Crack open a new box of crayons or markers, and sharpen those pencil crayons! We are bringing you more #CCMfromhome fun, this time with two new colouring sheets based on canoe-themed postcards in our collection.
If you’ve visited us recently, you may have seen one of our newer temporary exhibits, More Than Just Canoes, which highlights a collection of canoe-themed ephemera recently donated to the museum.
More Than Just Canoes
Included in this collection are artifacts that you might not expect to see in The Canadian Canoe Museum, such as sheet music, 78 rpm gramophone recordings, glass souvenir canoes, and a variety of canoe-inspired keepsakes from the early 20th century. These colouring pages are based on two postcards in this collection, “June” and “And they thought they were alone”.
Canoedling
Towards the end of the 19th century the customs of courtship began to change. In earlier times, young men and women who were romantically interested in each other were typically strictly-supervised by a chaperone. As social norms changed in the late-19th and early 20th century, it became increasingly acceptable for young couples to be seen together in public. The canoe offered an ideal way for couples to find some privacy while courting in public spaces.
These artifacts represent a time and place when romance and the canoe went hand-in-hand. A time when canoedling (which in the early 20th century by some accounts meant kissing and cuddling in a canoe), was made more comfortable with a canoe full of pillows, parasols, a gramophone and a picnic. The song, “Then We Canoe-Dle-Oodle Along” by Herbert Gordon and His Hotel Ten Eyck Whispering Orchestra captures this experience in a jazzy number (the museum has a 78 RPM record of the song in our collection). Take a listen.
Canoe-Themed Postcards Printable
While we don’t support canoedling in this time of physical distancing, you can show your affection for that someone special by sending them a canoe-themed piece of mail!
Snap a photo of your finished postcard and share it with us on social media by tagging @cndncanoemuseum or using the hashtag #CCMfromhome!
These colouring pages were originally submitted as part of #ColorOurCollections, a week-long colouring fest first launched by The New York Academy of Medicine Library in 2016. During the first week of February, libraries, archives, and other cultural institutions around the world share free colouring content with the hashtag #ColorOurCollections and invite the public to colour and get creative. In 2020, over 100 institutions took part from all around the world!
Visit Color Our Collections for more colouring resources, and to learn about collections all over the world: http://library.nyam.org/colorourcollections/
