by Mike Elliott, Kettle River Canoes
For those of you who have been following this blog for a while, the launch of my book on wood-canvas canoe restoration is a much anticipated event. I began this blog with the idea of, at some point, putting all of the how-to information together as a book. That time has arrived and it is with great excitement that I announce that This Old Canoe: How To Restore Your Wood-Canvas Canoe will be launched in April 2016.
There will be many events, presentations, articles, reviews and interviews throughout the spring and summer of 2016. For now, I present to you the preface of the book. It explains how this book came about and puts it in the context of my life in the world of wood-canvas canoes. I hope you enjoy it.
If you would like to reserve a copy of the book, please send an email request to artisan@canoeshop.ca
This Old Canoe: How To Restore Your Wood-Canvas Canoe
Preface
When I was a kid, my father worked for the Canadian government as a forest entomologist (He would always refer to himself as “a real bugger”). Our whole family spent a few summers at forest research stations in north-western Ontario. That is where my father infused us with a love of canoes and canoeing. Over the course of those summers, he and I would hop into a wood-canvas canoe. He took me out on the lake and taught me how to paddle. He had grown up in Peterborough, Ontario and raced cedar strip canoes in the 1930’s. My memories of those summers in northern Ontario include waking up to the sound of warblers singing in the black spruce trees, swimming in the freezing water of those lakes until my lips turned blue and watching the sunset over the lake from my position in the middle of a canvas-covered canoe.
About 36 years later, I had my head positioned inside an old 14’ “Huron” canoe — my first restoration project — as I cleaned and scraped the old wood. It was given to me by Richard Reid, a professional artist living in the southern interior of British Columbia. I happened to look up and had a view of the canoe from the centre looking towards the bow. Memories came flooding back to me. This was what I saw when I was six years old — the same ribs, the same seats, the same canoe. I checked with my father. He was a skilled carpenter and knew those old canoes inside-out. Sure enough, the canoes we used at the research stations were 14’ “Huron” canoes.
In my late teens, I became involved in elite-level sport and immersed myself in that — for me at least — neurotic, self-absorbed world. For the next twenty years I competed as both an athlete and a coach on national and international stages. In this environment, I gave little thought to life outside of the gymnasium. Then, I met Christy Luke in 1993 and soon decided to build a new life with her in Grand Forks, British Columbia. Yes, I had to look it up too. It was there that I decided to “get a life” and return to some of the things that brought me joy when I was a kid.
The next summer, as we looked out at the spectacular view from Chateau Lake Louise near Banff, Alberta, I turned to Christy and announced, “I am going to build a canoe and paddle it on this lake.” A few weeks later, Christy bought me a copy of Ted Moore’s Canoecraft: An Illustrated Guide to Fine Woodstrip Construction.
At this point, I should mention that I have dyslexia. It can take me up to an hour to read a page in a book. I find the prospect of reading anything to be daunting, unless I am reading something that interests me. I also require some previous background in the topic. Without a context for the words on the page, they are incomprehensible to me. Fortunately, as I started into Canoecraft, I found that Ted Moores included lots of pictures as well as some background information about the original cedar strip canoes. This harkened back to the stories my father told me about racing those canoes in Peterborough.
I poured over the book and soon approached my co-worker Barry Pratt with an idea. We were working with a group of boys who were having a rough time making sense of themselves and their place in the world. One thing I learned during my life in sport was that our worst personal demons can be conquered when there is a something worthwhile at the end of the road.
Barry and I asked the boys if they would like to go on a canoe trip. They were thrilled, but their enthusiasm waned when we told them they were going to build the canoes first. They were sure that the project would never happen and, if it did, the canoes would be ugly and sink to the bottom of the lake. They asked us if we had ever built canoes before. We held up our copy of Canoecraft and said, “No, but we have a book.” The boys were convinced that the project was doomed.
Five months later, as the boys paddled the finished canoes toward a campsite on Christina Lake in British Columbia, a big power boat cruised up. The men in the boat complimented us on the beautiful canoes. The boys straightened up a little. Was that a sense of pride I saw? Was there even the glimmer of self-esteem shining through? The boys replied, “Thanks, we built them.”
The boys donated the canoes to a local summer camp and became minor celebrities for a time. People around town started to refer to me as “The Canoe Guy”. It was then that Richard Reid gave me his old canoe. When Christy asked me if I had ever restored a canoe before, I said, “No, but I have a book.”
This time, it was a copy of The Wood & Canvas Canoe: A Complete Guide to its History, Construction and Maintenance by Jerry Stelmok and Rollin Thurlow. They devoted one chapter to canoe restoration. It was enough to get me started and once friends-of-friends found out that I knew how to do it, I restored half-a-dozen canoes in as many years.
When I am learning something, it helps me to write about it. Fortunately, the type of dyslexia I am dealing with does not present too many problems when I am writing. In fact, I find it easier to read something when I am the one who wrote it. It also helps if I teach others while I am learning.
I helped write coaching manuals as I studied to become a professional coach. So, as I learned to restore old canoes, I kept detailed notes with a view to writing a canoe restoration manual some day. Although Stelmok and Thurlow’s book was helpful, many of the situations I encountered were not addressed. By the time I started Kettle River Canoes in 2003, I had a notebook full of information that was not available in any book. The first thing I did to market my business was to post articles about canoe restoration on my website. I gave detailed instructions on some of the key aspects of the restoration process. Barry, who had many years of experience in business and advertising, was appalled by my generosity. For him, I was giving away my business. He asked me why I wasn’t giving away my tools too. For me, I was learning my craft and if I could help others learn at the same time, it was an added bonus. Once a coach, always a coach.
I started writing a blog about wood-canvas canoe restoration in 2009. My niece, Kristen Luke, was launching her business as a marketing consultant specializing in social media. She needed someone to practise on, so I was it. What astonished Kristen was the fact that I did everything she told me to do. The result is here in the following pages. This Old Canoe: How To Restore Your Wood-Canvas Canoe contains a lot of the information I shared in the blog as well as other descriptions, illustrations and photographs not published anywhere else. When Barry asks me if I am going to share all of my canoe restoration secrets, I will say, “Yes, I have a book.”
Mike Elliott, Grand Forks, British Columbia
