Cedar-Strip Canoe
From Chapter 4: All-Wood Canoes
University of Michigan needs your feedback to better understand how readers are using openly available ebooks. You can help by taking a short, privacy-friendly survey.
Follow author Mark Neuzil on Twitter: @mrneuzil
From Chapter 4: All-Wood Canoes
A cedar-strip canoe made in Peterborough, Ontario, on exhibit at the Antique Boat Museum in Clayton, New York, 2005.
From Chapter 4: All-Wood Canoes
A trapper’s dugout canoe constructed of basswood.
From Chapter 4: All-Wood Canoes
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.
From Chapter 4: All-Wood Canoes
John Stephenson, one of the early innovators of canoe design in Peterborough.
From Chapter 4: All-Wood Canoes
Employees of the William English Canoe Company pose with a giant war canoe built in the factory on Charlotte Street in Peterborough, Ontario.
From Chapter 4: All-Wood Canoes
Rice Lake Canoe Company catalog from 1900.
From Chapter 4: All-Wood Canoes
A restored William English canoe, model 21, which was listed as 16-feet long, 31 inches beam, and 12 inches deep.
From Chapter 4: All-Wood Canoes
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.
From Chapter 4: All-Wood Canoes
This drawing shows the Ontario Canoe Company factory in Peterborough in the early 1880s.
From Chapter 4: All-Wood Canoes
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.
From Chapter 4: All-Wood Canoes
The building department at the Canadian Canoe Company factory, ca. late nineteenth century.
From Chapter 4: All-Wood Canoes
Sawdust litters the floor of the workshop at the Canadian Canoe Company factory as builders fashion canoes in distinctive shapes.
From Chapter 4: All-Wood Canoes
A coat of varnish was one of the final steps in canoe construction at the Canadian Canoe Company factory.
From Chapter 4: All-Wood Canoes
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.
From Chapter 4: All-Wood Canoes
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.
From Chapter 4: All-Wood Canoes
Leah and J. Henry Rushton around 1884.
From Chapter 4: All-Wood Canoes
Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait, A Good Time Coming, 1862. Oil on canvas, 50.8 x 76.2 cm.
From Chapter 4: All-Wood Canoes
Hotel Ampersand looms over Lower Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks ca. 1890.
From Chapter 4: All-Wood Canoes
The Sairy Gamp on display at the Adirondack Museum in Blue Mountain Lake, New York.
From Chapter 4: All-Wood Canoes
J. Henry Rushton listed the Nessmuk in his 1907 catalog under the heading, “Feather-Weight Canoes.”