Paddle Through A New Podcast: Canada’s Canoe Archive

Aerial view of large canoe storage building

The Canadian Canoe Museum is the subject of Library and Archives Canada’s latest podcast titled Canada’s Canoe Archive.

Curator Jeremy Ward welcomed Geneviève Morin, host of Discover Library and Archives Canada: Your History, Your Documentary Heritage, for a behind-the-scenes tour, which is now live for listeners.

The 45-minute podcast highlights some of the collection’s oldest dugout canoes along with a handful interesting stories that accompany the artifacts. Listeners hear Ward talk about artifacts previously owned by iconic Canadians, including author Farley Mowat and visual artist Robert Bateman.

Morin and her team also explored the museum’s galleries where she and Ward discuss the museum’s canoe build project with Chuck Commanda in 2017. Ward adds, “we have four canoes by Chuck’s grandparents in our collection. And so to have Chuck, the grandson, here for a number of weeks working with a number of Indigenous youth from the area building a birchbark canoe in our gallery, and that continuity, the legacy of that, is really exciting today.” This collaboratively built, birchbark canoe is now on exhibit in the museum.

Early on in the piece, Morin asks Ward about the museum’s mandate. “Really in simplest—I suppose to pursue the story of the canoe where it leads us. There are three strong elements in the vision for this museum; which is to connect to each other, to our past and to the landscape where we find ourselves,” he says.

As Morin points out, “The Canadian Canoe Museum will soon be undergoing an ambitious relocation project in collaboration with Parks Canada. The aim is to create a major cultural and recreational destination that will draw people from all over, and allow more of this incredible collection to be shared with the public. It will also facilitate the expansion of the museum’s educational programming and hands-on workshops.”

We are grateful to Morin and the team for joining us and for sharing the museum’s story. She wished us well in the move with the new museum and has agreed to come back once it’s complete. And absolutely, we look very forward to that!

Listen to the podcast below.