Canadian Canoe Museum curator Jeremy Ward, left, and executive director Carolyn Hyslop with birchbark canoes in the museum's collection. The museum in Peterborough, Ont., is moving to another location in the city that will be on the water.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
The pandemic has been good for canoeing.
Paddling takes place outdoors in fresh air, stern seat a good two metres from the bow seat, healthy exercise and no cost beyond the initial price of a new or used canoe – if you could even find one in The Time of COVID.
“Canoeing has been insane,” says Jeremy Ward, curator of the Canadian Canoe Museum in Peterborough, Ont. “There have been traffic jams at the put-ins.”
This was going to be the museum’s year, even despite the serial lockdowns and the postlockdown restrictions on the number of visitors. With the museum set to celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2022, plans were well in place to make this a very special year in the founding, and lasting, relationship between Canada and the canoe.
That is, before those careful plans hit a set of rapids.
A year ago this month, the museum had hoped to break ground on a fabulous new location right next to the famous Peterborough Lift Lock, along Central Ontario’s Trent-Severn Waterway.
For the first time, the canoe museum would have a home that was, as it should be, on water. They would finally be moving out of the old outboard engine factory on Monaghan Road in the city’s west end. It was a homely building, but it had a certain charm and a lovely irony.
The Canadian Canoe Museum is currently located in a factory that had been home to Outboard Marine Corporation and will move to a new location on Little Lake.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Once, the factory had been home to Outboard Marine Corporation, manufacturing such standard outboards as Evinrude and Mercury. It was one of a dozen such factories around North America, with 8,000 employees at its height and more than $1-billion in annual sales. This Canadian factory closed in 1990; soon after, OMC declared bankruptcy – meaning the Canadian Canoe Museum found a home in the very building that formerly manufactured devices intended to eliminate the need for paddling.
Today, the original form of transport is no longer charged with exploration, trade and settlement, yet remains a pleasure craft so beloved that in 2007 a CBC panel declared it first among the Seven Wonders of Canada, the other six being Pier 21, Old Quebec, Niagara Falls, Prairie Skies, Rocky Mountains and the igloo. (Full disclosure: I was on the jury.)
The old OMC factory was gutted in the early nineties and reconfigured to hold the massive canoe and kayak collection amassed over decades by the late Kirk Wipper, who owned Camp Kandalore near Haliburton, Ont., one of Canada’s premier canoe “tripping” camps.
The Canadian Canoe Museum opened in 1997, having paid $1 for the old factory. It would make do until a proper museum could be built to showcase the more than 600 canoes in the collection.
The new museum by the lock would be on the water, feature a “green” roof and plenty of glass, and be an environmental delight. There would even be a wildflower meadow perfect for photographing the many wedding receptions the museum hoped to attract.
Parks Canada would allow the museum to be built on federal lands. The city was strongly on side. Donors, from large corporations to individuals, had committed more than 80 per cent of the expected cost.
Everything seemed in place in the spring of 2020. It was the perfect put-in … until they unexpectedly dumped in the rapids.
In May, inspectors found traces of various chemicals, including the carcinogenic industrial solvent trichloroethylene, on the property. The contamination came from a nearby property at a slightly higher elevation that once held a watch factory. Groundwater moving downward had carried the chemicals into the museum’s new site.
A Haida dugout canoe built by Victor Adams from Masset, B.C.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
“It was quite extensive,” says Carolyn Hyslop, the museum’s executive director. “It could not be managed here unless it was first managed on the other site, and we didn’t have enough jurisdiction to make any adjustments that might be required.”
To no surprise, the museum’s deep-pocketed and image-protective sponsors were reluctant to be involved with a project that stressed environmental values but would now be knowingly built on contaminated soil.
The museum board decided there was no choice but to terminate the lease – which they did in the very month they had hoped to break ground – and begin looking for a new site.
Fortunately, there was one. The city owned five acres on Little Lake, a widening of the Otonabee River as it winds through Peterborough. The new site was west-facing, perfect for sunset viewing and faced a naturalized property with no development. The Trent-Severn Canal runs just to the north, and to the south are various parks, including an ecology park. Better still, the Trans Canada Trail runs alongside the new site and the museum will have a 300-metre “portage” connecting the trail to the front doors.
“The story of Canada includes the Trans Canada Trail – and its historic routes that include waterways,” says a delighted Eleanor McMahon, president and chief executive of the TCT. “We are really excited about the Canoe Museum. In fact, we’re all about the canoe. Our Lake Superior trail is entirely over water – and there are numerous sections along the 28,000 kilometres of the trail that are perfect for canoeing.”
It came very close, however, to not happening. “We had to start from scratch,” says Mr. Ward. “Building a museum we can run in the good times and the bad – and we’ve had enough experience recently in the bad.”
A buckskin jacket that belonged to former prime minister Pierre Trudeau.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
The museum got through that unexpected dump, however, and carried on, all 160 of its volunteers still eager to help, all of its main sponsors still on board.
“There was a moment when we had to pivot,” Ms. Hyslop remembers. “Do we stay at this location or do we look for a second site? We had raised significant funds toward the new project and the question quickly became ‘Can we save this project?’ Our main sponsors said ‘Yes, our commitment to you is intact – if you can find a new place.’”
In January, Peterborough City Council approved the sale of the five-acre Little Lake property for $1.575-million. A groundbreaking ceremony is to be held this Saturday – a full year beyond the original plan for the now-abandoned locks property. The new museum is expected to cost between $35- and 40-million, with more than 80 per cent of that figure already raised. The federal government has committed $10-million to the project through the Department of Canadian Heritage. The Ontario government has committed to $9-million and another $7.5-million is coming from the Weston Family Foundation.
“We’ve been able to keep all of our government funding and almost all of our private funding during the pandemic,” Ms. Hyslop says. “A few pulled back, largely because of COVID impact. But all of the major donors have stayed with us.”
TD, for example, has committed $500,000 over five years so that the museum can hire people from eight Indigenous communities, as well as hire an Indigenous museum professional. The museum is situated on Treaty 20 Michi Saagiig territory and the traditional territory covered by the Williams Treaties First Nations. The museum will work with nearby First Nations communities as well as with Inuit communities in the North, Mi’kmaq in the East and the Haida Gwaii Museum on the West Coast. The Michi Saagiig dialect of Anishinaabemowin will be used throughout the museum alongside English and French.
The new location has been environmentally assessed and found to be clear of contamination. “We want to have as little impact on the environment as possible,” says Ms. Hyslop. “The museum has a restoration plan for the surrounding forest and will reintroduce native species to the grounds. We will make it a much stronger habitat.”
Beyond the actual museum will be a “Canoe House,” which Ms. Hyslop sees as “a community hub.” From certain angles, the main building has an intriguing likeness to an overturned canoe, almost as if this giant vessel has been pulled up for the night and set beside the camp.
Canoe paddles and other materials on display at the museum.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
But what a camp. The locally designed building will feature massive glass windows and a huge fireplace. It will hold about 550 canoes, some 150 of them on display at various times in the second-floor exhibition hall. There will be archives, areas for researchers, tours, canoe- and kayak-building demonstrations, a recording room to capture oral histories, a museum store and a café that will serve coffee during opening hours, but which can be converted to a bar during private gatherings and weddings.
For Peterborough, a city of 80,000 that lies between Ottawa and Toronto along Highway 7, the museum will bring new life to an area that once boasted such industries as Outboard Marine, General Electric, Quaker Oats and others, only to see some vanish and others reduce their work force. The museum is predicted to produce approximately 1,000 jobs during its construction and to have an economic impact of more than $100-million by time it officially opens.
The link between city and the canoe is strong. Canoe manufacturing was among the very first industries of the area. So popular were the vessels built by the Peterborough Canoe Company that the word “Peterborough” often came to stand for “canoe” in North American paddling circles. The last Peterborough canoe to come off the line in 1947 was sent by the Government of Canada to England as a wedding gift for then-princess Elizabeth and her new husband, Phillip. It will be on exhibit in the new museum.
It’s been a rough paddle over the past year, but as the latest fundraising campaign of the Canadian Canoe Museum puts it, “We’re on our final portage to the water’s edge.
“Join us on our journey to create a world-class museum – where visitors walk in the front door and paddle out the back!”
Onto, finally, calm waters, with the current, finally, going with them.
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