When a loved one passes, there are many stages of grief– five to be exact. They present themselves differently in each person and scenario, but we all go through them.

Donnie Eden, who recently lost his best friend and father, is much the same. Thankfully, he has been able to work through his grief to a place of acceptance and has chosen to honor his father for the second year in a row on a special fishing trip in Canada.

This past June, Donnie Eden along with Terry Eden, Clint Eden, and Brad Wilkinson, set out on a 17-foot fishing boat in the Northwest portion of Lake of the Woods, a premiere boating and fishing destination in Kenora, Ontario. 

When it was time, Donnie quietly balled up an old T-shirt that had belonged to his late father, Don Eden, said a few meaningful words, and tossed it over the side of the boat. As he watched the shirt sink slowly into the murky depths, he thought of Don and how great of a father, friend, and civic minded member of his community he was. 

Prior to making the journey north, Donnie had spent a lifetime wondering about the annual trip his father loved so much. For thirty years, the Ash Rapids Lodge and Lake of the Woods fishing area was a trip Don took with some of his closest friends and family members. This yearly getaway surprisingly had never included Donnie before.

It wasn’t that Donnie didn’t want to go on the trip with his father. Though the two were very close, life’s other commitments had always kept him from being able to join.

Finally, Donnie was able to make plans to take the excursion in 2020, until those plans were thwarted when Canada shut down all foreign entries due to Covid restrictions. Undeterred, Donnie made plans once again to attend in June of 2021. 

However, Don was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer that year and died 60 days later. He was 75.

Five months after Don’s passing, Donnie was still grappling with the loss of his father. “My dad, my best bud, had passed away, and it was nine months after it happened before I could even talk about it, so I was still pretty wrecked at the time,” he recalls.

Still, Donnie felt compelled to take the trip that first year so he could learn more about father. Donnie was in search of Don. And it was in the calm, cool waters of Lake of the Woods where Donnie found him again.

Upon his arrival, Donnie was warmly greeted by the owner of Ash Rapids Lodge, Tannis Clinton. “When we laid eyes on each other, she embraced me, and it was just beautiful because I could tell how much he meant to her by that hug.”

As the trip wore on, a fuller picture of Don began to emerge. “I kept running into people who would say, ‘Man, your dad was the best,’ and they would just go on and on about him.” 

Beyond sharing a name with his father, Donnie had always been acutely aware of how similar they were to one another, but at Lake of the Woods, Donnie was struck by the number of people who recognized so much of his father in him. 

“To me, that was the highest praise,” he states proudly.

Perhaps the most impactful moment of the trip was when Donnie spotted not one, not two, but a total of seven bald eagles on the trip. The bald eagle had long been a meaningful symbol to Don, who served in Vietnam as a Green Beret.

“He had a picture of a bald eagle in his office, perched up high in an Evergreen tree. When he passed away, that was one of the few things I asked my mother for. In the picture, he's not flying, he's just perched, his eyes peering out across the sky,” says Donnie.

It can’t go without saying that the sheer act of fishing was something Donnie also enjoyed about the trip. He marveled at the copious number of smallmouth, northern pike, and walleye just waiting to be caught. 

“I wanted to go to Canada to see what my dad loved about it for all those years. Catching 20” smallmouth bass to the tune of 80 to 100 per day, that’s certainly part of it,” Donnie smirks as he speaks. “It’s such a special place to me because he loved it so much. I can't imagine not going each year after this,” he continues.

Ultimately, this full-circle journey has allowed Donnie to make the biggest catch of all: a glimpse of the man his father was when he was at his happiest, most himself, and in a place he truly loved. 

Don’s Fishing Trip Group (some years more/less):

Terry Eden, Gary Grist, Randall Eden, Roy Goecks, Jim Baker, Kyle Beard, and Clint Eden.

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