canoe maker

An Ebay seller is a photo featuring an interesting paddle grip design. Sadly no details about the origin or date, but the seller is from Nova Scotia and the long canoes and grip shapes are consistent with the East Coast paddling tradition.








Another photo featuring the same party has showcases the grip from a different angle...

The Toronto Reference Library has a huge collection of rare books in their archived stacks. While waiting around for some medical appointments, I quickly popped in and checked out a hard to find canoeing book now out of copyright - Camping and canoeing : what to take, how to travel, how to cook, where to go by James Edmund Jones (1903). It was actually published here in Toronto and features some grainy photos of the author's style of canoe tripping.

A particularly engaging photo is one of a canoe shelter camp on the banks of the Tobique River in New Brunswick. Poles rigged up with a tarp over the canoe hull provide a minimalist shelter with logs piled up in front for a reflector fire. The guide poses with his paddle on the right.

Another paddle photo find in the December 1910 issue of  Rod and Gun in Canada ( Vol. 12, No. 7 ). The article entitled, "A New Brunswick Canoe Trip on the Fascinating Tobique" by Stephen B. Bustin features an image of the Maliseet guide posing with a slim guide paddle with tapering grip.

My latest discovery of of old periodicals on Archive.org is the outdoor themed publication, Rod and Gun in Canada. It was first published in June of 1899 and ran in various incarnations until 1974. While not strictly a canoeing magazine, many of the issues feature some sort of canoe related expedition to hunting grounds or fishing spots and make for great reading. Archive.org currently has 38 early volumes of venerable magazine for copyright free browsing and use.

The Sept 1910 issue (Vol 12 No.4) has an article entitled,  "Diary of a Canoe Trip" by   W.C. Gaynor.  It documents an  82 mile canoe trip from the border of New Brunswick into Quebec. Gaynor took the liberty of crediting his Maliseet guides for their superb performance in the many rapids and included a photo of them in his article.

The full page photo luckily captures both a full frontal view of a the main Guide's paddle (right) and a profile view of another.

Archive.org has a copy of the Rice Lake Canoe Co. Catalogue dated to 1900. The company was one of the many builders in southeastern Ontario at the turn of the 20th century and it's well illustrated catalogue showcases many style of canoes being built at the time. A short history of the company can be read here for anyone interested.

Page 14 of the document a full page ad with a series of paddles. They're all long deep-water paddles consistent with the deep lake water conditions of region. Check out those prices...$1.00 for an oiled Maple, Ash, or Spruce paddle!

One of my favourite pics from the Keewaydin Photo Archives...snubbing down rapids in a birchbark canoe!

Not directly related to paddle making, but I'm a sucker for these vintage canoeing pics. These ones are LIFE magazine from a series entitled "1942 Potomac Canoe Trip". Love the second shot - the ladies seem perfectly relaxed.  Think I'll be scrounging around some scrap wood to build an appropriate backrest for my special lady.

Can't seem to get enough of the online editions of In the Maine Woods. The 1917 Edition has some great photos of some canoe poling. Here's one from Page 70. Check out the crazy bend on the pole as the Guide works the canoe upstream on the Moose River...


A crazy action shot ascending rapids well beyond my abilities found in the 1910 Edition...

Another historic pic featuring a large Eastern Woodlands style paddle...



Gabe Tomah at Grand Lake, New Brunswick
Photographer Unknown. 1900
 

Over the years I've moved away from stiffer paddles and have started to enjoy paddles with quite a lot of flex - not everyone's cup of tea for sure. Last year, I tried to make another paddle for tripping with a piece of Sassafras given this wood's flexible properties and relatively straight grain. It didn't end well with the paddle breaking right below the grip.

I've got another Sassafras blank cut from separate stock and am hoping to get started on that for the upcoming paddling season. It is a narrow shafted (1") twin of the c. 1900 Penobscot Replica also completed last year.

Here's a great shot dated to around 1900 showing a Maliseet guide leaning back for a pose in his bark canoe...

Lunt's Ferry near Fredericton, New Brunswick

c 1900

NBM (LS-AA242)

A grainy closeup of the paddle shows a rectangular grip area with some scalloped cutouts down to the shaft

Paddle Closeup

From this expired Ebay ad - a vintage image of canoe poling. He seems so effortless holding the position above the small rapid. Unfortunately no details about the photo's origins.

Came across an interesting free online book at Gutenberg.org entitled Outdoor Sports and Games (1911), by Claude H. Miller. Chapter 16 is entitled HOW TO SWIM AND TO CANOE and has a series of comical pics about how to pole a canoe...hey whatever works right?

Found another vintage paddling photo - this one a postcard of silent film actress, Pearl White.



The canoe is a gorgeous looking closed-gunnel model with considerable tumblehome and slender, classic heart shaped decks. Her paddle has some decorative banding on the blade...

In the same edition, on page 60 is a pic of Guide Tom Grinier. You can just make out his hand resting on the flat grip in the classic Northwoods stroke position.

A while back, paddle maker Luc Poitras sent me some wonderful historic images of Wabanaki styled paddles. The one below is an photo of Penobscot Chief Peter N. Tuester and another (unidentified) person holding some slender paddles.  These tall slender paddles look reminiscent of the collection from the facebook page of the Passamaquoddy Cultural Heritage Museum  posted about here.

A few years back, I posted about a pic of bashed up cedar canvas canoe after a run down some nasty rapids. Now I've come across the original source article which appeared in LIFE magazine, 16 Nov 1953. It follows the life of Woodsman Rock Robertson in the backwoods of Quebec and features a few of Rock's canoeing exploits. Here's a pic of his portage load...




The article also features a sequence during a successful bear hunt. To get back to camp, he portaged the canoe and the bear with a tump-strap. Talk about a single carry!



But the most exciting part of the piece is his attempt down some rapids. Rock seems to have ignored typical bushcraft wisdom of being conservative in whitewater with a cedar canvas canoe and maybe tried to show off for the camera. Here's the excerpt from the article:

Recently, when he decided to shoot the rapids at the head of Lake Mattawa. He ignored the warnings that no man alive could take a canoe over that drop, and that no man could survive if the canoe tipped. Rock simply shrugged and reached for his paddle. He rode the millrace but not in the canoe which turned over and dumped him. Bouncing from boulder to boulder he went through the water in a jackknife position with arms and legs extended before him absorbing the shocks. When he crawled out unhurt 200 yards below, a triumphant grin lit up his face. "I lost my socks," he announced, "but l still got my chewing gum."

The sequence of pics...