Portage into the Spirituality of Canoeing

 

The entrance to the exhibition area of the new Canadian Canoe Museum in Peterborough, Ontario.Credit...Ian Austen/The New York Times

On the weekend the New York Times weekly Canada Letter included a focus on the recently opened Canadian Canoe Museum in Peterborough, Ontario. This facility has been a long time coming and replaced a worthwhile but makeshift display in a former factory in the same city. We have now visited both and this museum is really wonderful with interactive displays and historic film footage, along with creative presentations of the canoes themselves. Canoes owned by Pierre Trudeau and Gordon Lightfoot are there.  Previously the collection of canoes was hidden way, other than those on current display. Now glass walls allow visitors to see the tremendous variety of vessels in the museum collection. 

Canoes have been essential to many cultures around the world and this is reflected in the museum. It could also be argued that they are quintessentially Canadian, a mode of transportation, trade, war, and harvesting of the waters, for many Indigenous groups through the centuries. They also became vital for the fur trade and exploration by European settlers.

I've mentioned that Ruth and I first paddled together 50 years ago when we were teenagers and while we've been more inclined to kayaks in the past 15 years we still get out in our canoe several times a year. We'll take the canoe with us this weekend for a family camping trip and get the grandkids out on the water. In earlier years we engaged in some challenging trips in Northern Ontario, including with our three children.

There has always been something of a spiritual connection for us in canoeing, a sense of the pilgrimage which was profound. Making our way into the jewel of Killarney Provincial Park or down the Sand River north of Lake Superior gave us a deep connection with the wilderness and the Creator. As a minister I was involved in canoeing junkets with teens from diifferent  congregations, as well as with adults. Ruth was involved in canoe trips with a spirited group of church women for years. 

There is so much written about the spirituality of walking and I wish there was more about the spirituality of canoeing -- I know, write something. 

                                                                   Haida Heritage Centre, Haida Gwaii 

When we visited Haida Gwaii recently I realized that I'd forgotten to bring a cap, so Ruth loaned me the back-up she'd brought. It was an old, unused baseball-style hat purchased at the former Canoe Museum with the logo taken from a pictograph. When we were in the Haida Heritage Museum a staff member asked about my hat because he had been involved with the new museum planners in Peterborough regarding the magnificent Haida canoes that are part of the collection. He recognized the logo.  This was a  delightful, improbable, and perhaps providential encounter. 

Oh yes, during a long connector layover in Vancouver airport we sought out the monumental sculpture by the late Haida artist, Bill Reid called the Spirit of Haida Gwaii. The original is in the Canadian embassy in Washington DC, but this exact replica is a wonder to behold.