Yesterday was Natoonal Canoe Day and last evening I got thinking about our personal history of paddling. My first canoe trip was through the Christian camp which was the setting for the deepening of a faith which I had been nurtured in since birth.
Ruth and I first paddled a canoe together 47 years ago and we are blessed to be healthy enough to venture out regularly, including since the end of March this year. Now it's more likely to be in our kayaks than one of our canoes, as with so many others. It is actually noteworthy to see a canoe on a vehicle roof now.
Both canoes and kayaks are gifts to the world from Indigenous peoples. Kayaks were first designed to be more enclosed against frigid water, although a lot of what are sold as kayaks today are more like pointy bathtubs. Canoes could be created to hold one person or many. The paddling crews of canoes adapted by the Hudson Bay Company and other enterprises traveled across what we now know as Canada, trading for significant cargoes of furs. The unfortunate reality is that a craft perfectly designed for the challenges of wilderness rivers gave Europeans the opening for colonization which led to the sorry mess we find ourselves in today.
It's telling that Canada has issued a number of stamps through the years which feature kayaks and canoes. Hardly any of them include, let alone feature, the Indigenous peoples who designed these marvels of watercraft engineering. The settler mentality appropriated both.
There is a stamp which depicts a Quebecois legend of the "witched canoe" with a Satan-like figure looming over a flying birchbark voyageur canoe. I can't help but look at it and think that it represents what settlers, including so many who came in the name of the Christian religion, brought with them.
Do I still love canoes and kayaks? Of course I do, and I figure that we should be giving credit where credit is do.
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