By GLENN GARNETT
Pierre Berton once said a Canadian is someone who can make love in a canoe.
While my experiences in a canoe haven’t been quite that exciting, there is something romantic – and typically Canadian – about gliding across a lake aboard a wooden canoe and communing with nature. Every summer our friends Bill & Donna bring their canoe to the cottage and we use it to explore the tiny islands offshore. Seven years ago I joined a team of eight foolhardy co-workers and crossed Lake Ontario in a war canoe in the Great Lake Race, covering the 28 miles in a little over five hours, furiously digging into the waves and living in fear of tipping into the frigid lake.
Sure, you can take to the water in an aluminum canoe or one of those fibreglass jobs, but there’s something special about wood, from stem to stern to paddle in hand. And if you’ve got a sad old canoe in disrepair in the shed outback or under the deck at your cottage, chances are you can turn back the hands of time…with a little help from some friends.
Recently Craig and I met a couple of instructors from the Fairlines School of Wooden Canoe and Boat Building. Clint Todd and Lee Clark are part of a group of canoe builders who operate full time businesses, specializing in wooden canoes, kayaks and rowboats. Along with four other builders and for the past four years, they’ve been operating a school to share their considerable skills in building, and repairing, traditional wood canoes.
 |
If Todd and Clark, seen here working on woodstrips mounted on a canoe mold, are any example, the school boasts some enthusiastic instructors in love with their craft.
The guiding philosophy of the school is that a small team of enthusiastic and co-operative people can work wodners and build a canoe in a week. The course leaders, like Clark, help organize materials, demonstrate each of the steps of the building process, monitor safety, and get out of the way so that the canoe will be truly your project.
"Sometimes we’re just there to ‘give permission’," Clark smiles. "You don’t have to be good at woodworking to be successful at canoe building."
The "campus" extends from Carlisle, Ontario, where you can learn paddle carving, to Naples, N.Y., where you can learn to build canoe molds.
We watched as Todd and Clark sanded strips of wood steamed to conform with the shape of an old canoe mold and they won the attention of everyone passing by.
But the first thing that attracted me at their display at a recent cottage show was a beautiful 16’ wood canvas canoe – a 1912 Old Town Charles Rover canoe, restored last year. The "before" picture was staggering – a dilapitated neglected mess. But $550 in materials and 220 hours of loving labour later, it was a showpiece.
Clark, who teaches wood canvas canoe repair at his TMIAC Boats facility at Wilberforce, Ont., says his students range in age from mid-thirties to 75 years old. He says it’s sometimes hard to convince people that neglected wrecks can live again.
"Sometimes when you take off the old canvas you get a pleasant surprise," Clark points out. "With a little bit of work, it can be as good as new."
The TMIAC facility is located about 20 km from Algonquin Park and close to many lakes and waterways suitable for canoeing. Lee suggests getting of group of friends, perhaps five or six, who would like to take a course together.
For those who aren’t wood-canoe purists, there’s also a course in building so-called "hybrid" canoes, with wooden frames and kevlar casing. While kevlar – the stuff used to make bullet-proof vests - might sound like an odd material to use for a canoe, Clark says a 15’ foot canoe can weigh just 30 lbs.
"For older people, or the handicapped, that’s a great advantage," Clark says.
The school also offers a course in canoe furniture, from coffee tables to those nifty looking canoe bookcases. Courses range in price from C$115/US$75 for a two-evening, one full-day course in paddle carving to C$700/US$450 for a full weekend/evenings during the week course in woodstrip kayaks.
For more information about Fairlines, check out their website at www.FairLinesSchool.com or call 1-800-443-7398.
