Firefighters douse a piece of furniture pulled out of a house on Hazel Dell Avenue in Winnipeg on Wednesday. (CBC)

A Winnipeg adventurer and author, famous for fighting pirates, hunger and frostbite in two paddling journeys, has been injured in a fire.

Don Starkell, 77, was rushed to hospital in critical condition Wednesday after a fire in his Winnipeg home.

His condition has since improved to stable.

Emergency crews were called to his home at 520 Hazel Dell Ave., in the city's North Kildonan neighbourhood, around 9 a.m.

The blaze, which caused an estimated $200,000 damage, is believed to have started in the living room, fire officials said.

Starkell suffered smoke inhalation while trying to escape, said Bill Clark, assistant chief of fire operations.

He also said the home was crammed with belongings, which at first hindered fire fighters in their efforts to get inside.

Don Starkell, 77, is in critical condition in a Winnipeg hospital after being injured in a house fire. (Facebook)The cause of the fire is under investigation.

Starkell and his son Dana undertook a 20,000-kilometre canoe adventure from Winnipeg to the Amazon in the 1980s, which established them in the Guinness World Records book for the longest canoe trip ever.

The excursion was later detailed in Starkell's book, Paddle to the Amazon, taken from journals written during the trip.

The epic journey started out from Winnipeg on June 1, 1980, and ended on May 2, 1982, in Belen, a city on the banks of the Amazon estuary, in the northern part of Brazil.

Starkell's other son, Jeff, was part of the journey at the start but abandoned it during a 3½-month stopover in Vera Cruz.

Paddle to the Amazon is an account of a 20,000-kilometre canoe adventure from Winnipeg to the Amazon, which began June 1, 1980, and ended May 2, 1982. (CBC)

During the rest of the adventure, Starkell and Dana "encountered piranhas, wild pigs, and hungry alligators [and] they were arrested, shot at, taken for spies and drug smugglers, and set upon by pirates," according to a promotional release by publishers McClelland and Stewart.

"They had lived through terrifying hurricanes, food poisoning, and near starvation."

In 1990, Don Starkell embarked on a solo kayak adventure, tracing the Northwest Passage by kayak. The 5,000-kilometre trip took three years and Starkell lost all of his fingers and some of his toes to frostbite.

The book, Paddle to the Arctic, is an account of that journey.

Starkell was inducted into the Manitoba Sports Hall of Fame and Museum in 2006.