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Canadian author and adventurer Colin Angus is best known for completing the first human-powered circumnavigation of much of the Northern hemisphere. (Some have referred to the voyage as a "global" circumnavigation but it did not conform to the generally-accepted definition.) Angus claims that his two year expedition included voyaging the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans unsupported in a rowboat. Claims about the Pacific crossing are contradicted by an August 12 Nome Nugget Newspaper report in which expedition member Tim Harvey is quoted describing how wind power was used in an emergency, and that a Russian research vessel offered essential supported on that Pacific crossing with a high-seas rescue.

Outside Magazine has recently honored Angus for his efforts in on behalf of climate change by including him in a compilation of 25 people changing the world. Angus' expedition was non-continuous and was broken up by intercontinental air travel. Other expeditions Angus has completed include the first descent of the world's fifth longest river, the Yenisey, and a complete descent of the Amazon from source to sea. He has written two books Lost in Mongolia and Amazon Extreme and co-produced two films for National Geographic Television.

Angus began his adventuring lifestyle at nineteen with a five year sailing odyssey in the Pacific Ocean, half of it done with his best friend Dan Audet. In 1999, along with Australian Ben Kozel and South African Scott Borthwick, he became the first to raft the Amazon river from source to sea, chronicling the feat in his 2001 book Amazon Extreme. The trio retraced the route of Polish kayaker Piotr Chmielinski's 1986 historic first-ever descent of the Amazon River from source to sea, which used a kayak. To follow up the rafting of the Amazon, Angus put together a team which would accomplish the same task, only this time on the previously untraversed Yenisey river in Asia, one of the top-ten longest rivers in the world. This story was recounted in the 2003 book Lost in Mongolia: Rafting The World's Last Unchallenged River.

Most recently Angus claimed to be the first person to circle the world using exclusively human power, biking across land and rowing across water as well as wind power as noted above. He originally claimed the world's first human-powered circumnavigation, although his effort is bested by British Adventurer true human-powered circumnavigation, which traverses both Northern and Southern latitudes and therefore qualifies. The goal of Angus' expedition was to "promote awareness about global warming and demonstrate how effective human powered travel can be". The adventure made front-page news across Canada when Angus reported the dramatic fall-out with his original expedition partner, Tim Harvey.

Harvey and Angus raised funds and launched the expedition together before travelling 10,000 km, at which point their relationship failed amid serious allegations on both sides. Toronto-born Julie Wafaei, played a significant role, joining Colin for the voyage from Moscow, Russia to Vancouver, British Columbia. The rowing leg across the Atlantic lasted 145 days stretching from Lisbon, Portugal to Limon, Costa Rica. In all, the expedition lasted 720 days, ending in Vancouver on May 20, 2006. This included 75 days of rest recover from a urinary infection.

Aside from the first human powered circumnavigation of the Northern Hemisphere, this expedition established many other records. These include the first row boat crossing of the Atlantic from mainland Europe to mainland North America (Wafaei and Angus), the first Canadian woman to row across any ocean and the first woman in the world to row across the Atlantic from mainland to mainland (both Wafaei).