Joe Robinet is releasing a documentary and a book describing his return to wilderness trips after a serious single-vehicle collision near his Algoma District home in May 2024.
His dirt bike flipped over a few times and resulted in him having a traumatic brain injury.
"I was in a coma for three weeks. I ended up with nerve damage in my left hand, which left me unable to use it at all for about a half a year,” Robinet told SooToday.
He was airlifted to the hospital in Sudbury.
Three weeks later, Robinet came out of the coma.
“With physiotherapy, willpower and God, I came through it and I now have about 90 per cent use of my hand,” Robinet said.
“Physically I'm probably the best I've felt for a long time. I feel good, I have energy and I’m ready to just go all the time. Physically I feel great.”
He has dedicated the last 15 years of his life producing YouTube content about his outdoor adventures. Robinet said viewers can expect to learn about his recovery when he returned to documenting his experiences outdoors.
“This spring my dog and I did a fly-in trip to the wilderness with a two-person camera crew. We were up near Armstrong, three hours north of Thunder Bay. We were outside for eight days.”
The documentary is titled Nerves, a play on words regarding his recovery from nerve damage and his courage to return to the wilderness.
It shows him dealing with everything after the accident and seeing if he can do the physical things he used to do.
"Me and my dog are out on a canoe trip and a camping trip. We build a shelter, we catch fish for food, we bond. I see if I can actually rub two sticks together and make fire with my messed up hand. I pull off all sorts of tricks.”
After completing the documentary, Robinet felt driven to write a book about his experiences.
“I realized I needed to be outdoors by myself to write it. So, I went back out there for 20 days and I wrote it by literally putting pen to paper. I wrote 70,000 words.”
The book is called Surviving Joe.
With the assistance of his publisher, Robinet is putting the finishing touches on it and he anticipates that Nerves will be released on a national TV network streaming service in October or November.
He said the book will be released at the same time.
“The book will be available for sale through my website. We're going to try to get it into bookstores in the Sault and in Windsor and I will be doing two book signings in the New Year, one in Toronto, one in Hamilton. We’re going to try to get it on Amazon as well.”
His YouTube videos are produced throughout all four seasons of the year.
“They’re videos about an overnight stay with my dog in the wilderness where I build a natural shelter and cook a steak on the rocks, or a 20-day wilderness expedition where I'm moving every single day by myself in a canoe and I'm dealing with black flies and mosquitoes, lightning, hail and thunderstorms, wind and bears.”
More than a hobby, producing outdoor adventure videos for YouTube has become a profitable livelihood for Robinet.
“I started doing YouTube videos before you could make money at it but since then I’ve been able to turn my passion for the outdoors into my career.”
He said that his independently-spirited work has allowed him to spend both a great deal of time with his family as well as time alone.
“I'm able to provide my family a better life and I'm also able to go out and reset my head on these wilderness trips where I'm by myself or with my dog, where I have no TV, no internet.
"I personally need that time outdoors. I don't know how I would exist without it. It's like everything in one for me. It's providing for my family. It's a creative outlet and it is therapy. It's my life.”