How it began
The birchbark canoe was the principal means of water transportation for Indigenous peoples of the Eastern Woodlands, in what is now Canada. Canoes were a necessity for northern Algonquian peoples such as the Innu, Ojibwe, Wolastoqiyik and Algonquin. The skills needed to build them were passed down through generations of master builders. The sources give no date for the first canoes, which were in use well before Europeans arrived.
How it works
Birch bark is smooth, hard, light, resilient and waterproof. Its grain runs around the tree instead of along it, so the bark can be shaped well. Bark stripped from the tree was set inside a staked frame, then sewn and attached. The frame was usually cedar, soaked in water and bent to shape. Joints were sewn with spruce or white pine roots, which women pulled up, split and boiled. Seams were sealed with hot spruce or pine resin, and paddlers put on new resin almost daily.
How it spread
After sustained contact with Europeans, voyageurs used birchbark canoes to explore and trade in the interior and to link fur trade supply lines with central posts, notably Montreal. Samuel de Champlain called it the only craft suitable for navigation in Canada. Most European explorers who first traveled inland Canada did so in birchbark canoes. West of the Rocky Mountains, where birch was lacking, builders used spruce bark or cedar planks.
What changed first
The canoe was light and easy to maneuver, suited to summer travel through the shallow streams, ponds, lakes and swift rivers of the Canadian Shield, and to carrying across the portages between them. The writer Edwin Tappan Adney, who worked to preserve canoe building methods, judged European boats clumsy and useless by comparison. As the fur trade grew, Indigenous builders could not meet demand, and around 1750 the French set up a canoe factory at Trois-Rivieres.
Where it stands today
As the fur trade declined in the 19th century, the canoe became a craft for recreation. Most canoes are no longer made of birch bark, but the form has remained popular as a pleasure craft. The canoe is used as a symbol of Canadian identity. The reverse of the 1935 Canadian silver dollar, designed by Emanuel Hahn, shows a voyageur and an Indigenous person paddling a canoe loaded with Hudson's Bay Company furs.
