Canoe Trek, Advocates Urge Communities to Embrace the Scenic Housatonic
![Credit: Ryan Caron King for WNPR](https://archive.nenc.news/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/housatonic_river_canoe_trip_youtube_.jpg)
Credit: Ryan Caron King for WNPR
By Ryan Caron King, WNPR
As Schuyler Thomson lead a group of paddlers down the Housatonic River in northwest Connecticut, he squinted through the morning sunlight on the water.
There was a time when Thomson, a championship paddler and canoe craftsman by trade, might have been the only one out on the Housatonic. Waste and chemicals have kept people out of and away from the river for almost a century.
“People have turned their backs on the river,” Thomson said between strokes.