The Crossing: You haven’t lost your edge. You buried it.
This summer, the St. Lawrence II, Canada’s original tall ship, takes on a new kind of crew. The Crossing is a three-day initiation into emotional intelligence, presence, and personal mastery across the historic waters of Lake Ontario and the Thousand Islands.
Three Days. One Ship. A Crew Built On Purpose
This is a rare opportunity to do something few men ever will: live and work aboard a square-rigged tall ship. You'll haul lines, set sail, and take the helm under the guidance of a seasoned captain and crew. No experience needed. This is not therapy. This is experiential emotional growth through weather, water, crew, silence, and responsibility. Personal development for men shouldn't just happen in chairs; it happens when you are entrusted with something real. Somewhere between the promotions, the mortgage, the routine… the man who used to feel alive went quiet. Not broken. Just buried under the weight of a life he built while forgetting to live in it. The Crossing is not a vacation. It’s not team building. It’s not therapy. It’s the moment you stop managing your life and start leading it again.
Your Nervous System Has Been Running on Survival Mode for Years. Here’s the Reset.
Breath is the fastest path back to yourself. Not as a wellness trend. As a combat tool. Every watch rotation, every sail set, every moment the wind shifts and the deck demands your full attention: you’ll have a practice. Slow nasal breath. Calm the body. Command the moment. The ship teaches you to navigate the water. Breath teaches you to navigate yourself. Most men spend 40 years waiting for a moment of clarity. This gives you the tool to create it on demand.
If this sounds like the sort of adventure that you’d like to be part of, we encourage you to register today!
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Run a 51-tonne square-rigger by hand, learn sailing, knot and ropework, navigation and voyage planning.goes here
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Board as eight strangers. Step off as a crew who can adventure anywhere together, through anything.
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Leave the phones, the noise, and the demands of daily life on shore. Trade them for open water, real work, and men who get it.
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Simple, proven tools for staying calm and clear under pressure. Nervous system regulation through the ancient, grounding rhythms of duty, breathwork, operational mechanics.
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Three days, two nights, all meals, and every skill you need taught on board. Just show up ready to explore inside and out.
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Sail the hidden bays, anchorages, and shorelines few ever reach. The waters you thought you knew, from the deck of a tall ship.
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Live with radical transparency through shared quarters, shared labor, shared meals, and shared truths.
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Navigating open water changes your internal compass. You will step off the dock steadier, clearer, and more self-directed than the man who boarded.
Is This For You?
This expedition isn't for everyone, and it's not trying to be.
You’re functional. You’re responsible. And some part of you is bored to death. Not ungrateful. Not weak. Bored - because the man you were at 22, the one with fire and hunger and a why, has been running on discipline and duty for so long he forgot what it felt like to want something for himself. This is for that man. You don’t need to be in crisis. You don’t need sailing experience. You need three days, the open water, and the willingness to find out what’s still alive in you.
You already know if this is for you. The question is whether you’ll act on it… or scroll past it and back into the same week you’ve been living. Eight spots. One ship. One departure.
If that sounds like you, come find out what it's about.
Sail # 1: Kingston
August 21st - 23rd 2026 - Ages 18+
Departing from Kingston, the freshwater sailing capital of the world, The Crossing navigates the remote shorelines and open channels of the Thousand Islands. Experience these historic waters from a completely new vantage point: a ship powered by sails you raised yourself, operated by a team you helped build.
Investment is ONLY $975!
Three days. Two nights. All meals. A seasoned captain. Three facilitators. Eight men. The Thousand Islands. And a nervous system recalibration that most men spend years in therapy searching for. This isn’t the cheapest thing you’ll do this summer. It’s the one you’ll remember.
Meet Your Facilitators
Cory Firth
After overcoming a 20-year battle with depression and suicidal ideation, Cory devotes his life to challenging outdated health paradigms and advocating for mental health reform across the world.
As a certified Flow State Practitioner, next-gen health entrepreneur, and non-profit founder, Cory brings together a unique set of tools and experiences that empower men in transforming their mental-emotional health and creating a life of alignment.
Cory works at the intersection of biology, philosophy, psychology, behavioural health, and spirituality. He believes in using science to ask the questions and working with nature to find the answers. With this foundation he teaches how to create optimal states of flow in life and work, shifting habits and environments to create health and longevity, while embracing spirituality in an accessible and attainable way.
Through his journey studying, experiencing, sitting with wisdom keepers and working with world-class neuroscientists and psychologists, Cory has helped advance groundbreaking mental health research, created community-driven education initiatives and led regulation-changing advocacy projects that have fundamentally changed the way we access mental health support today.
That same lived experience is what he brings to The Crossing. Cory's role isn't to teach men how to feel, it's to help them remember that they already know how. Drawing on peak performance science, plant medicine, Taoist philosophy, somatic practice, and years of facilitating men's work, he creates the conditions where insight can surface naturally and slowly become a way of living, rather than a single moment of clarity.
Cory, Travis and Brent have walked this path together before, guiding fathers and leaders through the kind of honest, unguarded work that rarely happens in everyday life. Grounded, curious, and disarmingly direct, Cory has a gift for making the inner world feel approachable, and for helping men trade self-judgment for self-trust.
For Cory, this is what The Crossing is really about: a few days of open water that hand a man back the steadiness and self-trust he set down somewhere along the way.
Brent Atkinson
Brent Atkinson doesn’t believe transformation is something another person gives you. He believes it’s something that emerges when the conditions are right, when the noise quiets, when the masks soften, and when you’re willing to meet yourself honestly. His role on The Crossing isn’t to provide answers. It’s to help create the conditions where your own begin to surface.
As a husband, father, , executive, entrepreneur, board chair, and facilitator, Brent has spent decades building organizations, leading teams, and helping people navigate moments of uncertainty. Yet the work that matters most to him happens far away from boardrooms, where men are invited to slow down, tell the truth, and rediscover the parts of themselves that have quietly been waiting to be heard.
Drawing from years of leadership development, men’s work, archetypal psychology, breathwork, and transformational facilitation including plant medicine ceremonies, Brent creates spaces where insight naturally becomes action. His approach is thoughtful rather than performative, challenging without judgment, and rooted in the belief that every man already carries the wisdom he is searching for.
Brent is the founder of The EQ Lab, where he helps men cultivate emotional intelligence, courage, and authentic leadership through community and shared experience. His facilitation is influenced by the work of Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, David Deida, Gnostic Scrolls, and timeless indigenous wisdom traditions, while remaining deeply practical and grounded in everyday life.
Travis Rivard
Travis Rivard is a former Canadian Army officer and strategic planning professional with more than a decade of experience leading complex operations, coordinating multidisciplinary teams, and managing high-stakes logistical planning across Canada. Throughout his military career, he held leadership roles in the Canadian Arctic, Joint Task Force North, and the Army Lessons Learned Centre, where success depended on meticulous preparation, sound decision-making, and creating the conditions for others to perform at their best.
Today, Travis applies that same operational mindset to The Crossing, serving as the behind-the-scenes facilitator responsible for expedition planning, logistics, risk management, and participant support. While the on-water experience is led by the ship's captain and program facilitators, Travis ensures every detail is coordinated so participants can fully immerse themselves in the journey.
His passion for leadership, personal growth, and meaningful adventure is rooted in a belief that real transformation often happens outside of comfort zones. By combining military planning experience with a commitment to building strong communities, Travis helps create an environment where men can disconnect from everyday demands, embrace challenge, and reconnect with purpose.