World's Most Scenic River Journeys

Escape with us on an epic journey

along one of North America's legendary rivers,

world-famous for its majestic Niagara Falls.

A million bathtubs full of water are rushing past here

every single minute.

As we venture up close, we find a waterway

churning with discoveries...

...ancient and spiritual landscapes...

Every time I paddle, I feel that energy from the spirits

from my ancestors.

...places of unspoiled beauty and adventure.

We'll ride some of the most extreme rapids in the world...

...and dangle precariously over a hypnotic whirlpool...

It's breathtaking.

You're not going to get this kind of view anywhere else.

...alongside the people most connected to these waters.

There's just a lot of power and magic in the Niagara River.

This is one of the most scenic river journeys in the world.

The Niagara River.

The Niagara River is a legacy of the last ice age...

...dramatically carved out of the landscape 18,000 years ago.

A remarkable three-quarters of North America's surface water

passes through this 36-mile river,

making it a formidable barrier

and not just because of the 40 mile per hour rapids.

These waters also serve as an international border.

All clear!

So, for the first leg of our journey,

we've arranged for a special escort - the US Coast Guard,

who is taking us downriver from Buffalo, New York.

2690. We're just about at the Peace Bridge. Ops normal.

I'm always fascinated by bodies of water.

You know, hence I'm in the Coast Guard.

But certainly the Niagara River is special.

It is part of a greater system

and that greater system being the Great Lakes.

It's just an amazing amount of water.

Oceans inside of the United States and Canada.

To me, that's what's mind boggling.

All of that has to flow out to the sea

and this is the choke point for that to happen.

The mouth of the Niagara River.

Do you see the current wrapping around the abutment of the bridge?

That is an incredible amount of flow.

It's probably seven to eight knots.

And, you see, it's taking us past here in mere seconds.

This is the Peace Bridge, the first of six border bridges

over the Niagara River between Canada and the United States

and one of the busiest border crossings in all of North America.

The name symbolises the peace between our two nations.

The Niagara River is a part of the longest stretch

of peaceful border anywhere in the world,

where there is absolutely no conflict.

We realise between our two countries that it's on us.

This is a joint effort to keep this waterway going

and flowing in the way that we want it to.

Being a part of that is really special to me.

Connecting Lake Erie to Lake Ontario,

the Niagara River is a short but vital cog

in the Great Lakes waterway,

and our journey will be packed with attractions.

From the Peace Bridge, we travel north through the Chippawa Channel,

pass the International Control Dam and a shipwrecked scow,

and on to Niagara Falls.

Then, travelling through a seven-mile gorge,

we pass a whirlpool and a glen,

tackle the Devils Hole Rapids and finish our journey

with a visit to New York's Stella Niagara and Canada's wine country.

Four miles downstream from the Peace Bridge,

the waters have slowed.

Avoiding an international incident,

we hop over to the Canadian side to catch a stunning sunrise.

Enjoying it are a raft of ducks...

...a retiring fox...

...and a lone paddler on the water.

This is the shoreline of the Chippawa Channel,

named for some of the First Nations who populated these river banks.

"Nibi" means water in Anishinaabemowin,

and water is life.

Knowing that my ancestors paddled the same river...

...5,000 years ago, 10,000 years ago, it's incredible.

Every time I paddle, I feel that energy from the spirits

from my ancestors.

It's just magical.

We join Michele-Elise Burnett in a traditional birch bark canoe,

much like the ones her Metis Algonquin ancestors would have used.

She is paddling downriver past Grand Island

towards Niagara Falls.

I'm telling you, my ancestors...

...they were engineers.

This birch bark canoe, it's a one man canoe for hunting and fishing,

but they did make different canoes for different waters.

It was something that the whole family did together

as a collaborative, and then they would pass that tradition

on to their children.

The canoe was very, very important to us

and we held it with very high respect

because, really, the canoe was our means of hunting and fishing

and transportation.

At this point in the river, we must come in to shore.

Just like Michele-Elis's ancestors,

we cannot navigate the Niagara the entire way.

Downstream, the Falls must be bypassed by land.

But a little portaging didn't stop this from being

a superhighway for indigenous peoples for hundreds of generations.

Niagara was a crossroad.

It was an area that our indigenous people would come from the north

and then they would come down here and then cross over

and meet with other indigenous nations and do trades.

The function of the river changed dramatically once North America

was colonised.

The Niagara quickly took on a new role as a border,

but it's a role that Michele and many others

with indigenous heritage refuse to recognise.

It's an imposed border from our point of view

because our ancestors

basically roamed all of this area.

Once a year, we go across the Niagara Falls Bridge

with flags and march.

As indigenous people, we're proud to walk across the border and say,

we don't recognise borders.

I look at this river and I see that it binds us together.

Water is something that we are all connected by

and it unifies us and it brings us together.

This river...

...is our lifeline, it really is.

The next stop on our river

will bring us to the brink of Niagara Falls...

...and the engineering that controls it.

16 miles into ourjourney along the Niagara River...

...the water restlessly rushes us towards its famous midpoint.

Niagara Falls.

A breathtaking sight, Niagara Falls is a wonder of the natural world.

For millennia, almost 18% of the world's fresh water

has thundered over the 180-foot drop.

But what many don't know is that for the last 70 years,

the water going over the Falls has been meticulously controlled.

This impressive structure just under one mile upstream

determines whether the water gushes or trickles over the Falls.

We take a moment here to explore the International Control Dam,

built by Canada and the US

to regulate the flow of the Niagara River.

Jim is showing us around.

The sheer power of a portion of the water here

is harnessed ancl diverted to two large hydroelectric plants

further downriver.

On the Canadian side, enormous underground tunnels

carry the diverted water down under the city of Niagara Falls

so that it can be used to generate power

for 3.8 million homes.

This is exactly why the dam was put in place.

The international treaty mandates that during tourist season,

a minimum of 100,000 cubic feet per second of water

must be sent over the Falls.

But after hours and off season, the flow is reduced to half that.

F

It's just under one mile from the Control Dam to the Falls...

...which the raging torrents travel in just two minutes...

...so we certainly aren't boarding any vessels

on this part of the water.

But just above the thunderous Falls is a surprising sight -

the rusting hulk of a wreck.

It's the relic of a century-old rescue story

where the stakes were high.

188 feet high, to be precise.

In the river behind me is what's left of the scow,

which was a boat.

It was towed by a tug and it was working on a project

on the American side for a hydro canal.

And there was two men on board.

And on August 6th, 1918, it broke away from its tug

and started heading for the Great Horseshoe Falls.

As the scow was swept downstream towards the Falls,

the two unfortunate souls on board managed to open the doors

and flood its compartments, slowing its progress.

You want to know how much water is going over the Falls?

The best way to picture it is picture a bathtub full of water

and multiply it by one million.

So a million bathtubs full of water

are rushing past here every single minute.

And the fact the scow grounded about 600m from the brink,

these guys didn't have a lot of time to react, and it would have been

just a few more seconds and they would have gone over.

The scow got caught on a rock shoal in the middle

of the Canadian Channel near the edge of the Falls.

The men were marooned there, knowing that any second

the torrential water could knock them loose

and plummet them over the Falls.

Back then, nobody had a helicopter, so they had to rescue these guys,

and the United States Coast Guard brought over a cannon,

which doesn't sound very friendly, but it was a rescue cannon.

They put it on top of a big hydroelectric plant here

and fired a line out to the guys on the Scow.

But the lines became tangled, and it was another 12 hours

until a local hero managed to travel along the line in a canvas sling

and rescue the men.

The Scow has sat in the middle of the river for over 100 years,

stubbornly refusing to be tossed over the falls -

a reminder of the heroics of those involved in the rescue.

People care about the story of the Scow, I think,