Canoes: A Natural History in North America

A cedar-strip canoe made in Peterborough, Ontario, on exhibit at the Antique Boat Museum in Clayton, New York, 2005.

A trapper’s dugout canoe constructed of basswood.

This beautiful cedar strip canoe was built by the Lakefield Canoe Company of Peterborough ca. 1925–1930. The canoe uses three wide boards as planking on either side.

John Stephenson, one of the early innovators of canoe design in Peterborough.

Employees of the William English Canoe Company pose with a giant war canoe built in the factory on Charlotte Street in Peterborough, Ontario.

Rice Lake Canoe Company catalog from 1900.

A restored William English canoe, model 21, which was listed as 16-feet long, 31 inches beam, and 12 inches deep.

A cedar strip all-wood canoe (right) at the Canadian Canoe Museum. A “double-cedar” canoe, with a layer of canvas between the planking, is at the left.

This drawing shows the Ontario Canoe Company factory in Peterborough in the early 1880s.

The first Canadian Canoe Company factory stood on Water Street in Peterborough from 1892–1904 near the rail office where all the canoes made in town were shipped.

The building department at the Canadian Canoe Company factory, ca. late nineteenth century.

Sawdust litters the floor of the workshop at the Canadian Canoe Company factory as builders fashion canoes in distinctive shapes.

A coat of varnish was one of the final steps in canoe construction at the Canadian Canoe Company factory.

George Washington Sears wrote under the pen name “Nessmuk” in Forest and Stream magazine about his canoe trips in the Adirondacks. It was said that he taught America how to camp.

Dr. Arpad Gerster, a prominent New York surgeon, vacationed with his family in the Adirondacks during the 1890s. Here, Gerster portages a Rushton pack canoe at Camp Oteetiwi, Big Island, Raquette Lake.

Leah and J. Henry Rushton around 1884.

Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait, A Good Time Coming, 1862. Oil on canvas, 50.8 x 76.2 cm.

Hotel Ampersand looms over Lower Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks ca. 1890.

The Sairy Gamp on display at the Adirondack Museum in Blue Mountain Lake, New York.

J. Henry Rushton listed the Nessmuk in his 1907 catalog under the heading, “Feather-Weight Canoes.”