CCM Blog

Lines-taking and lofting a historic sailing canoe

Candace Shaw — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 18:00:10 -0400

From John Summers, CCM General Manager

I spent an interesting few hours last Sunday measuring a boat. Why would you want to measure a boat, in this case an historic sailing canoe? Well, for a old boat like this, built in the early years of the 20th century, the plans, if there ever were any, are long gone, and so the only way to build another one is to measure and draw it. This involves two related steps: 1) lines-taking; and 2) lofting.

In lines-taking, you construct a geometric box around the boat and measure in from it to points on the canoe's surface. Because a canoe is mostly curves, you need to pick up a number of points so that you can later connect the dots and re-draw the curve. In lofting, you take these measurements and draw full-sized plans of the canoe on white-painted plywood [it's called lofting because it was originally done in the mould loft, usually on the second floor over the boat- or ship-building shop]. From these full-sized drawings, you can either build another canoe, andor reduce them to scale drawings and plans that others can use.

The photos show Andre Cloutier, a canoe collector from the Wooden Canoe Heritage Association, CCM Curator Jeremy Ward and canoe-builder Dick Persson of the Headwater Wooden Boat Shop in Buckhorn, ON using a finger gauge to lift measurements from the canoe and transfer them to a lofting board, and also Cookie the Golden Retriever, tired out after a long day of watching grown men crawl around on the floor drawing with pencils. An emerging drawing of the boat's cross-sections, or "body plan," can be seen next to her.
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Vox Populi in Victoria

Thelma Thwartbender — Sat, 7 Nov 2009 07:41:40 -0500

by Thelma Thwartbender (attorney at law and gourmand)

travelling with James Raffan on the National Treasure Tour

Hooo-weee did Jimmy put his foot in it this evening in Victoria! At each stop along the National Treasure Tour, he's made a point of scurrying around town to find examples of canoes in public art, sculptures, murals, signs, what have you. And in Victoria he was particularly pleased with himself that he found a new (to him) and quite arresting canoe sculpture in Bastion Square just outside the Maritime Museum of British Columbia . As usual, he popped a shot of this structure into the opening of his show and ... ever the curious one ... he asked what this bouquet of tulips holding a likeness of a Haida or Coast Salish dugout might be doing in the centre of town. Well ... the voice of the people rang out. Turns out no one in the audience really knew what the sculpture meant, what it symbolized, or why it might be flying through the air over Bastion Square. It wasn't that what people said was derogatory but there was something of an air of ... shall we say ... irreverent perhaps even ribald appreciation for the long slender poles, the brilliant red finials, and the flying canoe so centrally displayed.

But all this guffawing came home to roost at intermission when a chap walked up to Jimmy at the front with a very intense look on his face indicating that he'd like "get a couple of things straight" about the canoe sculpture. Seems it is called "The Commerce Canoe" and it celebrates the starch trade on the West Coast. It was the winner in a public competition for a piece of sculpture to mark and celebrate the rewewal of Bastion Square. The green stalks could be wheat or wild rice and the canoe symbolizes the vessel that is gathering, collecting andor transporting the grain. Jimmy's a perceptive guy ... sometimes ... and it was only after this chap introduced himself as Illarian Gallant that a flicker of mild panic crossed his face.

You could see Jimmy joining the dots. The encyclopedic knowledge of the sculpture. The stern look on the man's face. The artistic sounding name.

"You wouldn't happen to be the artist—the person who designed and made The Commerce Canoe , would you?"

Nervous smile.

"I am."

Long pause.

Mercifully, Mr. Gallant did not wring Jimmy's neck. He actually managed a smile and eventually showed a magnanimous sense humour as he and Jimmy laughed and talked about how the sculpture had almost mysteriously drawn in the stranger from out of town who was looking for canoe connections in Victoria, to the point that without prior knowledge of it being there and a series of random turns on a wander through downtown Victoria en route from the bus station to the presentation venue Jimmy had ended up underneath The Commerce Canoe almost before he actually looked up and saw the art.

Jimmy's still mumbling about what the chances might be that an artist who created a piece of public sculpture might a) be from the town in which the art is displayed, and b) present at a presentation about The Canadian Canoe Museum. Higher than you'd think, my friend. Higher than you'd think. Fortunately for him, my client did not need the services of his personal attorney. Fortunately for me, his personal attorney, my client did not need any emergency legal aid just then because I'd spent most of the afternoon sampling brews at the Canoe pub next door and was in no real shape for a fight, legal or otherwise.

Here are the labels of just three of a host of special canoe beers on offer at Canoe Brewpub, Restaurant and Marina on the Victoria harbourfront. Excellent brews all.

The event hosted by owner Brian Henry at Ocean River Sports in Victoria was a huge success. Great turnout. Great enthusiasm for all things kayak and canoe. And, thanks to the kindness of a group from the Ocean River Paddling Club and the Victoria Canoe and Kayak Club, Jimmy and I got out in an OC-6 outrigger canoe the following morning before flight time. We toured the site of a proposed marina and restaurant and talked about how this will impact on public spaces on the Victoria waterfront and then we headed out to sea ... all good until somebody in the canoe mentioned that the boat we were headed for in the Straits of Juan de Fuca was an American nuclear submarine headed in or out of the naval pens in Puget Sound. Gulp.

Collection Connections in Vancouver

Thelma Thwartbender — Fri, 6 Nov 2009 16:54:23 -0500

by Thelma Thwartbender (attorney at law and gourmand)
travelling with James Raffan on the National Treasure Tour

So one of the main points Jimmy's been wailing on about in this National Treasure Tour is how much a part of everyday life is the canoe in its various regional permutations. Exhibit A, Your Honour, on Wednesday's flight from Edmonton to Vancouver was page 2 of the Globe and Mail which featured a b&w shot of Bill Reid famous Haida dugout, Lootaas, carrying the olympic torch. Arriving in Vancouver, a similar shot, only this time in colour, had been promoted to the front page of the Vancouver Sun. Here's our hardworking Vancouver host and National Treasure convenor, Sanford Osler, chilling outside CBC Vancouver while Jimmy is inside chatting up Stephen Quinn, host of On the Coast , about the three National Treasure presentations Sandford had teed up in the Greater Vancouver area. Lootaas is not part of the CCM collection but its maker, artist Bill Reid, is very much a part of the story that goes with the 26' Haida canoe in our Origins Exhibit.

Another slightly offbeat collection connection to our Silver Canoe came in the most unexpected circumstance. Things were all set to go at the Vancouver Maritime Museum and Jimmy headed to the Kitsilano strip for a quick meal with our hosts before the show. By the time they rolled back to the VMM parking lot it was dark. Sanford headed in to to the venue to make last minute preparations and Jimmy was just gathering his things together from the car when a diminutive senior sidled up to him in the parking lot and said in a hushed tone: "Pssssst, are you James. I've got something in the back of my car that you'd like to see." I think I saw him recoil a little from fright, thinking that he was more or less all alone and anonymous in a parking lot, in the dark, on a week night, on the other side of the country. But he nodded, and off they went to the other side of the parking lot where she opened the back of the car.

What she had in the back of her car was a lawn whirligig ... but instead of Daffy Duck's little yellow legs being propelled by a prop on the front of of home-made ornament, the main object of the thing was a canoe, and not just any canoe. In the middle of the canoe was Sir George Simpson and his piper, Colin Fraser, in living acrylic colour, carved into good Rona pine boards. And the simple mechanism made voyageurs ahead and behind Sir George paddle their little wooden hearts out. But that wasn't all. This amazing piece of lawn art had been made by the woman's late husband, James. And, as it happened, the reason why James had made this particular canoe with these particular passengers was that he had married one of Sir George's GGGGGreat Granddaughers (with Margaret Taylor). In a Vancouver parking lot, Jimmy had met Mary Lou Stathers, a direct descendant of the infamous Hbc Governor who ruled Rupertsland from 1820-1860!

So instead of opening the presentation at the Vancouver Maritime Museum with his usual patter, Jimmy wandered up to the podium with this most splendid lawn ornament, one hand holding the pole that would be driven into the ground and the other spinning the propeller that made the wee laddies stroke, stroke, stroke their way into infamy. Here's a little closer look at this magnificant piece of folk art.

Throughout the tour, we've been running into all kind of people who have connections to the CCM collection in one way or another but at a lunchtime presentation the next day, at the Bill Reid Gallery in downtown Vancouver, Jimmy was delighted to meet Ronald Russ from Masset on Haida Gwaii, a relative of Victor Adams, the man who built the CCM's Haida canoe back in the 1960s. Ronald and his wife, Sandra Dan, had stories about the building or our Haida canoe as well as some interesting tales about the Bluebird (our 60' Salish racing dugout) as well. They'd come to the gallery to confer with Bill Reid's wife, Martine, who also attended the National Treasure Presentation. (l-r In the Bill Reid Gallery, our man Jimmy—looking a little rumpled and bleary eyed two weeks into the tour—with Dr. Martine Reid, Ronald Russ and Sandra Dan from Masset, Haida Gwaii) In popping on a pin and a logo cap from the CCM, Ronald and Sandra invited Jimmy back to Haida Gwaii, when he can make it, to learn more about the building of the Haida canoe and to strengthen the museum's connections back to this corner of Canoe Country.

Only In Canada!

Thelma Thwartbender — Thu, 5 Nov 2009 01:23:24 -0500

by Thelma Thwartbender (attorney at law and gourmand)
travelling with James Raffan on the National Treasure Tour

So at the end of the Edmonton show at Grant MacEwan University a guy came up to Jimmy and, in a sort of conspiratorial voice, said: "Hey, if you've got a minute you should check out the Five Star Pawn Shop at 118th Avenue and 123rd Street. They have a real birch bark canoe on the wall."   Just the thought of some coureur des bois wandering in off the North Saskatchewan and hawking his canoe for some drinking cash set Jimmy's heart a fluttering, so he and his buddy Morton set out early enough from Camrose to take a trip into town to check things out. Turns out it wasn't called the Five Star, it was called Loan Star Jewellery and Loans and there it was just where the chap said it would be. And ... sure enough, there was a bark canoe hanging from the ceiling right above the Kiss-autographed electric guitars, a couple of old saxophones, a ceremonial Jan Arden CD in a really nice frame, and a Miller High Life neon beer sign.

Jimmy was expecting some kind of backyard-special bark canoe. Not. First thing he noticed was that was sixteen feet long and appeared to be made from one piece of bark. The workmanship was exquisite. Owner Mike Monaghan (above) as a tad perplexed by all the questions but he played along. Seems the canoe came with the place when he bought the store from its previous owner and, the story got a little more complex, a condition of sale was that he would never ever sell said canoe. Mike said that he liked it for atmosphere and that the canoe, with other 'atmospheric items' like the stuffed buffalo head, a stretched beaver pelt, barber chair and a couple of stuffed birds, gave the place a unique feel.

As he was talking, Jimmy got in behind the counter and had to be restrained when he stepped up on a chair and started trying to get a closer look. Mike was concerned that he might fall and wreck some of the musical instruments on offer. However, getting a little bit curious himself by now, Mike disappeared into the back and got a small step ladder so that they might get up for a closer look. And while Jimmy was ogling the details and decorations on the craft and pestering him for details, Mike called the previous owner. Alas, besides remembering that he'd purchased the canoe from 'a guy in Cold Lake' he had no other information about the canoe, except that he thought there might be a name on it somewhere. Jimmy just about dropped his teeth when they found that name.

There were other clues that this might be a boat made by one of the preeminent living bark builders in North America—the St. Lawrence River Malecite lines, the superb workmanship, the delicate fleur-de-lis on one end, the other decorations including the fancy deck flap—but the signature in red paint sealed it. Henri Vaillancourt , star of John McPhee's Survival of the Bark Canoe . Who knew??? In an Edmonton pawn shop!

United Canoe Nations In Edmonchuk

Thelma Thwartbender — Wed, 4 Nov 2009 05:11:55 -0500

by Thelma Thwartbender (attorney at law and gourmand)
travelling with James Raffan on the National Treasure Tour

Yum, yum, yum here I come with another tale of gastronomique delights from the road. Jimmy's pal Morton Asfeldt, who has a little Danish blood in him, took us over to The Lefse House here in Camrose today to pick up some awesome Norwegian brown goat cheese called gjetost (pronounced "yet-toast" and tastes a whole lot better than it looks or sounds) and catch up over a truly Scandinavian lunch.   First course was rullepolse (a sort of savory head cheese) with melt-in-your-snoot pickled herring (not even going to try to say or spell that in Norwegian because it sounds rude in English) with Swedish rye bread, cloudberries, and a few delicious slices of the aforementioned gjetost. That was followed by a sampler of dessert treats including hardanger lefse, krum kakes, fattigmann and sandbakkles—which with sweet tea and lashings of whipped cream played havoc with a girl's waistline but mmm-mmm good!

Arrived late in Edmonton (the good folks at Westjet, at their wit's end with a new electronic reservation system, couldn't figure out what happened to one passenger on the manifest so we sat for an hour on the tarmac 'til they called, counted, consulted, cajoled, counselled and finally crumpled up the list and printed a new one) but not so late as to miss the chance to check out a sculpture called "Caraval" on the lawn in front of Edmonton City Hall. Here's Paddle Alberta President, Mark Lund, taking his turn as a paddler in this magnificent stainless steel canoe:

Of course, Edmonton has seen its fair share of canoes come and go on the mighty North Saskatchewan, and so it makes sense that there would be a canoe sculpture on the front lawn of city hall. Here's what the artist, Isla Burns (good Scottish name that) had to say about the work on a plaque: "The feel and tension of the sculpture derives from the 'canoe' shape, the relationship of the shape to the ground and the way it curves up from the ground. The weight presses down on one end while the other end lifts up appearing weightless, creating a sense of movement. The canoe shape itself speaks directly. It talks about travel, going somewhere, coming from somewhere else, about history and timelessness."

It's hard to say who was more excited—my friend Jimmy, who was reading this out loud to anybody passing by city hall at rush hour, or Edmonton's own Mr. Canoehead, Mark Lund, who had to get into the canoe and paddle with braces high and low (all with appropriate sound effects). Tres tres embarassing!

When Mark Lund got the drift of Jimmy's seriously unbridled passion for these "vessels with out decks" (as he likes to call them when he's trying to sound like he knows what he's talking about)—in a kind of you-show-me-yours and I'll-show-you-mine schoolyard tit for tat, nothing would do but that Mark had to take Jimmy to his house to show him where he'd buried a 17' Grumman canoe in his front yard. That's when this day's episode of the National Treasure Tour got just a little too weird. The sight of these two white-bearded wonders making a fool of themselves in front of city hall was bad enough, but when they started to kneel and mumble prayers of support for the dear departed soul of the old Grumman, I had to excuse myself, feeling the contents of my stomach rising into my throat, and caught the first cab to the Edmonton Bar Association Steam and Sauna Club for good scrub down to remove any of this nasty canoe virus that might have rubbed off on me. Seriously. The guy buried a 17' aluminum canoe in his front yard!

What this Mark Lund guy lacks in horticultural sophistication, however, he makes up for in other areas, like how to host a fine National Treasure night in Edmonton. The auditorium at Grant MacEwen University was pleasantly filled with enthusiastic paddlers and interested others who, among other thoughtful gestures, brought canoe postcards to add to Jimmy's collection. And, adding another international dimension to the Edmonton stop, Jimmy asked the person who'd come the farthest to attend the presentation to make the door prize draws. This turned out to be a woman from Minnesota! who was visiting friends in Edmonton and who had come along to the presentation to learn a bit more about the Canoe Museum.

From there it was off to Camrose, an hour or so SSE of Edmonton by car, with Professor Morton Asfeldt to spend the night in preparation for speaking to the University of Alberta, Augustana Campus students about canoes and risk. According to Jimmy, Morton and his colleagues are keepers of one of the most thriving post-secondary outdoor education programs around, with regular local expeditions routinely heading out onto the rivers and mountain trails of Alberta in the spring, fall and winter (Morton spends 50-60 days a year on the trail with his students) and with biannual arctic expeditions as well heading up onto rivers like the Mara, Burnside, Firth and Thelon. You can check out Augustana's cool outdoor education programs here . The canoe and canoe expeditioning is so integrated into curricular life at Augustana that there is a mural celebrating a school expedition to the Burnside River not far from the cafeteria in a wonderful new university centre on campus in Camrose. I'm thinking it might be the gjetost that gives them that kind of get up and go!

Oh yeah, not far from the mural there's a guy (whose identity has been masked in case his dean finds out that he's wrecking company equipment) who has another little canotic 'shrine' on the wall ... or is it some kind of strange brown-goat-cheese inspired Scandinavian art ... or is it just a whole other twisted story??? Only Ban Ki-moon knows for sure!