canoe maker: Canoe Camp Shelters

Sabtu, 9 Februari 2013

Canoe Camp Shelters

Back in the summer after my poling excursion on the Big East River, I made a quick canoe camp shelter for some relief against the heat and sun...

Canoe shelter with tarp, paddles, & pole

It was fun to rig up and got me curious to search out images of other temporary shelters rigged up in a similar manner. One of my favourites is this photo dated to the 1860's of a Maliseet canoe camp. The bark canoe is propped onto its side with a tarp supported by their poles & fishing spears...

Campsite at Blue Mountain on a bend of the Tobique River c. 1862.

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(Provincial Archives of New Brunswick, P5-253)

Canoeing, sailing and motor boating by Warren H. Miller (1919) has an image (p.145) featuring a comfortable canoe camp, where the hull of the canoe serves as a headboard of sorts and shelving for various supplies. The tarp is being lifted with a canoe pole...you can just see a metal shoe at the base. While this looks too permanent with the cots and bedding, the setup looks tempting to me next time I'm poling...

Here's one I came across in Boy's Life, March 1944 showing how the canoe can be supported with paddles lashed to the gunnels while a small rain poncho is tied off . Not much headroom here but interesting...

Boy's Life, March 1944

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An image from Hesketh Prichard's enthralling read, Through Trackless Labrador (1911). Here a complete absence of trees meant improvising a shelter to escape the wind.

Through Trackless Labrador (p. 70)

Edward Breck's 1908 publication, The Way of the Woods, has a basic setup of a propped up canoe on pg. 75

Sketched image from The Way of the Woods (1908)

I found the source of this artistic image when perusing through the 1910 online version of In the Maine Woods (p.40) on Archive.org.

Boy's Life, April 1957 has a brief writeup on Lean-To Shelters including a sketch of a canoe shelter with a rigged tarp and forked sticks holding up the overturned canoe. It looks comfy only because the paddlers are tiny kids - no way I'd fit under an overturned canoe like this...