Wipper Lecture – 2020

Ontario Book Launch & Talk: “Canoe and Canvas” with Jessica Dunkin

Sunday February 2nd, 2020 from 2:30-4:30pm

Join 2020 Wipper Lecture guest Jessica Dunkin, in conversation with author James Raffan for the Ontario launch of her recent book, Canoe and Canvas. Canoe and Canvas: Life at the Encampments of the American Canoe Association, 1880-1910 examines the social and cultural landscape of the summer encampments, challenging the stories we tell about the role of canoes in society.

Dunkin’s book will be available in-store on the day of the event at a discount. 

Schedule

2:00pm  Light refreshments will be served
2:30pm  Wipper Lecture, Q&A, and Book Signing with Jessica Dunkin

The event is free/by optional donation, but you are asked to reserve a seat. Please bring/show your email confirmation of reservation (there are no physical tickets). 
Questions may be directed to Karen Taylor, Director of Public Programs, at [email protected] or 705 748 9153 x219.

We have reached our capacity for reserved seating for this event! We are currently working on adding additional seating but for those who had not yet reserved seats, please note the overflow areas may be standing room only on the second floor.
 
The event will be audio recorded and shared in its entirety with our members in an upcoming newsletter. Stay tuned for highlight clips to be shared on our social media!

About Canoe and Canvas

Canoe and Canvas offers a detailed portrait of the summer encampments of the American Canoe Association between 1880 and 1910. The encampments were annual events that attracted canoeing enthusiasts from both sides of the Canada-US border to socialize, race canoes, and sleep under canvas. While the encampments were located away from cities, they were still subjected to urban logic and ways of living. The encampments, thus, offer a unique site for exploring cultures of sport and leisure in late Victorian society, but also for considering the intersections between recreation and the politics of everyday life.

A social history of sport, Canoe and Canvas is particularly concerned with how gender, class, and race shaped the social, cultural, and physical landscapes of the ACA encampments. Although there was an ever-expanding arena of opportunity for leisure and sport in the late nineteenth century, as the example of the ACA makes clear, not all were granted equal access. Most of the members of the American Canoe Association and the majority of the campers at the annual encampments were white, middle-class men, though white women were extended partial membership in 1882, and in 1883, they were permitted to camp on site. Canoe and Canvas also reveals how Black, Indigenous, and working-class people, while obscured in the historical record, were indispensable to the smooth functioning of these events through their labour.

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