NEWRY — Master Maine Guide and Master Craftsman Kevin Slater of Newry won the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife’s Wiggie Robinson Legendary Maine Guide Award for 2023.

His partner and Mahoosuc Master Guide Service partner, Polly Mahoney, won the same prestigious award in 2021, marking a historic first as the first pair from the same family to achieve such recognition and only the second time a woman has won.

They met in 1989 at Newry’s Outward Bound School through a mutual friend. In 1990, they established their guide service in the town.

Their skills and styles complement each other, Mahoney said. They lead trips together and separately: canoe trips up north in the summer and dog sledding trips around Newry in the winter. They do some specialty trips, too, such as Slater’s fly-fishing expeditions for native brook trout and landlocked salmon. Mahoney leads the women-only trips such as the annual canoe and yoga trip in August with instructor Chris Trefethen of Bethel’s Morning Glory Farm.

They have worked with Inuits and Cree people. In Maine, they employ a person from the Penobscot Nation to help guide a native plant study via canoe.

In the tribute to Slater on April 13, MIFW Deputy Commissioner Tim Peabody said, “In all his trips and endeavors, Kevin is influenced and includes the lessons of native cultures, whether it is what he learned from the Inuit, or more locally the ways of the Wabanaki. He shares the importance of their culture and customs with those with him, and imparts their ways whenever he can, whether through guidance or advice, or through his hands as a master craftsman when he is building a canoe or dog sled,”

Their huge 1903 barn, Slater said, was built by the Chapman Family. The family was contracted as a stop on the stagecoach route between Bethel and Errol, New Hampshire, to rest the horses, he said.

The handcrafted canoes, paddles and dog sleds they use line the rafters and other parts of the barn.

“In the old days the traditional guide, they made everything they were using,” Slater said. “They didn’t order it from L.L. Bean. That kind of traditional guiding has fallen by the wayside.”

Slater builds canoe hulls from northern white cedar. “It’s just like a birch bark. It’s the ideal wood to use,” he said. “It’s light in weight and it is very rot resistance.”

For the dog sleds, paddles and snowshoe frames he uses white ash because it has the best strength-to-weight ratio.

Slater is nostalgic when he talks about, “the most perfect ash log I have ever seen.” It came from a friend’s property on Bryant Pond. It was “beautiful, straight-grained ash, with no knots.”

The many places they have each lived are recorded by the various license plates nailed to the barn wall. A tiny Minnesota plate is from Slater’s Harley-Davidson days. Mahoney remarks that they don’t have a British Columbia license plate on the wall. She lived there before coming to Newry.

Mahoney grew up in South China. When she was 18 she headed west and spent her 20s in Alaska learning dog sledding skills. She worked for the park service in Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, restoring buildings, building bridges and constructing rock steps. “It was hard work,” she said.

She and her ex-husband worked for Big Game Trophy Hunting Camp in BC. They hunted for trophies on horses. Big racks of moose and caribou, she said. “That’s what people wanted to put in their trophy rooms,” she said.

Like Mahoney, Slater spent time in Alaska, too, working as a guide in Denali National Park and leading Alaskan dog sled tours. Before Alaska he worked in an unorganized township in Penobscot County right out of high school, learning about guiding, hunting and trapping from mentors.

He founded Dirigo Mountain Rescue and Dirigo Search and Rescue, where he served in Baxter State Park. During that time, he was involved in a number of technical rescues on the mountain, including the 1984 avalanche. “Six guys got buried. Two didn’t make it,” he said. It was why he began the rescue services.

He created the Junior Maine Guide Program through Newry Recreation, and taught the Junior Maine Guide Program at the Bryant Pond Conservation School.

Slater and Mahoney distinguish themselves from other guides by making their living solely from guiding year-round.

“I can only think of five guides who make their living solely from guiding year round,” he said.

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