canoe maker

Canoe Resuscitation - digital enhancement

Found an interesting post with a bit of rare, vintage cedar canvas canoe story. Trevor Laforce's blog, Spillway, has some posts about an original Omer Stringer built canoe he's inherited from his folk's cottage on Canoe Lake, Algonquin Park. Turns out that Omer is his great uncle and this canoe was a gift from the paddling legend. It's been left derelict for sometime, but Trevor has plans to restore the canoe back to its former glory.


Trevor used some clever photoshop to picture what the restored canoe could look like...all shiny with Omer's famous racing stripe painted below the gunnels.


Digitally restored
For the whole story and more pics, check out his posts here and here.

After this post on Beaver Canoes, I started doing some rudimentary research on Omer's canoes. Wooden Canoe issue 25 (Winter 1986) has an article which describes Omer's custom boats. Here's an excerpt...

"Omer's canoe is also unique. He began with a 15-foot Chestnut Chum, built in New Brunswick. When it was under construction, he asked that the cedar plank-and-rib shell be left without inwales, thereby allowing him to vary the sheer line after the shell was removed from the form. He then increased the depth of the canoe to 15 inches and reduced the bow height by 1-1/2 inches. With weights, he rounded out the ribs in the center of the canoe slightly. This rounding produced a canoe that was deeper and a bit more tender and maneuverable than the original Chum."

Today, Omer's personal canoe is hanging in the Algonquin Park visitor's Centre (km 43)...it's the faded red one.






Photo Credit: Andre Cloutier