World's largest museum collection of canoes on the move
CBC
It's a portage unlike any other.
Hundreds of canoes belonging to the Canadian Canoe Museum — some as long as a transport trailer — are being moved from their previous location in a former outboard motor factory in Peterborough, Ont., to a new waterfront home three kilometres away.
The museum holds the world's largest collection of paddled watercraft, from birchbark canoes handmade by Indigenous craftspeople to a sleek kayak used in the Olympic Games.
The museum's building for the past 26 years is so cramped that only a portion of the collection could be displayed to the public. That left some 500 canoes languishing in an adjacent warehouse, covered with sheets to protect them from birds that would occasionally fly in through broken windows.
The collection deserves a new home, says the museum's executive director, Carolyn Hyslop.
"There is no other collection like this in the world," Hyslop said in an interview.
"We've been looking for a waterfront home for this collection and a place where the whole collection can be accessible."
That new home is under construction on the edge of Little Lake, near the spot where the canal locks of the Trent-Severn Waterway meet the Otonabee River.
Hyslop says it's a much more appropriate spot for a museum of canoes than the landlocked former factory site. It will allow the museum to offer visitors the chance not just to look at the watercraft but to actually use some on the water.
"They'll be able to canoe right out of the back door of the new museum," said Hyslop.
The museum has designated some of its collection to create a programming fleet, so people can "experience what a birchbark canoe or wood-canvas canoe actually feels like to paddle."
The logistics of moving the 600 canoes to the new location, currently an active construction site, are complex and "a lot of work," says museum curator Jeremy Ward.
"This has been several years of preparation behind us to get the canoes and kayaks ready to be brought here," Ward said during an interview inside the second-floor exhibition hall of the new site.
"Every object has been very carefully inspected, photographed, cleaned and catalogued."
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