The canoe has at all times been a part of Canada’s nationwide mythology — however it’s an advanced historical past. For 1000’s of years, these numerous watercraft offered important transportation by way of the huge wilds of North America for the continent’s nice range of Indigenous peoples.
Then those self same vessels grew to become instruments of colonial enlargement throughout the voyageurs’ fur commerce period, displacing native communities and fueling the extraction of pure assets. Lastly, it arrives within the fashionable period, the place it’s principally recognized for leisure actions “dominated by middle-class white folks,” as sports activities and leisure historian Jessica Dunkin wrote within the 2019 guide Symbols of Canada.
That’s fairly the circuitous journey — even for a vessel designed particularly for navigating them.
However there’s doubtless no place on earth higher geared up to inform the canoe’s story than the upgraded Canadian Canoe Museum. Although the museum’s been round for 27 years, it lastly raised sufficient cash for an enormous enlargement final yr. It now gives a beneficiant house for paddle lovers, who can discover its assortment of 600+ watercraft on a wonderful lakefront property in Ontario.
From the large exhibit corridor to the hands-on workshops to paddle excursions on the water, the museum goals to convey collectively the canoe’s wealthy and diversified historical past.
“You possibly can go in a single door and paddle out the again. It’s like a household reunion in your boat to have the ability to go there and see what its dad and mom and grandparents seem like,” mentioned James Raffan, a Canadian anthropologist, writer, and adventurer. “However it’s not nearly celebrating canoes. It’s additionally about determining to narrate higher to one another.”
A Uniquely Canadian Museum
Whereas the U.S. has the soon-to-expand Minnesota Canoe Museum, and the Canoe Heritage Museum in Spooner, Wisc., each are comparatively small operations. So the Canadian Canoe Museum gives a represents a novel draw for American vacationers with its depth of historical past and canoe selection.
It additionally took years to lift $45 million for the Canadian museum’s new 65,000-square-foot constructing, mentioned Megan McShane, communications coordinator for the museum. Donations got here in from across the nation, with about half the cash coming from personal foundations and people, and the opposite half from numerous authorities funding.
The donations allowed curators to comprehend their formidable plans for exhibiting off the canoes they’d spent many years gathering.
Lengthy missing the house to correctly showcase the gathering, their love for the watercraft is clearly evident when seeing the “coronary heart” of the museum: a 20,000-square-foot room stuffed with greater than 100 canoes and kayaks. The big constructing additionally features a cafe, reward store, house for workshops and certification packages, and even a dock for canoe and kayak leases throughout the summer season.
The 5-acre web site is positioned a few 2-hour drive east of Toronto, and features a connection to the Trans Canada Path.
“The gathering is shocking and even fairly transferring for lots of people,” McShane mentioned. “We’re listening to from people who find themselves in tears of happiness. It actually hits folks.”
A Lengthy Lineage
The exhibited canoes present the lengthy arc of the vessel’s historical past.
You possibly can admire the orca-and-salmon art work adorning a double-masted, Nuu-chah-nulth dugout canoe relationship to the Pacific Northwest within the Eighteen Nineties. Even older is the Hudson Bay Firm Timber Body, relationship to 1876. Used for a few years at an Ontario fur commerce submit, this huge 42-foot canoe is the most important artifact within the assortment.
There’s additionally the “winged” racing canoe of Sheila Kuyper. The Olympic gold medalist made large strides for girls canoeists after Canada grew to become the primary nation to incorporate ladies in nationwide competitions within the mid-Nineteen Nineties.
The museum goals to indicate that canoe-making isn’t merely a convention. It continues to evolve — even among the many first folks to invent them.
To that finish, the Canadian Canoe Museum has commissioned the development of a number of new watercraft instantly from First Nation builders. That features a canoe constructed by an elder from the Uqqurmiut, a tribe on Southern Baffin Island, and a “tough water” canoe from the Mi’kmaw, a folks native to Northeastern Canada.
As soon as all these diversified types of canoes are proper subsequent to one another, you can begin to see the design options that influenced one another, mentioned Raffan, a longtime paddler of Canada’s backcountry rivers.
“There are lots of examples of how the thought of the canoe will get reinvented relying on who’s doing it,” Raffan mentioned. “If you wish to know the place your Pyranha whitewater boat got here from, you may see the lineage right here.”
Paddle Excursions & Workshops
Whereas admiring canoes is one factor, really taking one out onto the water is one thing else totally.
That’s why the museum’s organizers selected a lakefront location, full with docks for renting canoes and kayaks throughout Ontario’s hotter summer season months. There’s additionally the Voyageur Canoe Excursions, which take guests on guided journeys by way of close by waterways whereas discussing the vessel’s historical past.
It’s a chance to supply vacationers and watersports lovers a deeper understanding of their connection to the outside — and the various peoples who share in it, mentioned Museum Curator Jerry Ward.
“Being within the wilderness can be being in someone’s yard,” Ward mentioned. “There’s a actual shift in understanding the advanced historical past of individuals on this nation over the previous few millennia.”
Selling interactivity is essential to the museum’s organizers, who’ve been busy including extra workshops for hands-on studying. Upcoming occasions in March and April embrace courses for carving your personal canoe paddle, weaving a standard basket, or constructing a wanigan, a standard storage field for backcountry canoe journeys.
“While you drive dwelling with a completed canoe paddle you made your self — the sense of empowerment is wonderful,” Ward mentioned. “You’re drained after two days, as you need to be. However right here’s the cool half: On the finish of those programs, we get our boats right down to the water, and check out these paddles out. And the grin they’ve on their faces after they come again is so huge. It’s greater than the paddle. It’s that have, proper?”
It’s been a few yr for the reason that museum’s grand opening. Because the museum has welcomed an growing variety of guests, Ward mentioned a lot of them are merely searching for methods to flee the noise of recent life and reconnect with nature.
“The canoe is only a boat that departs the place there aren’t any roads,” he mentioned. “I believe there’s an actual starvation for that.”
