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, and/or 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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 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.

by Thelma Thwartbender (attorney at law and gourmand)

travelling with James Raffan on the National Treasure Tour

by Thelma Thwartbender (attorney at law and gourmand)

travelling with James Raffan on the National Treasure Tour

by Thelma Thwartbender (attorney at law and gourmand)

travelling with James Raffan on the National Treasure Tour