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The Canoe

The Collection Centre houses the Museum's entire collection of 600 craft. Canoes and kayaks from across Canada, as well as watercraft from around the world are featured.
The Canadian Canoe museum is the only one of it's kind in all of North America, featuring a large number of canoes, kayaks, and other articles. The museum also features many interactive workshops

.The museum, which has 500 canoes and kayaks, as well as popular interactive exhibits and activities, opened in the late 1990s. Until last summer, attendance steadily increased, reaching 40,000 visitors two years ago. But the rough economy has taken its toll. Last year the number of visitors dropped dramatically. On October 17, the museum was forced to shut its doors and lay off nearly all paid staff. Then, on October 22, banks temporarily bailed out the museum with emergency loans to keep it afloat and preserve the collection until the museum's board of directors can develop a new financial plan.

Canoe Museum About

Taj Mahal India The canoe has been an enduring presence in peoples’ experience of this land, from time immemorial, and from coast to cost to cost. It has become a timeless and evocative symbol of Canadian history and culture, of Aboriginal ingenuity and adaptability, and of an environmentally sustainable approach to life. With over 600 canoes and kayaks – the largest collection in the world - The Canadian Canoe Museum, in Peterborough Ontario, is a National museum phenomena about to happen. Working closely with the Museum staff and directors, Commonwealth led a team of consultants to conceptualize the visitor experience, through three phases of development.

The project included reconfiguring the Museum’s well-developed interpretive goals and objectives into an overall interpretive plan and storyline, developing a master-plan for the 8-acre urban site and 140,000 square feet of building and integrating the proposed interpretation and facility developments into a comprehensive sequence of visitor’s experiences.

The word "canoa" or "canoe" appeared in the earliest writings about the First Peoples of the New World, and was adapted from the Arawak language of the Native Caribbeans. While the word simply referred to a boat or vessel in its original meaning, it has largely come to refer to a specific craft which is familiar to many people today.

However, there is an ancient and rich diversity in canoe shapes, construction and purpose, a knowledge that Native builders have refined over the past centuries. Some canoes were elegantly carved and formed from the massive trees of the northern Pacific coast for trade, war and for hunting the great whales. Other builders carved smaller canoes, well suited for travelling rivers, creeks and small waterways. In the harsh treeless Arctic landscape, the generosity of the ocean and rivers provided Inuit builders with animals and driftwood, from which they perfected the seaworthy shapes of their covered hunting craft.

Canoe Facts

Items in the Museum's were largely collected by Professor Kirk Wipper, Founder of the Kanawa International Museum of Canoes and Kayaks. From 1957 until 1990, Mr. Wipper devoted his life to developing the collection, with the vision of preserving a vital part of Canadian heritage.

The Canoe: A Canadian Icon

Canada exists because of the canoe. The canoe determined national boundaries and carried sovereignty to the northern half of the continent. Long before the arrival of Europeans in the Western Hemisphere, the canoe was at the centre of Aboriginal life and was the principal means of trade and communication between First Nations.

It was the symbol of a frontier perhaps unique in the world, on which a canoe-based trading partnership (between Europeans and Native peoples) emerged that created Canada, and equally importantly, established principles of mutual respect and accommodation, not dispossession.

Though these principles were badly eroded on the later frontier of settlement, the basis had been established during the era of the canoe for Canada's later reputation of understanding between peoples. The canoe is a symbol that joins British and French in the creation of Canada and puts the French at the centre of national development. And it is the most powerful symbol Canada has of the cooperation between Europeans and Aboriginal Peoples in Canada's early economic development. In the fur trade can be found the roots of multiculturalism.

Canoe Collections

The Canadian Canoe Museum houses the world's largest and most significant collection of paddled watercraft, representing a diverse range of design and construction techniques. Every craft in the collection has a story to tell about the people who built and used it. By collecting, preserving and displaying these craft, the Museum provides an important and unique insight into Canada's rich cultural heritage.

The collection features examples of Aboriginal craft that span the continent of North America. They range from great cedar whaling dugouts of the West Coast, to fine bark canoes used along the rivers of Eastern Canada to the skin kayaks of the Arctic. These vessels exemplify the skills and ingenuity of the builders who constructed them using available resources from the land and sea. The canoe was an integral part of the lives of the people who used them for hunting, fishing, trade and warfare. Today, these vessels serve as teaching tools, bringing about a revival in canoe-building traditions, fostering an awareness and appreciation of heritage and culture in communities across the nation.

The Museum houses a variety of historic wooden canoes, built in the canoe manufacturing centres of Ontario, Nova Scotia and Maine during the late 1800's to early 1900's. Through these craft, we discover the importance of the canoe in the lives of Canada's first settlers, both in work and in leisure.

Historical and contemporary stories of paddling are told at the Museum including that of George Douglas, who led a remarkable trip to the Coppermine River in 1911 and Don and Dana Starkell, famous for their incredible 12,181 mile canoe trip from Winnipeg to the mouth of the Amazon River. Presently, the canoes of former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, and artist, filmmaker and renowned paddler, Bill Mason are on display.

Examples of International craft from Senegal, Africa, Papua New Guinea, Taiwan, and Polynesia are also found in the collection. From large dugout craft with outriggers, to unique sewn plank canoes, these examples offer a glimpse into the lives of people whose cultures are intrinsically connected to the canoe.

As you explore the collection, we encourage you to reflect on your own unique relationship with this remarkable craft. Enjoy your journey!

Getting There

The Canadian Canoe Museum is located at 910 Monaghan Road in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada. Peterborough is located approximately 140 kilometres northeast of Toronto (an easy 90-minute drive).

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