Canoe Quotes And Writings

The canoe carried aboriginal people for thousands of years, followed then by the explorers and the missionaries and the engineers and the surveyors….until in modern times it gives us the gift of freedom. The canoe is a vehicle that carries you into pretty exciting places, not only into whitewater but into the byways and off-beaten places….You are removed entirely from the mundane aspects of ordinary life. You’re witnessing first hand beauty and peace and freedom – especially freedom….Flirtation with the wilderness is contact with truth, because the truth is in nature….I like to identify myself with something that is stable and enduring. Although [nature] is in a state of flux, it is enduring. It is where reality is. I appreciate the canoe for its gifts in that direction. - Kirk Wipper, from CBC Radio’s  Ideas program The Perfect Machine: The Canoe.

Watercraft was humankind’s most important conveyance outside of walking. - Kirk Wipper

In its contemporary use, the canoe and kayak become a medium to experience peace, beauty, freedom and adventure. These values are of utmost significance in a world which has lost much of its contact with the profound lessons learned in nature. To travel the paths in natural places makes all the differences and in this the canoe and kayak are essential partners. – Kirk Wipper

First, the canoe connects us to Ma-ka-ina, Mother Earth, from which we came and to which we must all return. Councils of those who were here before us revered the earth and also the wind, the rain, and the sun – all essential to life. It was from that remarkable blending of forces that mankind was allowed to create the canoe and its several kindred forms.

From the birch tree, came the bark; from the spruce, pliant roots; from the cedar, the ribs, planking and gunwales; and from a variety of natural sources, the sealing pitch.

In other habitats, great trees became dugout canoes while, in treeless areas, skin, bone and sinew were ingeniously fused into kayaks. Form followed function, and manufacture was linked to available materials. Even the modern canoe, although several steps away from the first, is still a product of the earth. We have a great debt to those who experienced the land before us. No wonder that, in many parts of the world, the people thank the land for allowing its spirit to be transferred to the canoe.

Hand-propelled watercraft still allow us to pursue the elemental quest for tranquility, beauty, peace, freedom and cleaness. It is good to be conveyed quietly, gracefully, to natural rhythms….

The canoe especially connects us to rivers – timeless pathways of the wilderness. Wave after wave of users have passed by. Gentle rains falling onto a paddler evaporate skyward to form clouds and then to descend on a fellow traveller, perhaps in another era. Like wise, our waterways contain something of the substance of our ancestors. The canoe connects us to the spirit of these people who walk beside us as we glide silently along riverine trails. – Kirk Wipper, in foreword to Canexus (also published as “Connections” in Stories From The Bow Seat: The Wisdom And Waggery Of Canoe Tripping by Don Standfield and Liz Lundell, p. 15) 

An interest in the wilderness means getting there, and getting there means canoes.- Kirk Wipper (from 2010 interview)

A better understanding of one’s past can only lead to better understanding of one’s present and one’s future. (Quote from slide at Kirk Wipper’s presentation in Gravenhurst in October 2010….shown on video of this talk by Brian Hayden, from his Docanoementary.)

You have to do what you can, do your best with what you are. And you have to believe in wilderness. If you do that you can’t go wrong. –  Kirk Albert Walter Wipper b Grahamdale, Manitoba, December 6th, 1923 d Peterborough, Ontario, March 18, 2011

….the canoe is not a lifeless, inanimate object; it feels very much alive, alive with the life of the river. – Bill Mason, Path of the Paddle

There is nothing that is so aesthetically pleasing and yet so functional and versatile as the canoe. – Bill Mason

I have always believed that the Canadian Wooden canoe is one of the greatest achievements of mankind. There is nothing that is so aesthetically pleasing and yet so functional and versatile as the canoe. It is as much a part of our land as the rocks and trees and lakes and rivers. It takes as much skill and artistry to paddle a canoe well as it does to paint a picture of it. In this painting I wanted to capture the look and feel of a well-worn travelling companion. There’s hardly a rib or plank that isn’t cracked but after a quarter of a century it’s still wearing its original canvas. - Bill Mason, Canoescapes (NOTE: This was in reference to a painting done by Bill Mason of his favourite Chestnut canoe.)

There is one thing I should warn you about before you decide to get serious about canoeing. You must consider the possibility of becoming totally and incurably hooked on it. You must also face the fact that every fall about freeze-up time you go through a withdrawal period as you watch the lakes and rivers icing overone by one. Cross-country skiing and snowshoeing can help a little to ease the pain, but they won’t guarantee a complete cure. – Bill Mason, Path of the Paddle

When you look at the face of Canada and study the geography carefully, you come away with the feeling that God could have designed the canoe first and then set about to conceive a land in which it could flourish. - Bill Mason, Path of the Paddle

It’s the portage that makes travelling by canoe unique. – Bill Mason

….portaging is like hitting yourself on the head with a hammer: it feels so good when you stop. – Bill Mason

Anyone who says they like portaging is either a liar or crazy. – Bill Mason

It was the canoe that made it possible for the Indian to move around before and for several hundred years after the arrival of the white man. As the white man took over their land, the native people would regret the generosity which they shared their amazing mode of travel. The more I study the birchbark canoe and what it can do, the greater is my admiration of these people who were here long before we arrived.

The birchbark canoe is made entirely from materials found in the forest: birch bark, cedar, spruce roots, ash, and pine gum. When it is damaged, it can be repaired easily from the materials at hand. When it has served its purpose, it returns to the land, part of a never-ending cycle. - Bill Mason, Path Of The Paddle

….we need to be more aware of where we are headed and from whence we came. An appreciation of the canoe and acquisition of the necessary skills to utilize it as a way to journey back to what’s left of the natural world is a great way to begin this voyage of discovery. - Bill Mason, Path Of The Paddle

A journey by canoe along ancient waterways is a good way to rediscover our lost relationship with the natural world and the Creator who put it together so long ago. - Bill Mason, Path of the Paddle

The path of the paddle can be a means of getting things back to their original perspective. - Bill Mason, Path of the Paddle

….the age of the canoe is not gone; it’s just different. the canoe is no longer a vehicle of trade and commerce. Instead, it has become a means of venturing back into what is left of the natural world. It’s true there isn’t much left to be discovered, but there is much to be rediscovered about the land, about the creatures who live there, and about ourselves. Where do we come from and where are we going? There is no better place and no better way to follow this quest into the realm of spirit than along the lakes and rivers of the North American wilderness in a canoe. -Bill Mason, Path Of The Paddle

The first thing you must learn about canoeing is that the canoe is not a lifeless, inanimate object; it feels very much alive, alive with the life of the river. Life is transmitted to the canoe by the currents of the air and the water upon which it rides. The behavior and temperament of the canoe is dependent upon the elements: from the slightest breeze to a raging storm, from the smallest ripple to a towering wave, or from a meandering stream to a thundering rapid. - Bill Mason, Path Of The Paddle

It is certainly not my intention to convince everybody they should grab a canoe and take to the wilderness. We are all different, and our interests vary. That is how it should be. Some people are content to enjoy the land from the edge of the road or campground. Others are only happy when isolated from the synthetic world by many portages and miles of trackless wilderness. I used to think it was a major tragedy if anyone went through life never having owned a canoe. Now I believe it is just a minor tragedy. – Bill Mason, Path of the Paddle

Wilderness: a beautiful word to describe a beautiful land. Wilderness though is a white man’s concept. To the Native people, the land was not wild. It was home. It provided shelter, clothed and fed them. And echoing through their souls was a song of the land. The singing isn’t as loud as it used to be. But you can still hear it in the wind….in the silence of the misty morning….in the drip of the water from the tip of a paddle. The song is still here if you know how to listen. – Bill Mason, Song Of the Paddle

There’s probably some truth in the old argument that hordes of canoeists swarming around out here can also destroy wilderness. Ironically though the ultimate survival of wild places will depend on how well we are able to rediscover a sense of awe for the land….and how successful we are in passing this reverence along to our children. – Joyce Mason, Song of the Paddle

On wilderness: I like being out here. I like looking around. Listening. Seeing how the wilderness fits together. It’s like a puzzle. When we go in and change things, it upsets the balance. And what a great puzzle our world is. It’s beautiful, powerful, and mysterious. – Becky Mason

On her passion for the canoe: Sometimes when I’m hiking I feel like I’m crushing things under foot. But when I’m in a canoe I glide with the currents, feeling the tug of the water underneath. And that’s why it’s special to me. – Becky Mason

On why she paddles: Paddling is sensual. It touches my emotional side. Often I notice that my feelings change when I paddle. If I’m angry, upset or worried, these emotions just seem to slip away and a sense of peace settles over me. – Becky Mason

On her Dad’s art: Like him, I find that paddling can take you on a voyage of creativity where you store up experiences in your memory to treasure for a lifetime. – Becky Mason

Becky Mason’s essay Reflections, which I felt was worth repeating:

I have often thought about the connections that paddlers experience when canoeing. Peace, reflection and wonder come to mind. I suppose it’s a desire to seek a form of quiet meditation. I find it natural to turn to paddling as a meditation point. I’m not sure that the canoe is the real catalyst for me though. It’s the natural environment that really elevates my awareness and feeling of heightened spiritually and belonging. For instance, I would not feel at one with my surroundings if I was paddling indoors in a chlorinated pool, where as I might feel totally different if I had hiked into a remote waterfall.

But canoeing is in my blood. I have found that it is not a separate entity in my life but part of my psyche and personal make up. My Dad, by example, showed me that this balance was possible. He was always so busy and active, working and going non-stop for months at a time. Nevertheless, he recognised that he really needed the quiet solitude of a wilderness journey to nourish his soul and rekindle his spirit.

As far back as I can remember, I have been spending a part of my summer canoeing and camping in the wilderness. These have been memorable and rewarding trips but equally important for me is the hour or two of paddling I can squeeze into the middle of a busy week. I like to jump in my canoe and head out with no real destination or purpose, just letting the wind and my whims lead me where they may. Upon returning to my desk and slogging through the pile of stuff that needs attending I enjoy thinking of the adventures I will be able to continue on my next paddle.

It’s fun to fantasize about paddling. To imagine exploring further that tiny trickle of a headwater, that slowly builds and turns into a lively river with rapids I dance in, and chutes and falls I portage around, and mirror-like pools I spin and play upon. However, nothing can substitute for the real thing. So I do get out there. And when I do, that feeling of being at one with the land and water and air slowly surrounds and envelops me, it feels very calming and Zen like. And I know that in my dreams and in my life I will eagerly continue on, going just a little further down that creek to see what is there and what new wonders the wilderness will have to teach me. – Becky Mason

Canoeing is always an educational experience, fortunately learning is what makes it’s fun. - Paul Mason.

May every dip of your paddle lead you towards a rediscovery of yourself, of your canoeing companions, of the wonders of nature, and of the unmatched physical and spiritual rapture made possible by the humble canoe - Pierre Elliott Trudeau, foreword to Path of the Paddle by Bill Mason, 1980

What sets a canoeing expedition apart is that it purifies you more rapidly and inescapably than any other. Travel a thousand miles by train and you are a brute; pedal five hundred on a bicycle and you remain basically bourgeois; paddle a hundred in a canoe and you already a child of nature. – Pierre Elliott Trudeau

I know a man whose school could never teach him patriotism, but who acquired that virtue when he felt in his bones the vastness of his land, and the greatness of those who founded it. - Pierre Elliott Trudeau (From Exhaustion and Fulfillment: The Ascetic in a Canoe, 1944; also cited in  Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Why He Paddled by Jamie Benidickson, pp. 54-59, from Kanawa, Fall 2001.)

Paddling a canoe is a source of enrichment and inner renewal. – Pierre Elliott Trudeau

Canoeing gets you back close to nature, using a method of travel that does not even call for roads or paths. You are following nature’s roads; you are choosing the road less travelled, as Robert Frost once wrote in another context, and that makes all the difference. You discover a sort of simplifying of your values, a distinction between those artificially created and those that are necessary to your spiritual and human development. – Pierre Elliott Trudeau

I think a lot of people want to go back to basics sometimes, to get their bearings. For me a good way to do that is to get into nature by canoe – to take myself as far away as possible from everday life, from its complications and from the artificial wants created by civilization. Canoeing forces you to make a distinction between your needs and your wants. – Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Memoirs

A canoeing expedition….involves a starting point rather than a parting. Although it assumes the breaking of ties, its purpose is not to destroy the past, but to lay down a foundation for the future. From now on, every living act will be built on this step, which will serve as a base long after the return of the expedition….and until the next one. - Pierre Trudeau

Water reflects not only clouds and trees and cliffs, but all the infinite variations of mind and spirit we bring to it. – Sigurd Olson

….a man is part of his canoe and therefore part of all it knows. The instant he dips a paddle he flows as it flows. - Sigurd Olson, The Singing Wilderness.

The movement of a canoe is like a reed in the wind. Silence is part of it, and the sounds of lapping water, bird songs, and wind in the trees. It is part of the medium through which it floats, the sky, the water, the shores….There is magic in the feel of a paddle and the movement of a canoe, a magic compounded of distance, adventure, solitude, and peace. The way of a canoe is the way of the wilderness, and of a freedom almost forgotten. It is an antidote to insecurity, the open door to waterways of ages past, and a way of life with profound and abiding satisfactions. When a man is part of his canoe, he is part of all that canoes have ever known. – Sigurd Olson from  The Singing Wilderness

My two old canoes are works of art, embodying the feeling of all canoemen for rivers and lakes and the wild country they were meant to traverse. They were made in the old tradition when there was time and the love of the work itself. I have two canvas-covered canoes, both old and beautifully made. They came from the Penobscot River in Maine long ago, and I treasure them for the tradition of craftsmanship in their construction, a pride not only of form and line but of everything that went into their building. When l look at modern canoes, of metal or fiberglass stamped out like so many identical coins. l cherish mine even more …Sixteen feet in length, it has graceful lines with a tumble home or curve from the gunwales inward …No other canoe I’ve ever used paddles as easily … The gunwales and decks are of mahogany, the ribs and planking of carefully selected spruce and cedar… - Sigurd Olson, Tradition

The canoes rode well, not too high in the bows, but just enough. Peterborough Prospectors were made for the bush and for roaring rapids and waves. They embodies the best features of all canoes in the north. They were wide of beam with sufficient depth to take rough water, and their lines gave them maneuverability and grace. In them was the lore of centuries, of Indian craftsman who had dreamed and perfected the beauty of the birchbark, and of French voyageurs who also loved the feel of the paddle and the smooth glide of the canoe through the water. All this was taken by modern craftsman who – with glues , waterproof fillers and canvas, together with the accuracy of machine tooled ribs and thwarts , planking and gunwales – made a canoe of which Northmen might be well proud. – Sigurd Olson

Such vivid awareness is swiftly lost today, but if it can be held into adulthood it enriches and colors all we do. How often in the wild country of the north I have been aware of the spirits of the voyageurs, the shadowy forms that once roamed the rivers and lakes. Often at night it seemed I could hear ghostly songs coming across the water, the rhythmic dip of paddles and the swish of great canoes as they went by. - Sigurd Olson

As long as there are young men with the light of adventure in their eyes or a touch of wildness in their souls, rapids will be run. – Sigurd F. Olson (Naturalist author of The Singing Wilderness)

The mist was all gone from the river now and the rapids sparkled and sang. They were still young as the land was young. We were there to enjoy it, and the great machines seemed far away. – Sigurd F. Olson (Naturalist author of The Singing Wilderness)

I remember long trips in the wilderness when food and tobacco were running low, when the weather for a week or a month had been impossible, and the joy that coming back meant in the satisfaction of long-thwarted hunger and comfort. In the light of reflection, that was the real harvest, something to remember whenever the going gets tough.

And that, I believe, is one of the reasons why coming home from any sort of a primitive expedition is a real adventure. Security and routine are always welcome after knowing excitement and the unusual. We need contrast to make us know we are really alive. – Sigurd Olson, from Contrast

In travelling great rivers and lakes, there are times when islands fade, hills and headlands recede, the water merges with the sky in a distant mirage of shimmery blue. These are the open horizons of the far north.

If it is calm, the canoes drifting through reflections with nothing to break the vast silence but the hypnotic swish of paddles, there are moments when one seems suspended between heaven and earth. If it is stormy and the lakes alive, with whitecaps and blowing spume, each instant is full of battle and excitement. When, after hours and sometimes days, the misty outlines of the lake take form again, islands slowly emerge and float upon the surface, headlands become real, one passes through a door into the beyond itself and the mystery is no more.

Life is a series of open horizons, with one no sooner completed than another looms ahead. Some are traversed swiftly, while others extend so far into the future one cannot predict their end. Penetrations into the unknown, all give meaning to what has gone before, and courage for what is to come. More than physical features, they are horizons of mind and spirit, and when one looks backward, we find they have blended into the whole panorama of our lives.- Sigurd Olson, fromOpen Horizons, 1969.

I can still see so many of the lakes (whose shores and hills are forever changed after the storm): Saganaga, Red Rock, Alpine, Knife, Kekekabic, Eddy, Ogishkemunicie, Agamok, Gabimichigami, Sea Gull. It seems like yesterday… the early-morning bear on Brant Lake, that long portage from Hanson Lake to the South Arm of the Knife, that perfect campsite on Jasper Lake…. – Sigurd Olson

The canoe was drifting off the islands, and the time had come for the calling, that moment of magic in the north when all is quiet and the water still iridescent with the fading glow of sunset. Even the shores seemed hushed and waiting for the first lone call, and when it came, a single long-drawn mournful note, the quiet was deeper than before. - Sigurd Olson, The Singing Wilderness

I would paddle out swiftly onto the open lake if the moon was shining down its path. It never failed to come to me when going down that brilliant shining highway into space. Most completely of all would I be taken when lying on my back looking at the stars. The gentle motion of the canoe softly swaying, the sense of space and infinity given by the stars, gave me the sense of being suspended in the ether. My body had no weight, my soul was detached and I careened freely through a delightfullness of infinite distance…. Sometimes the night cry of the loon would enhance the illusion. For long periods I would lie, having lost track of time and location. A slap of a wavelet would jerk me back into the present and I would paddle back to the glowing coals of the deserted camp fire, trying to fathom the depths of the experience I had been through. - Sigurd Olson, in his Journal, Jan. 20, 1930

The sun was trembling now on the edge of the ridge. It was alive, almost fluid and pulsating, and as I watched it sink I thought that I could feel the earth turning from it, actually feel its rotation. Over all was the silence of the wilderness, that sense of oneness which comes only when there are no distracting sights or sounds, when we listen with inward ears and see with inward eyes, when we feel and are aware with our entire beings rather than our senses. I thought as I sat there of the ancient admonition “Be still and know that I am God,” and knew that without stillness there can be no knowing, without divorcement from outside influences man cannot know what spirit means. - Sigurd Olson, The Singing Wilderness

The singing wilderness has to do with the calling of the loons….It is concerned with the simple joys, the timelessness and perspective found in a way of life that is close to the past. – Sigurd Olson

The way of a canoe is the way of the wilderness, and of a freedom almost forgotten. - Sigurd Olson, 1956

Life is a journey, not the destination. – Unknown

As a society and a individual you become very stale. No challenge. Out here, I know exactly what I’m about. You can’t fake your character out here. Wilderness actually will bite you back. You are who you are. It’s good for the body and good for the soul. I want to be that 80-year old guy sitting on the porch and saying “I remember when…” as opposed to saying “I wish I did…” – Kevin Callan from “This Is Canoeing” video.

After an extended solo adventure I think back to my fears. Amazingly enough, what unsettles me most is not the loneliness which at time creeps up, the moment when complete darkness blankets the campsite, or being challenged by foul weather. It is when the trip is over and I am driving away from my place of vision and have to prepare myself mentally for the jam-packed expressway, crowded with thousands of people. More than once, I have turned tail on one of the cut-offs, phoned home to let someone know of my altered plans and headed back into the wilds for an few extra days – alone and content. – Kevin Callan, Ways of the Wild

When in doubt, keep the open end up, and the pointed end forward. – Signature from online canoeing forum.

On age: “For an old man, a canoe is ideal; he need only sit and move his arms.” – E.B.White

PADDLIN’ MADELINE HOME

I love a girl named Madeline I know she loves me, too For ev’ry night the moon is bright She rides in my canoe

At midnight on the river I heard her father call, But she don’t care and I don’t care If we get back at all

‘Cause when I’m paddlin’ Madeline home Gee! When I’m paddlin’ Madeline home First I drift with the tide, Then pull for the shore I hug her and kiss her And paddle some more

Then I keep paddlin’ Madeline home Until I find a spot where we’re alone Oh! She never says “No” So I kiss her and go Paddlin’ Madeline Sweet sweet Madeline Paddlin’ Madeline home

‘Cause when I’m paddlin’ Madeline home Gee! When I’m paddlin’ Madeline home First I kiss her a while And when I get through I paddle for one mile And drift back for two

Then I keep paddlin’ Madeline home Until I find a spot where we’re alone Oh! If she’d only say “Throw your paddles away” Paddlin’ Madeline Sweet sweet Madeline Paddlin’ Madeline home - Harry Woods (1925)

Paddle Your Own Canoe

I’ve traveled about a bit in my time,

And troubles I’ve seen a few.

And found it better in ev’ry clime

To paddle my own canoe;

My wants are small I care not at all.

If my debts are paied when due.

I drive away strife, in the ocean of life

While I paddle my own canoe.

If a hurricane rise in mid’day sky

And the sun is lost to view

Move steadily by, with a steadfast eye

And paddle your own canoe.

Fields of daisies that grew in bright green

And blooming so sweet for you

So never sit down, with a tear or a frown

But paddle your own canoe. – Irish ballad, circa 1840, published in Jane Benedickson’s Idleness, Water and a Canoe

Voyage upon life`s sea, To yourself be true, And, whatever your lot may be, Paddle your own canoe. - Sarah Bolton

. . . as one goes through life one learns that if you don’t paddle your own canoe, you don’t move. - Katherine Hepburn

This isn`t exactly a stable business. It`s like trying to stand up in a canoe with your pants down. – Cliff Robertson

Acceptance is the art of making the obstacle the path. Therefore, embrace the enemy. This is the lesson of the river guide: face the danger, move toward it, that’s where the current is the strongest, and it will carry you around the obstacle. Use it. — China Galland (author of The Bond Between Women and Women in the Wilderness)

So dat’s de reason I drink tonight

To de man of de Grand Nor’ Wes’.

For hees heart was young.

An’hees heart was light

So long as he’s leevin’ dere –

I’m proud of de sam’ blood in my vein

I’m a son of de Nor’ Wes’ wance again –

So we’ll fill her up till de bottle’s drain

An’ drink to de Voyageur. - from The Voyageur by Henry Drummond

“I think,” said Christopher Robin, “that we ought to eat all our provisions now, so we won’t have as much to carry.”  - A.A. Milne, Winnie The Pooh

Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day. - A.A. Milne, Pooh’s Little Instruction Book

Bottom line …..is that you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t force it to learn how to paddle a canoe. – From online discussion on canoeing safety.

These waves didn’t look that big when I scouted it! - Signature from online canoeing forum.

And when I must leave the great river, O bury me close to its wave, And let my canoe and my paddle Be the only mark over my grave! - Traditional Folk Song

I sailed up a river with a pleasant wind, New lands, new people, and new thoughts to find; Many fair reaches and headlands appeared, And many dangers were there to be feared; But when I remember where I have been, And the fair landscapes that I have seen, Thou seemest the only permanent shore, The cape never rounded, nor wandered o’er.” – Henry David Thoreau,  A Week on the Concord and MerrimackRivers

Wherever there is a channel for water, there is a road for the canoe. – Henry David Thoreau

Everyone must believe in something. I believe I’ll go canoeing. – Henry David Thoreau

A lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is Earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.- Henry David Thoreau,from the chapter“The Ponds”inWalden

It is wonderful how well watered this country is…. Generally, you may go any direction in a canoe, by making frequent but not very long portages. - Henry David Thoreau

The canoe implies a long antiquity in which its manufacture has been gradually perfected. It will ere long, perhaps, be ranked among the lost arts. — Henry David Thoreau, The Maine Woods

It was inspiriting to hear the regular dip of the paddles, as if they were our fins or flippers, and to realize that we were at length fairly embarked. – Henry David Thoreau

God grant me the serenity to walk the portages I must,

The courage to run the rapids I can,

And the wisdom to know the difference. – Anonymous

Some people can’t stand the sound of paddles banging on an aluminum canoe, but I have a bigger problem with the sound of cedar splintering against rocks. – Anonymous

The trick of running whitewater is not to try to rid your stomach of butterflies, but to make them fly in formation. – Anonymous

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be! – Signature from online canoeing forum.

Wilderness areas are first of all a series of sanctuaries for the primitive arts of wilderness travel, especially canoeing and packing. - Aldo Leopold

…perhaps our grandsons, having never seen a wild river, will never miss the chance to set a canoe in singing waters…glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in. - Aldo Leopold

The good life on any river may… depend on the perception of its music, and the preservation of some music to perceive. — Aldo Leopold (American ecologist, forester, and environmentalist, considered to be father of American wildlife management)

I don’t think you can live with the flat, metallic lakes, the brooding firs and pines, and the great expanses of gray rock that stretch all the way from Yellowknife to Labrador, with the naked birches and the rattling aspens, with the ghostly call of the loon and the haunting cry of the wolf, without being a very special kind of person. – Pierre Berton, author

A true Canadian is one who can make love in a canoe without tipping. - Pierre Berton

Anyone can make love in a canoe, it’s a Canadian who knows enough to take out the centre thwart! - Philip Chester

Paddle solo, sleep tandem. - Caroline Owen

Love many, trust a few, and always paddle your own canoe. – Anonymous

Mind over matter, canoe over water. - Kevin Quischan

To canoe is to be moved. - Doug E. Bell

If there’s a place, canoe there. - Brent Kelly

Never trust a person who’s feet are dry and he is paddling a canoe. - Anonymous

May your portages be short and the breezes gentle on your back. - Anonymous

Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing- absolutely nothing- half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. – K. Grahame – The Wind in the Willows

Why do we come to this place with its clouds of black flies and mosquitoes, the gravel road that rattles your bones, teeth and tires loose? Why do so many of us return year after year with the spring thaw? We migrate, not unlike other species, to the North, to the water, to the bush and shield rock country that makes up Northern Saskatchewan. We pack up our paddles and gear, strap our canoes on roofs- some of them nice, more of them dented aged jalopies- and instinctively make our way northbound on the CANAM highway.

People ask how I can stand the 13-hour, door to door drive to Missinipe. How do I explain a love for watching geography as it changes with each mile? How do I explain the burst of energy that I am infused with when I pass over the bridge in Prince Albert and the whole world changes from one of lush farmland to one of boreal forest with sneak peeks of lakes with their loons calling in the early evening? I don’t need to explain it to my dog for she wakes from her slumber to sniff at the windowsill. I open it for myself as much as I do for her, breathing in the scent of the Jackpines and fresh water. – Shannon Bond, Churchill River Canoe Blog

The worst portage ever is the next one! – Scott MacGregor

Get some colour in those cheeks! Paddle Naked! – Signature from online canoeing forum.

I feel the canoe is actually a metaphor for the Canadian character. It’s not loud, pushy or brassy. It’s quiet, adaptable and efficient, and it gets the job done. – Janice Griffith, former General Manager of the Canadian Canoe Museum

They say that one day God was fooling around, the way He does, and son of a gun if He didn’t make a canoe. Well, He’d made a lot of stuff, but that canoe really blew Him away. “Helluva boat,” He said. “But where am I going to paddle it?” All of a sudden, it came to Him. “I know,” He said. “I’ll make Canada.” – from Burying Ariel, by Gail Bowen

The canoe is a miracle. I cannot spend enough time on the water. My canoe is called “Margaritaville”. – Phil Chadwick

For Those Who Dig The Water! – Badger Paddles slogan

I like to tell our staff that guiding is ninety-five percent cooking, five-percent terror. – Neil Hartling, Nahanni

To travel alone is a risky business, especially into a wilderness; equally risky is to have dreams and not follow them. - Robert Perkins, Into the Great Solitude

We do not go into the green woods and crystal waters to rough it; we go to smooth it. We get it rough enough at home…. – Nessmuk, 1884

I went along to iron out the wrinkles in my soul. - Omond Solandt

Doing what you like is FREEDOM, liking what you do is HAPPINESS. - Unknown

Happiness is paddling a canoe on the river of life. – Unknown

May good friends and a good paddle always be at your side - Unknown

Originality is unexplored territory. You get there by carrying a canoe. You can’t take a taxi. – Alan Alda

There is a sense of timelessness and tranquility that goes with canoeing. These feelings come from fitting in with history, tapping a connection to our beginnings in the here-and-now and having a concern to preserve the future integrity of this activity. So past, present and future meet…. - Bob Henderson, Reflections Of A Bannock Baker from Canexus.

Temagami

Far in the grim Northwest beyond the lines

That turn the rivers eastward to the sea,

Set with a thousand islands, crowned with pines,

Lies the deep water, wild Temagami:

Wild for the hunter’s roving, and the use

Of trappers in its dark and trackless vales,

Wild with the trampling of the giant moose,

And the weird magic of old Indian tales.

All day with steady paddles toward the west

Our heavy-laden long canoe we pressed:

All day we saw the thunder-travelled sky

Purpled with storm in many a trailing tress,

And saw at eve the broken sunset die

In crimson on the silent wilderness. - by Archibald Lampman (1861-1899)

Give me a good canoe, a pair of Jibway snowshoes, my beaver, my family and 10,000 square miles of wilderness and I am happy – Grey Owl

The trail, then is not merely a connecting link between widely distant points, it becomes an idea, a symbol of self-sacrifice, and deathless determination, an ideal to be lived up to, a creed from which none may falter…. Stars paling in the East, breath that whistles through the nostrils like steam. Tug of the tump line, swing of the snowshoes; tracks in the snow, every one a story; hissing, slanting sheets of snow; swift rattle of snowshoes over an unseen trail in the dark. A strip of canvas, a long fire, and a roof of smoke. Silence.

Canoes gliding between palisades of rock. Teepees, smoke-dyed, on a smooth point amongst the red pines; inscrutable faces peering out. Two wooden crosses at a rapids. Dim trails. Tug of the tump line again; always. Old tea pails, worn snowshoes, hanging on limbs, their work well done; throw them not down on the ground. Little fires by darkling streams. Slow wind of evening hovering in the tree tops, passing on to nowhere. Gay, caparisoned clouds moving in review, under the setting sun. Fading day. Pictures forming and fading in glowing embers. Voices in the running waters, calling, calling. The lone cry of a loon from an unseen lake. Peace, contentment. This is the trail. – Grey Owl, from Men of the Last Frontier, pp. 78-79

River, sublime in your arrogance, strong with the might of the Wilderness, even yet must you be haunted by wraiths that bend and sway to the rhythm of the paddles, and strain under phantom loads, who still thread their soundless ways through the shadowy naves of pine forests, and in swift ghost-canoes sweep down the swirling white water in a mad chasse galerie with whoops and yells that are heard by no human ear.

Almost I can glimpse these flitting shades, and on the portages can also hear, faintly, the lisping rustle of forgotten footsteps, coming back to me like the whispers from a dream that is no longer remembered, but cannot die. – Grey Owl, Tales Of An Empty Cabin, p. 166

The town of Bisco was dropping fast astern as I dipped and swung my paddle, driving my light, fast canoe steadily Northward to the Height of Land. It was not much of a town as towns go. It has no sidewalks, and no roads, and consisted mainly of a Hudson’s Bay store, a saw mill, probably fifty houses scattered on a rocky hillside, and an Indian encampment in a sheltered bay of Biscotasing Lake, on the shores of which this village stood. But it was rather a noted little place, as, being situated within measurable distance of the headwater of a number of turbulent rivers…and being moreover the gateway to a maze of water routes that stretch Southward to lakesHuron and Superior, and Northward to the Arctic ocean, the fame of its canoemen was widely known. – Grey Owl, Pilgrims Of The Wild, p. 8

Steadily, day after day, he had forged ahead, sometimes moving along easily on smooth water as he was now doing, at other times poling up rough rapids, forcing his frail canoe up the rushing, foaming water and between jagged, dangerous rocks with a skill that few white men and not all Indians learn. This morning his way was barred by a water-fall, wild and beautiful, higher than the tallest pine trees, where the sun made a rainbow in the dashing white spray at the foot of it…Picking up the canoe, he carried it, upside down on his shoulders, over a dim portage trail between the giant whispering trees, a trail of years old, and on which the sun never shone, so shaded was it. He made a second trip with his light outfit, loaded his canoe, and out in the brightness and the calm water above the falls continued his journey. – Grey Owl, The Adventures of Sajo And Her Beaver People, p. 15

But there are those amongst us, some who have earned the right to follow their own judgement in such matters; these now take control of the situation. They are the “white water men”, to whom the thunderous roar of the rapids and the smell of spray flying in the face are as the intoxication of strong drink. – Grey Owl, Men of the Last Frontier

On the portages the leaves hang limp and listless, and the still air is acrid with the resinous odour of boiling spruce gum. Here men sweat under enormous burdens: earlier in the summer, clouds of mosquitoes and black-flies would envelope them in biting swarms. But it is August, and the fly season is over, and those that are left are too weak to do any damage, and sit balefully regarding us from nearby limbs of trees. Pattering of moccasined feet on the narrow trail, as men trot with the canoes, one to a man, or step easily along and under their loads; and in a miraculously short space of time everything is over to the far side. –Grey Owl, “The Lost Brigade”

The feel of a canoe gunnel at the thigh, the splash of flying spray in the face, the rhythm of the snowshoe trail, the beckoning of far-off hills and valleys, the majesty of the tempest, the calm and silent presence of the trees that seem to muse and ponder in their silence; the trust and confidence of small living creatures, the company of simple men; these have been my inspiration and my guide. Without them I am nothing. – Grey Owl

When I first ventured to Temagami in the early spring of 1970, paddling solo in a fourteen-foot cedar-canvas canoe, with the snow falling and the ice still partially on the lake, I passed through a portal into another world – Grey Owl’s world – and I knew I had found my home. - Hap Wilson, Grey Owl and Me, p. 18

The thought of having to carry all your worldly possessions on your back has been cause to modify the quintessential Canadian adventure canoe trip in terms of how many portages will be encountered. Paddlers now have mutated their own aspirations of adventure by eliminating the “carry”-the fundamental and historical pith of the journey, and choose a route with the least amount of work involved. - from Grey Owl & Me by Hap Wilson

Canoeing more or less defines who I am. Patched boats in the backyard affirm soul truths. My home, Canada, is not an abstraction; it is kindred canoe spirits and a constellation of sun-alive, star-washed campsites, linked by rivers, lakes, and ornery portages; scapes of the heart, rekindled by sensations that linger long after the pain is gone. When I meet someone, I wonder what they would be like on a trip. - James Raffan

The paddling rhythm allows us to focus on the here-and-now. Senses are tuned and aware, but not focusing on anything in particular. I’m aware of bodies falling easily into the monotony of the motion. The magic of paddling for hours in the efficiency of the action. For every action there is a resting phase – the yin (sic) of exertion, the yang (sic) of rest. For every expenditure of energy, there is renewal of breath and power from the motion of the boat. Resting phase: hands fall forward, shoulders tilt, the blade drops into the water and every part of the body evenly flexes to the task. Exertion: I look down and see my bare toes flex against the sand in the bottom of the boat as the stroke begins. The thigh follows, left more than on the right. The demand of the right side of my torso is smooth and even. The demand on the left side – the side I’m paddling on – is wave-like. I look down as the power of the stroke peaks: chest and upper arm flex together as the paddle swings forward again. Gail’s back shows the other side of the effort. Sheets of muscle in her back are a series of delicately shadowed triangles that focus their force towards her spine. Her shoulders glisten in the light and drop slightly as she tips forward and begins a new stroke. Watching the sequence of motion played out through the smooth muscles in Gail’s back makes me aware of a high-frequency tingling in the nape of my neck. I daren’t tip forward for fear of springing a wire. It seems odd that the paddle is the object being powered and the spine is the place from which the power is being dispatched. Our paddles enter the water on opposite sides of the boat, but I’m conscious right now that the power is centralized. It comes from the core. It’s motion derived of the soul and of the land whose energy flows through in every sense. - James Raffan

The all-wood canoes had aesthetic appeal, they were light and much more durable than their bark predecessors, and they were used by latter-day explorers such as the Tyrrell brothers, but for use in wilderness locations, for lugging rock samples, hunting equipment or survey instruments, there was a much more practical and durable design – the wooden canoe with a canvas skin. The Peterborough boat builders knew this technology and were using it to some degree, but some would say that, relatively speaking, they were well behind their counterparts in the northeastern United States. Builders at the E.M. White and Old Town canoe companies had been refining canvas-canoe manufacturing techniques since the 1850s, experimenting with canvas sandwiched between wwoden layers in the hulls of canoes, and with painted cotton duck as a skin on the outside of cedar ribs and planking that made the boat waterproof and protected the vulnerable wooden ribs and planking from abrasion and impact damage. – James Raffan, Fire In The Bones

The Canadian connection to these, arguably superior, New England canoes was through the owners of the hardware store in Fredricton, New Brunswick. Stiff tariffs had made it advantgeous for merchants in Canada to buy Canadian, which had protected the Peterborough canoe-building industry and its all-wooden boats, but the Fredricton “Daily Gleaner” reported in 1897 that Mr. W.T. Chestnut had imported a canvas canoe from a “leading and renowned boat building house in the United States, it being especially for use at Pine Bluff Camp.” The article maintained that this fine canoe would be exhibited at R. Chestnut and Sons’ hardware store for a few days. Shortly thereafter, the J.C. Risteen sash and door company in Fredricton (owned by a group including W.T. Chestnut and his brother Harry) started making a canoe identical to the imported American model and, in 1905, the venerable R. Chestnut and Sons canoe company was incorporated.

A curious aspect of this importation of an American canoe was that W.T. Chestnut secured a Canadian patent for the canvas-covered canoe design, despite the fact that the technology had been in use elsewhere in the country in one form or another for decades. Armed with this new patent, Chestnut launched a lawsuit against the Peterborough Canoe Company, alleging violation of its canvas-covered canoe patent. According to canoe historian Roger MacGregor, “Peterborough’s reply….was lengthy, detailed, and devastating. Chestnut did not even file a counter-reply.” And, MacGregor notes, as if to add insult to injury, another company, the Canadian Canoe Company of Peterborough, seeking entry to the canvas canoe market in 1907, simply acquired a Chestnut canoe in Fredricton and copied it exactly as Chestnut had done earlier with the American canoe. – James Raffan, Fire In The Bones

Although in later life Bill vehemently defended the virtues of his beloved Chestnut – his personal fleet included three, a 16′ Pal, a 16′ Prospector and a 17′ Cruiser – he could have been paddling any number of canvas-covered canoes built in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. In fact, there were on the market, for all intents and purposes, dozens of nearly identical models, made by various manufacturers in the United States and Canada, many of which had the model name “Prospector.” But, even as a class or type of canvas-covered canoe, the Prospector that became his favourite was entirely consistent with Bill and his view of the world. It was mostly made of natural materials – steamed white cedar ribs and planking; brass tacks and screws; cotton-canvas skin; and white ash or oak seats, thwarts and gunwales. It was solid; it was durable; it could be repaired in the field; and it moved quietly and responsively in all types of water. – James Raffan, Fire In The Bones

We need quiet places, and we need quiet ways to travel in them. We never quite realize how valuable they are until we’ve been paddling, camping, and fishing in them for a few days. Once cleansed of the residue of daily living, it’s possible to find what my son once called ‘a calm spot’ in your heart. It’s a good thing to find. – Jerry Dennis, From a Wooden Canoe

Requiem for a Paddler

So many times we sat in the woodsmoke of morning as the sun searched out our camp.

We felt the touch of a Creator whose name we did not know.

Someone conceived these places, and dreamed the perfect shape of a canoe.

So many times we would talk without speaking, move with a knowing.

Someone created us, not each of us, but the two of us – the something that makes us as one.

You are packed and leaving on a solo run. I will follow in time with hope that the current carries me where you have gone and we will once again sit in the rising mist

together.

I pray there is a God. - Peter G. Gilchrist

….the best I can do does not do the place much justice in the way of beauty. - Tom Thomson, letter to Dr. James MacCallum, Oct. 6, 1914, from Canoe Lake Station (MacCallum Papers, National Gallery of Canada Archives).

Take everything as it comes; the wave passes, deal with the next one — Tom Thomson, 1877-1917

Thomson had caught the bug of the North. He soon showed up at work carrying a new paddle, which he immediately tested out by filling one of the photoengraver tanks with water, then placing the tank beside his chair so he could sit down and practise paddling.

“At each stroke he gave a real canoeman’s twist,” recalled J.E.H. MacDonald, “and his eye had a quiet gleam, as if he saw the hills and shores of Canoe Lake.”  - from Northern Light: The Enduring Mystery of Tom Thomson and the Woman Who Loved Him by Roy MacGregor, p. 28

It has always fascinated me how the Aboriginal inventers of the canoe had the foresight to design a craft that would fit perfectly, upside down, on cars that hadn’t yet been imagined.

Not only that, but they had such a sense of fashion that their invention would fit like a dapper cap as car and canoe head up the narrowing highways toward certain adventure.

I mean, think about it – what other vehicle on Earth can you use as a hat when it rains, a shelter when it storms or a table when it’s time to eat?

And what other country would define its people by their ability to make love in such a vehicle? Certainly the Germans don’t do this with the Volkswagen “Bug”!

I love my canoe. Nothing in the material world has cost less; nothing has afforded me more opportunity to flee that world.

In this age of fretting over our carbon footprint, how comforting is it to know that you not only don’t require fuel but will not be spilling at the dock? For those who still follow the original art of canoe manufacturing, this is transportation that can be made from completely natural materials and can be maintained forever with natural repair materials.

Given such wonderful tradition, then, it is only appropriate that while we have the National Gallery in Ottawa to hold Tom Thomson’s Jack Pine and the Art Gallery of Ontario to show his West Wind, we also have the Canadian Canoe Museum in Peterborough to honour the craft that got him to such exquisite locations.

For the canoe is as much a part of the Canadian landscape as the trees, the rocks, the mountains, the rivers – and even the highways heading for essential escape. - Roy MacGregor, author and Globe and Mail Columnist

We are Canadians who took the time and hard work to feel the history in the stroke of our paddles and blisters in our boots. - Michael Peake

In Canada, whether or not we have much to do with canoes proper, the canoe is simply inside us. — Roger MacGregor

Wood and canvas canoes are strong, seaworthy, exceptionally responsive to the paddle and soothing to the human spirit – Hugh Stewart, master canoe builder, Headwater Canoes

The concept and the magic of a canvas-covered canoe is that it can have two, three, or even four new outer skins in its lifetime… These canoes are exceptionally recyclable and ultimately, except for screws, tacks and brass, biodegradable. — Hugh Stewart, wood-canvas canoe-builder and owner of Wakefield, Quebec’s Headwater Canoes

Going down a river or crossing a lake in anything but wood-canvas is like floating on a linoleum rug. That’s just how it looks when you glance inside one of those types of canoes and watch the bottom flex and shimmer with the water. Whereas, in any wood-canvas canoe you have all these beautiful rich colors of the cedar planking and ribs, hardwood gunwales and decks, and caned seats. Even the smells are nice and directly relate to the environment you are traveling through. - Jack Hurley, canoebuilder

I suppose there would always be an argument for the different types of materials and canoe designs, but the wood-canvas canoe is one generation away from the birchbark canoe and was made for working and transporting people through the wilderness. It was designed and made out of materials that would stand up to miles and miles of flatwater and whitewater and portaging through very rugged and unexplored terrain. As a trip leader with kids and adults, I have safely traveled across many lakes in a wood-canvas canoe in conditions where other experienced paddlers in the new-design boats were either windbound or took on water during the crossings. - Jim Spencer, canoebuilder.

A Recipe For Success:

STEAMED CEDAR WITH CANVAS

An elegant accompaniment to fish.

Make ahead of time for relaxed visit with friends.

51 board feet of peeled and deveined eastern white cedar

10 board feet of combined ash, black cherry, and maple

2600 brass tacks

18 feet of 10 weight canvas

¾ gallon of oil base filler

3 quarts of varnish

2 quarts of paint

Assortment of beer to taste (chilled if possible)

Using a large shop, prepare all ingredients the night before. Early the next day preheat element to high heat. Bring an adequate quantity of water in a large pot to a tumbling boil. Steam ribs until al dente (flexible) and bend immediately while still tender. Let stand at room temperature to blend flavors until cool. Chop cleaned white parts of planking into long thin slices, (smaller pieces will fall to ground). Add bulk of brass tacks and planks at random until ribs disappear (careful not to tenderize planking with pounding of tacks). When ingredients become solid remove from mold and set aside. Prepare gunwales and decks by chopping fresh hardwoods. Snip to length and desired shape, introducing slowly for best results. Wrap with canvas skin; skewer with tacks along edges, leave middle open. Add both caned seats and center thwart until balanced. Inlay decks for garnish.

Use the same basic recipe for fifteen and seventeen footers. Quantities will vary including concentration of beer.

Well before serving time, press filler firmly onto bottom side of prepared carcass to seal in natural juices and let marinate. Heat entire hull at medium to high sun for about three weeks, covering occasionally, until fully baked.  From a separate pot, baste inside with all-purpose varnish to glaze ribs, careful not to drip, and let harden. Repeat occasionally. Meanwhile, whisk and and gently combine, until mixed but not runny, an assortment of fresh paint to color, stirring occasionally as you serve, and dressing the outside lightly from end to end. The condiments blend even better if allowed to stand for several hours until sticky topping hardens. (Careful not to undercook, but do not let baking temperature bubble surface.) Repeat spreading of additional layers on outer crust and again set aside and let stand until hard. Cover and store in a safe spot until needed. Present whole at room temperature, arranged attractively on an adequate bed of water. If desired, garnish with cherry paddles as a starter. Bon voyage. Serves 2 to 3. (Note: Depending on degree of festivities, presentation may be turned into a dip.)  – Don Standfield, from Stories From The Bow Seat: The Wisdom & Waggery of Canoe Tripping by Don Standfield and Liz Lundell.

A canoe must fill many unusual requirements: it must be light and portable, yet strong and seaworthy, and it must embody practical qualities for paddle, pole, and sail. It must reject every superfluity of design and construction, yet satisfy the tastes of its owner and safely carry heavy dunnage through unpredictable conditions. These demands will be met by a builder both meticulous and clever – one who, through resourcefulness and dedicated craftsmanship, can build a canoe that will be an everlasting source of joy. It will provide pleasures that continue throughout the four seasons: loving labors that extend from spring refit through a summer and autumn of hard work and play, and on through the winter layup period of redesigning, building, and improving the canoe and its auxiliary gear.

I hope the author’s text….will impart….a proper understanding of of the creation of simple, graceful canoes. It is sad that the practical knowledge and technical skill necessary to build them has remained virtually uncommunicated. One can only hope that revealing a part of this information will result in a clearer understanding of the special bond between the traditionalist canoeist and the wood-canvas canoe. For indeed, a canoe reflects the spirit of its builder and user that develops a character more akin to a living thing than to a mere object of possession…. - Clint Tuttle (canoe builder and instructor of wooden boatbuilding), from the Foreword of Building The Maine Guide Canoe by Jerry Stelmok.

Time spent in a wooden canoe of fine lines and able handling qualities is intoxicating. Restoring vintage canoes or building such craft from scratch can be consuming. It will ruin a man or a woman for any other work. This is not to dismiss all canoe builders as rapscallions, curmudgeons, or reprobates. But in the majority of cases there are the symptoms of an addiction, or at least a suspension of common sense where canoes are concerned. We are kin to the hard-bitten trout fisherman who stands out in the wind and rain breaking ice from the guides of his fly rod for a chance at an early season rainbow, or the railbird unable to resist the summons of the bugle, knowing it will be followed by the starting gun which will launch the thoroughbreds from the gates. We all know better, yet we simply can’t help ourselves. Why else would we devote our most productive years attempting to revive an industry that has not known real prosperity since before the Great Depression? Today, at long last, wooden canoes and their construction are enjoying a quiet renaissance, and this only encourages us, adding fuel to our dreams. - From the Introduction to The Wood and Canvas Canoe: A Complete Guide To Its History, Construction, Restoration, And Maintenance by Jerry Stelmok and Rollin Thurlow.

Beautiful things made by hand carry within them the seeds of their survival. They generate a spark of affection. For some it’s sentimental, for some it’s the art of the craftsmanship, for some the beauty of the finished boat. People love these things and try hard to ensure they endure.

The survival of the wood-canvas canoe (to paraphrase John McPhee) is certainly a matter of the heart; a romantic affair. The economics are unfavorable. In fact, the wood-canvas canoe’s most conspicuous asset and advantage is that it’s a beautiful piece of art. It’s the Shaker rocking chair of outdoor sport – handcrafted, simple, clean, and functional. There’s nothing in it that doesn’t have to be there, but all of the pieces add up to more than the parts. It works well and looks wonderful doing it. - From Honeymoon With A Prospector by Lawrence Meyer

From Kettle River Canoes:

Any relationship worth having is worth preserving.

Crisp fresh air kisses your skin at first light. Your wooden canoe skims over still, misty water. Now, that’s our idea of a reality check.

If you only do what everyone else can do, where is the advantage in that? - Mike Elliott, canoebuilder

…..everything I do in the canoe workshop is influenced by and connected to my training in martial arts.

I have restored over 100 wood-canvas canoes in the past eight years. In that time, I have found that a successful canoe restoration demands a mind and body that work together in the present moment. As soon as I rush things, I make mistakes and have to start all over again. As soon as I think of myself as the expert, I find something I’ve never come across before. As soon as I think the task is simple, I get bogged down in complex problems. As soon as I obsess over technical aspects and try to think my way through them, everything grinds to a halt in a mass of frustration. And the more I try to get out of my head and get back to “the moment”, the worse the frustrations become.

I approach a canoe restoration with a mindset developed in my years as a competitive fencer. For me, it is an opportunity to immerse myself in the moment – now and now and now and now. When I succeed, the hammer drives the tacks straight into the wood – almost by itself. The hot, steamed wood bends to hug the canoe in a warm embrace. The work flows and I lose track of time. One minute I’ve just started the day and the next I’ve completed three days work in six hours.

But, just as in the fencing bout, as soon as I try to take credit for the accomplishment or repeat the masterful actions of the past, everything goes wrong. The tack jabs in under my fingernail as I attempt to grab it. I bend a new rib over the canoe only to find that it is upside-down and has to be thrown away. The air of the shop is filled with my not-so-quiet curses.

In those moments, I endeavor to see the cloud of frustration as a gift. Sometimes at least, I am able to catch myself and laugh at the situation and – with any luck – laugh at my approach to it. I take a deep breath and shake my head. Instead of trying to change the situation, I revel in the fact that I am feeling frustrated. I practice learning how to stay with the day where nothing seems to be going my way. When I succeed in taking the day – and myself – for what it is, things tend to turn around. Paradoxically, as soon as I try to hold onto my feelings of frustration they vanish and the rest of the day flows effortlessly.

When it comes right down to it, you are not working on your old wood-canvas canoe, you are working with it. You and your canoe are active partners in search of a successful conclusion. You must listen to your canoe and accept its strengths and limitations. There will be times when you want one thing and your canoe simply has something else in mind. You must be prepared for times when things don’t go as planned. The fact is, when things work out the first time, it will be the exception rather than the rule. - from Zen in the Art of Wood-Canvas Canoe Restoration on The Canoeguy’s Blog by Mike Elliott (also of Kettle River Canoes)

Nothing feels like a cedar-strip canvas canoe - Omer Stringer, a confirmed traditionalist

Canoes don’t tip, people just fall out of them. – Omer Stringer

A great poem:

The Old Canoe by George Marsh (Scribner’s Magazine, October 1908)

My seams gape wide so I’m tossed aside To rot on a lonely shore While the leaves and mould like a shroud enfold, For the last of my trails are o’er; But I float in dreams on Northland streams That never again I’ll see, As I lie on the marge of the old portage With grief for company.

When the sunset gilds the timbered hills That guard Timagami, And the moonbeams play on far James Bay By the brink of the frozen sea, In phantom guise my Spirit flies As the dream blades dip and swing Where the waters flow from the Long Ago In the spell of the beck’ning spring.

Do the cow-moose call on the Montreal When the first frost bites the air, And the mists unfold from the red and gold That the autumn ridges wear? When the white falls roar as they did of yore On the Lady Evelyn, Do the square-tail leap from the black pools deep Where the pictured rocks begin?

Oh! the fur-fleets sing on Timiskaming As the ashen paddles bend, And the crews carouse at Rupert House At the sullen winter’s end; But my days are done where the lean wolves run, And I ripple no more the path Where the gray geese race cross the red moon’s face From the white wind’s Arctic wrath.

Tho’ the death fraught way from the Saguenay To the storied Nipigon Once knew me well, now a crumbling shell I watch the years roll on, While in memory’s haze I live the days That forever are gone from me, As I rot on the marge of the old portage With grief for company.

Additional verse written by Kirk Wipper for Kanawa Collection (now the Canadian Canoe Museum):

Tho’ they rest inside, in our dreams they’ll glide

On the crests of streams of yore.

In the mid-day sun, they’ll make their run

and night on a distant shore.

The travelers are gone their unmatched brawn

Who plied the mapless ways

But their craft we keep tho the paddlers sleep.

Their stars we seek today.

Another great poem:

West wind, blow from your prairie nest Blow from the mountains, blow from the west. The sail is idle, the sailor too; O! wind of the west, we wait for you. Blow, blow! I have wooed you so, But never a favour you bestow. You rock your cradle the hills between, But scorn to notice my white lateen.

I stow the sail, unship the mast: I wooed you long but my wooing’s past; My paddle will lull you into rest. O! drowsy wind of the drowsy west, Sleep, sleep, By your mountain steep, Or down where the prairie grasses sweep! Now fold in slumber your laggard wings, For soft is the song my paddle sings.

August is laughing across the sky, Laughing while paddle, canoe and I, Drift, drift, Where the hills uplift On either side of the current swift.

The river rolls in its rocky bed; My paddle is plying its way ahead; Dip, dip, While the waters flip In foam as over their breast we slip.

And oh, the river runs swifter now; The eddies circle about my bow. Swirl, swirl! How the ripples curl In many a dangerous pool awhirl!

And forward far the rapids roar, Fretting their margin for evermore. Dash, dash, With a mighty crash, They seethe, and boil, and bound, and splash.

Be strong, O paddle! be brave, canoe! The reckless waves you must plunge into. Reel, reel. On your trembling keel, But never a fear my craft will feel.

We’ve raced the rapid, we’re far ahead! The river slips through its silent bed. Sway, sway, As the bubbles spray And fall in tinkling tunes away.

And up on the hills against the sky, A fir tree rocking its lullaby, Swings, swings, Its emerald wings, Swelling the song that my paddle sings. – The Song My Paddle Sings, E. Pauline Johnson

Tu es mon compagnon de voyage! Je veux mourir dans mon canot Sur le tombeau, près du rivage, Vous renverserez mon canot

When I must leave the great river O bury me close to its wave And let my canoe and my paddle Be the only mark over my grave– From ‘Mon Canoe d’écorce’ (‘My Bark Canoe’) translated by Frank Oliver Call

The Canadian Shield was never a block to travel; in fact, it was the reverse, for the Shield helped to spin the web of interconnecting rivers and lakes that covers half of Canada, an unrivalled system of ‘highways’ extending over a quarter of a million square miles of forest-lakeland and comprising a good part of the whole world’s fresh water. - Eric W. Morse

At 1:20 a.m. Sunday, a Niagara Regional policeman had to radio somewhat sheepishly for help — his cruiser had just been rammed by a canoe. Constable Edwin Gilmore was checking a noise complaint when he spotted some happy tobogganers swooshing down the hill in a canoe. He parked his car at the bottom of the hill to find out what was going on. Several minutes later his car was clobbered broadside. About $50 damage was done to the cruiser and the canoe will never float — or toboggan — again. Police say no charges were laid because they could not find a section of the Highway Traffic Act which covered careless canoeing. – Canadian Press, February 1974

I think it much better that, as we all go along together, that every man paddle his own canoe — Character of ‘The Indian’ in The Settlers in Canada by Captain Marryat (1844)

For 24 years I was a light canoeman. I required but little sleep, but sometimes got less than I required. No portage was too long for me; all portages were alike. My end of the canoe never touched the ground ’til I saw the end of it. Fifty songs a day were nothing to me. I could carry, paddle, walk and sing with any man I ever saw… I pushed on – over rapids, over cascades, over chutes; all were the same to me. No water, no weather ever stopped the paddle or the song… There is no life so happy as a voyageur’s life; none so independent; no place where a man enjoys so much variety and freedom as in the Indian country. Huzza, huzza pour le pays sauvage! — anonymous coureur-de-bois quoted by a Hudson’s Bay Co. historian

What the camel is to desert tribes, what the horse is to the Arab, what the ship is to the colonizing Briton, what all modern means of locomotion are to the civilized world today, that, and more than that, the canoe was to the Indian who lived beside the innumerable waterways of Canada. — William Wood

A canoe is a canoe is a canoe — Anonymous

Even long ago there were some men who could not make all the things that were needed. In each camp there were only a few who could make everything. The hardest thing to build was the canoe. The man who could make a canoe was very happy because the people depended on it so much. –  John Kawapit Eastern Cree Great Whale River, Quebec

Canoeists and other primitive-trippers are not delighted to encounter others intent on the same private experience. How many visitors constitute the end of wilderness? — John A. Livingston

Had I done it alone by canoe I might have boasted a little. — Sergeant Farrar, RCMP, 3rd mate aboard the St. Roch, first vessel to circumnavigate North America

The romantic life of each colony also has a special flavour – Australian rhyme is a poetry of the horse; Canadian, of the canoe — William Douw Lighthall

… and to any others who have felt the thrill of the back country and still long to explore what might lie just around the next bend. I know of no better way of doing just that, than having a fine canoe under one’s seat, a sleek paddle in one’s hand, a little bug dope in your pocket, and a harmonica near the top of your pack. — Book dedication from Kenai Canoe Trails by Daniel Quick

It is difficult to find in life any event which so effectually condenses nervous sensation into the shortest possible space of time as does the work of shooting, or running an immense rapid. There is no toil, no heart-breaking labour about it, but as much coolness, dexterity, and skill as a man can throw into the work of hand, eye, and head; knowledge of when to strike and how to do it; knowledge of water and rock, and of the one hundred combinations which rock and water can assume- for these two things, rock and water, taken in the abstract, fail as completely to convey any idea of their fierce embracings in the throes of a rapid as the fire burning quietly in a drawing-room fireplace fails to convey the idea of a house wrapped and sheeted in flames. — Sir William Francis Butler, (key figure with the North West Mounted Police) in The Great Lone Land: A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America (1872)

And the paddle, in  the water, is a long, lost friend. There are times I’d like to wander down a river without end, In a hull of flowing cedar, carved by knowing hands, That sings of rushing water — the spirit of the land. - Shield by Dave Hadfield

Firewood, smoke and oranges, path of old canoe; I would course the inland ocean to be back to you; No matter where I go to, it’s always home again; To the rugged northern shore, and the days of sun and wind; And the land of the silver birch, cry of the loon; There’s something ’bout this country, that’s a part of me and you. – from ‘Woodsmoke and Oranges’ by Ian Tamblyn.

I have no interest in building a plastic canoe – Bill Miller

I’ve got 36 more years before I retire. I will gladly build my last canoe on my 100th birthday – Bill Miller

My hands are on every stage of production. If you spend two or three months making something, it becomes a chunk of you, like for a painter. - Will Ruch, Ruch Canoes, Bancroft, Ont.

The survival formula in canoe making is “being married to someone with a real job.” - according to John Kilbridge, Temagami Canoe Company, Temagami, Ontario

As someone said, canoeing is a fringe activity and wood canoes are the fringest of the fringe - Doug Ingram, Red River Canoes, Lorette, Man.

No one gets rich making canoes - Larry Bowers, West Country Canoes, Eckville, Alta.

The canoe is the most practical, efficient and satisfying way to travel through wild country, particularly on the Canadian Shield, where you can go almost anywhere. I think of that country every day of my life. One of the things I like best about canoe travel is that you are completely self-reliant. There is no dependence on mechanical devices. It is utterly simple. For me, the canoe means complete freedom – the ultimate escape. - Alex Hall

I have always had a desire to explore out-of-way places. Together, the canoe and this country’s many waterways provide the ideal combination. When travelling by canoe you seem to blend in rather than being an intrusion on your surroundings. – John B. Hughes

Ultimately, a paddling trip simplifies life. – Wendy Grater

Canoeing is the best way to become intimate with the land. You can cover so much more territory in a canoe. You don’t need to concentrate on your feet, thereby allowing your eyes to soak up the landscape around you. Travel by canoe is more about the journey than the destination. – Rolf Kraiker

Today, most Canadian canoeing is recreational. Many of us would assert that it is usually meaningful, aesthetically fulfilling and ecologically sensitive recreational canoeing. Admittedly, these modifiers are not present in the highly competitive, highly structured and technically oriented canoe racing sports which tend not to take place in a wilderness environment. But with these large exceptions, canoeing, certainly canoe tripping and lake water canoe cruising, tends to involve in varying degrees a quest for wilderness or at least semi-wilderness. It also involves a search for high adventure or natural tranquility or both. These activities are an integral part of Canadian culture. Bill Mason asserts that the canoe is “the most beautiful work of human beings, the most functional yet aesthetically pleasing object ever created,” and that paddling a canoe is “an art” not a technical achievement. That certainly means culture. - Bruce Hodgins, from Canexus, p.46

It’s pretty hard for me to go more than a few days without getting a paddle wet somewhere. For me, that stepping into the canoe and pushing off is a very special spiritual and physical experience. Bill Mason had it right: it’s like walking on water. It transports you to another way of being, another way of feeling – it restores my soul. – David Finch

I like to encourage people to paddle because it gives them a different way to experience the river, the landscape and…life. – David Finch

It is such a great way to take in a wide range of experiences. When we paddle, the experience of place moves from the brain to the heart, making it a life-forming experience. – Kevin Redmond

Nothing like paddling a canoe to restore the spirit and reconnect with this gorgeous planet that sustains us. - Dalton McGuinty, Ontario premier in twitter to Badger Paddles folks.

Over the weekend I realized what a skilled solo paddler can do – move the canoe sideways, pirouette around the paddle, and turn gracefully with a little forward momentum. Meditation in motion. If whitewater paddling is slam dancing, flatwater paddling is ballet. I had discovered another way to have fun instead of just crossing the lake. - Sheena Masson, from Confessions Of A Know It All Or Why To Take A Clinic in The Canoe In Canadian Cultures by Bruce W. Hodgins, John Jennings, Doreen Small

Dance with the Wilderness by Charles Burchill

Memories of still water Speak to your restless soul Calling you and your silent craft To the rippled reflection of the shore.

Rushing water spills over a ledge Scan for the V to point the way Eddy out and watch the swirl Now ride the wild wave.

Go and Dance Your partner waits.

Ideals by Charles Burchill

Who will speak for us now? Pierre and his canoe have left us. Bill and his Pal are gone. Politics threatens our union. Tell me when will it end.

We believed at Stockholm We believed in Rio. Now Voices from Kyoto fall. Where does it end.

When do we start?

PFD by Charles Burchill

Personal was the choice I made. The wind was calm, the waves were small. The distance was not much at all.

Freedom was what I wanted then. The way was short, just across the bay. No one knew I went that way.

Death called to me. The shore was dim, I could not swim.

The Spirit by Charles Burchill

The spirit has moved within me and draws me back each year. It calls to me each spring, and every fall it draws a tear.

Every stroke’s a blessing each spring and summer day. Moving forward with my life in such a wondrous way.

How I love the tranquil sound of water rushing by. The quiet laughter on the hull lifts my spirit high.

To paddle with you is a joy; across the lake each fall. Of all the things I keep inside this I tell to all.

Once the spirit finds you your life will be complete. The love of paddle and canoe will keep your soul replete.

Just add water and a canoe….you will find freedom. – Mike Ormsby

I paddle a canoe as a past-time. Beyond the simple mechanics of paddling is the actual dance of the canoe. We create the sheer poetry of motion by making a rhythm or even music with the canoe; literally making the canoe dance. Just as there are no wrong notes in making music (at least in the purest sense), even if we don’t know the exact correct paddle strokes, we can move that canoe, creating our own poetry or dance. As we become more proficient in paddling we can create a more intricate dance. But when we come to add emotion to our paddling, we create a vision. Then that canoe dance almost seems to takes on a life of its own. It is more than just mere paddling…almost as if that canoe becomes an extension of ourselves. Freeing ourselves. And the canoe is the vehicle or instrument to such freedom. The freedom found in making beautiful music together with my canoe. – Mike Ormsby

When we come to add emotion to our paddling, we create a vision. Then our canoe can dance and almost seem to take on a life of its own. It is more than just mere paddling…almost as if that canoe becomes an extension of ourselves. Freeing ourselves. – Mike Ormsby

Perhaps it would be better to look at this whole process in terms of a canoe trip….you start out on a route that you’ve planned and mapped out….along the way you might find something of special interest that causes you to linger longer than at another…..perhaps you even decide to take a side trip or to stay out a bit longer, even go off in a new direction ….but if you’re travelling in a group, you are part of a team….hopefully cooperating to make the trip enjoyable for all….everybody has their role….some carrying packs across a portage, others the canoes….setting up camp…..cooking meals….even having a say in where they’re going…..there may be a trip leader, sometimes more than one….But when I think of leadership, I am reminded of watching a V-formation of geese in flight….the lead goose is sticking its neck out to break the air currents for the rest of the flock, thereby making it easier for the others to fly (as they “draft” in behind)…but if you watch that V-formation long enough, you’ll see that the lead goose will eventually fall back and another one will come up to take its place….so a good leader will stick its neck out for whoever is following, setting a good example for the others; but also a good leader knows when to let another lead, when to let others have a chance….These geese work together….to a common goal of getting where they need to be….like we do on a canoe trip….working towards a common goal…. – Mike Ormsby

A canoe is a very good way to get close to nature. While it is possible to make a canoe go pretty fast, it is the thrill of slowing down that appeals to most canoeists. Even when canoes do go fast, when they rocket rapidly through whitewater, they are still canoes. Still close to nature and its environs. It is not the canoe that provides the power, it is the water. The canoe rides the water and its occupants humbly steer.

In a canoe you can’t help but feel the body of the country, notice the shape of islands or hills, hear the cries of birds and the sound of the wind, yet still respond fervently to the hundreds of small things that make up the world about you. Take a canoe onto a lake at night and enjoy what it can do, acting as a launching pad to distant worlds, opening up a vista of stars in the sky. The canoe seems to float up to these very stars and far away planets, as the night sky becomes one with the dark silent waters, twinking stars reflected in murky depths until water and sky all seem to blend together in one great expanse.

Canoes can sneak up on loons or beavers or herons, even a mighty moose, silently getting you closer than you can imagine. The canoe becomes part of its surroundings, becoming part of the natural world, and so completely that even once discovered it doesn’t scare such creatures. The canoe is just part of their world, accepted as always being there. It might be that the canoe has been such a familiar sight for so long, for so many years in the north country. In no particular hurry, the loon or the beaver slip quietly under the water if at all bothered by any such intrusion. Usually the moose will just stand there, holding its ground, patiently out waiting the canoe and its paddlers, unless it tires and lumbers off to the safety of the nearby bush.  The heron takes flight with its dignity intact, probably thinking: “It’s only a canoe, but I’ll just move away a bit anyway.” – Mike Ormsby

In the early morning light, just as the world seems to wake up and come alive, the canoe glides over the glass like lake. The beautiful wood canvas hull easily slices through the lake’s surface, water slipping aside almost as if willed, forming undulating wavelets in its wake. Above the ripples, the paddle hovers momentarily like a dragonfly, before dipping down to break the intricate pattern formed. The canoeist seems lost in the moment.

On the wing over the watery expanse an eagle soars, in synchronicity with the man’s journey; as the paddler shifts to miss a rock, the raptor slows to test the wind. The large bird lazily wheels across the horizon, almost  touching the rays of the rising sun. Yet his flight seems to keep pace with the canoe below. The eagle rides the air currents while the canoe dances over those of the lake’s surface. As the paddle flashes in the early morning sunlight, dipping once again into the water, the eagle dives to capture his breakfast, a silvery trout. Then, only briefly, do both break the mirror reflecting their seemingly choreographed display. While they never quite meet except for that, it doesn’t stop the dance. One on water, the other in the air, they are partners, each moving rhythmically over a northern vista of rocks and trees and water.

Occasionally, such magical moments happen out on the water. For the canoeist, the lakes and rivers become more than mere passageways. Waterways become vantage points to observe all that is around,  carrying a message of life while still being the very lifeblood of Mother Earth herself. All at once, the paddler is both vessel and prophet, both audience and actor, just by merely venturing out on the water. Paddling these liquid highways takes the canoeist and canoe on a wonderful magical mystery tour, blending into the surrounding natural world.

The paddler is blessed to be able to join in the dance around him for awhile. While he watched, the large bird of prey flew off, likely to share his meal of fresh fish with his young brood nesting in a nearby lofty pine. Eventually the canoe glides on. A new dance may soon begin anew. - Mike Ormsby

“WANTED: Woman who will put up with a “canoehead”. Should be able to paddle well; especially good to have reliable cross-bow draw as I paddle in Class II  water at times. If she has own canoe that would be ideal. Better yet if she has a wood canvas canoe and lives near Algonquin, Temagami, Quetico or anywhere else that is in canoe country (and where in Canada isn’t canoe country?!?!?). Don’t care if she “outpaddles” me — in fact likely will. Must love canoeing and canoe tripping as much — or more — than she does me. Definite bonus if able to paddle solo as well as Becky Mason (then she could show me how to do all those fancy pivots and turns and make my canoe literally dance a canoe ballet). Probably should have good paying job as not much “financial reward” being a “paddle bum/canoehead”. However I do appreciate amazing sunsets over the water I’m paddling on (yes this means I am often late setting up camp) or the colour of the trees in fall or the taste of GORP on the trail ….as least as much as some do cuddling by the fireplace, romantic candlelit dinners, walks on the beach (all of which I’m not adverse to as long as it doesn’t cut into my time canoeing….and I don’t even want to get into the definition of a “true Canadian” being “somebody who can make love in a canoe without tipping”….suffice to say that I’m sure, at least, that any prospective female canoe partner might have figured out that taking out the centre thwart would make such a “defining” moment potentially easier….however it is far more important that she has the ability to carry the canoe herself over any portage no matter how long or rocky….plus to have a solid repertoire of various paddle strokes from the J to the running pry). Please forward pictures of canoe (or preferably canoes) owned – if she owns a kayak or two as well that will not be a problem. So paddles up, wanting to get together soon out on the water.” - Mike Ormsby

Lying on the cold stark ground, the body remains all but fully dismembered. Its back hasn’t been completely broken, but several ribs are splintered or at least badly cracked. What was once a bright coat of red colour lies tattered and torn, now dull and weathered from being exposed to the elements. The listless body lies prone, no longer able to dance as it once did, and rot has started to eat away at its very being. This body was once full of spirit, especially when it was in its best….now it lies mere feet from the water that gave it life. But while the tired old body seems to be a shell of its former self, maybe even a ghost of the grandeur it once was, all is not lost. Perhaps some kind soul will once again breathe life into these old bones. Mend the body and give it purpose again. For now the broken body merely waits hoping somebody finds it before its truly too late. So many such ghosts remain, often hidden away from view. Thankfully, people are out there looking to bring such bodies back from the brink of such unnecessary demise. - Mike Ormsby