A canoe that belonged to Canadian singer/songwriter Gordon Lightfoot, on display at the Canadian Canoe Museum in Peterborough, Ont. The museum has received a $1.775-million gift from the family of former Canadian Football League wide receiver Stu Lang.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
The new Canadian Canoe Museum in Peterborough, Ont., having already lucked into an unexpected change of venue that turned out vastly superior to the original plans, has just received a $1.775-million gift from the family of former Canadian Football League wide receiver Stu Lang.
The 72-year-old Lang is a successful Guelph, Ont., businessman who from 1974 to 1981 won five Grey Cups with the Edmonton Eskimos (now known as the Elks).
Stu and Kim Lang are well-known philanthropists who have donated more than $70-million to such causes as the Ontario Veterinary College, the Guelph General Hospital, Queen’s University and the University of Guelph. The Gordon S. Lang School of Business and Economics at the Guelph school is named after Mr. Lang’s father, who in 1951 founded CCL Industries, the world’s largest label company.
Why Peterborough and why canoes? In their youth, the Langs attended the famous Taylor Statten Camps on Canoe Lake in Algonquin Park, where they developed a life-long passion for paddling, exploring rivers and Canadian history.
The gift will be used to develop a lakefront campus and gathering circle along a picturesque widening of the Otonabee River as it passes near downtown Peterborough. Some 1,200 feet of shoreline will feature native trees, gardens, a multipurpose outdoor classroom, two seasonal docks, a boardwalk, a gathering circle, a canoe house, a small amphitheatre and an adaptive canoe and kayak launch. As the Trans Canada Trail passes by nearby, there will be an easy “portage” from the trail to the museum entrance.
“The Canadian Canoe Museum’s world-class collection deserves an outstanding home,” Mr. Lang said in a statement. The campus and gathering circle “will showcase the canoe’s incredible history and cultural significance and connect people to the land and water in a way that only hands-on experiences can.”
“As the largest watercraft collection in the world, it’s only right that it be on the water,” said museum curator Jeremy Ward.
“We are incredibly grateful and fortunate for the passion, vision and generosity of the Langs,” Carolyn Hyslop, the museum’s executive director, added. “The lakefront campus will make our museum come alive. Participants in a paddle carving or canoe restoration workshop will experience the excitement of testing their freshly honed skills on the water.”
Mr. Lang, Ms. Hyslop said, “pushes us to think bigger than we do. He sees us as we should see ourselves.”
The museum’s Inspiring Canada by Canoe campaign has now raised 95 per cent of the $40-million cost for a new 65,000-square-foot facility to house its collection of 650 canoes and kayaks. Founded in 1997 in a land-locked, former outboard-motor factory, the museum planned to move to a new building for its 25th anniversary, which passed last year.
The original plan was to build by the famous lift lock along the Trent-Severn Waterway. That dream, however, burst when it was discovered the ground held traces of the industrial solvent trichloroethylene and other chemicals. Groundwater had seeped from slightly higher land that once held a factory. Cleaning the site proved too expensive.
The organizers had to pivot quickly and the city offered to sell a property along the river off Ashburnham Drive for $1.57-million. Construction is well under way, with plans to open this summer or early fall.
Contributions have come in from the public, as well as the Department of Canadian Heritage, the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario, the Weston Family Foundation, the City of Peterborough, Peterborough County and the province of Ontario.
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