Woles

I've been searching old books for artist prints documenting some of their paddle shapes and decoration. As Gidmark writes in Canoe Paddles: A Complete Guide to Making Your Own early native paddles are frustratingly difficult to research given that many have not survived through the centuries. Most documentation has been in the form of European explorers who often crudely represented the paddles in out-of-scale drawings and sketches.

One fascinating historical document with such imagery is the the Codex canadiensis, a 79-page document written circa 1700. It is believed to have been written by Louis Nicolas , a French missionary in Canada in the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth century. The codex is illustrated with 180 drawings of First Nations peoples, plants, mammals, birds and fish of Canada

Collections Canada has a site setup to view all the illustrations in this piece of Canadian heritage. Here are some shots below that show some of the paddle forms and decorations encountered by Nicholas. I'll be posting more on other historic paddle illustrations soon.

An Ebay seller claims to have a silver gelatin original photograph dated to 1887 which features a couple in an elegant canoe. To my eyes it looks to be a very old birchbark canoe since some pitched gores are just visible in the grainy zoomed picture.





The gentleman in the rear looks to be using a graceful paddle with an elongated grip...



Another photo dated to same time and place is a group shot of paddlers. The seller describes it as "Visiting Neighbors by canoe, Riverside, MA c.1887"



The closeup shot reveals some lovely elegant paddles as well as fancy paddling clothes for the ladies...




If I'm not mistaken, Riverside Massachusetts is near the famed Charles River, where a thriving canoe building industry once existed. Archive.org has a nice little booklet entitled online entitled  Souvenir of the Charles River (1904). While published much later than this purported photo, it shows just how popular recreational canoeing was at the turn of the 20th century. Lots of great vintage photos and ads of early canoe builders as well.

On the search for more paddle related art, I came across this painting on FineArtAmerica.com featuring a bark canoe and a straight sided, Passamaquoddy grip styled paddle...




To my eyes, the lines and decoration of the canoe look like something built by well known birchbark craftsman, Steve Cayard...

Found some paintings by Lieut. Robert Petley (1809-1869) in the Archives & National Gallery of Canada. Petley was a military artist and an officer with the 50th Regiment who spent the majority of his tour of duty in the Maritime provinces, serving at Fredericton in 1831 and with the 71st Regiment in Halifax from 1832 to 1836. He officially documented military sites in Nova Scotia but also produced personal works with an emphasis on Mi'kmaq (Micmac) subjects.

This seems to be echoed in a work of his entitled "Interior of a Wigwam" in which there are two versions of a similar scene. In the foreground of each painting is a slender, elongated canoe paddle resting on baskets. Once again, we see a long, extended grip which seems consistent with the paddles of this region, like the ones found in the New Brunswick Museum.


Interior of a Wigwam c. 1834
watercolour on wove paper
14.7 x 20.7 cm
National Gallery of Canada (no. 26987)


Paddle Closeup




Interior of a Wigwam
Library and Archives Canada


Paddle Closeup

With the bark canoe essentially complete, I figured I'd make use of some free time making a paddle to go with the boat. Given that it is based on a solo Attikamekw (Têtes-de-Boules) Hunter's canoe, it was only logical to carve an Attikamekw paddle with it.

The blank was cut out of some yellow birch (Betula alleghaniensis) stock, the off cuts of which had been used to make the permanent thwarts in the canoe a while back. Adney documents a sample Têtes-de-Boules paddle in Fig.102 of his book. It's a pretty no frills blade design with a round tip and gradual straight-lined taper to the neck. Pretty narrow blade as well, I made mine 4-3/8th inches at the widest point. Adney documents two alternative grip designs, neither of which I've found confortable in my paddle making experience so far, so I stuck with the elongated grip I've begun to favour for my style of paddling. Some decorative notches were added to the base of the grip as well.


Adney's Plan; My version; Grip Closeup
As for decoration, I wanted to experiment with some native-inspired scroll designs to go with the designs I may etch into the canoe's winter bark in the future. I checked out a great online resource - Frank G. Speck's Double-Curve Motive in Northeastern Algonkian Art (1914) available through Archive.org. In the end I settled on a Naskapi Cree double curve pattern (Fig. 12.) because the book source didn't have any documentation on Attikamekw patterns but stated that there was similarity between tribal groups of this region


Double Curve motif
From this basic pattern, a mirror imaged design was set up and burned onto the blade. Normally, such designs would be etched on, but I'm not confident enough with my chipcarving skills to tackle that. Pyrography also allows you to add some shading, and yellow birch is a great wood to take advantage of for subtle tones. One the grip, I burned some other free hand scroll patterns and designs.


Blade pattern; Grip decoration; Whole Paddle
Being a one-piece, I'll be oiling this one rather than varnishing but will likely do that once the extreme windy weather in Toronto settles down a bit.

Nov 29/09 UPDATE - A leather wrapping has been added to the shaft of this paddle which so far is my favourite design for solo paddling.

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Next up in my Exotic Paddle Series is an Australian Rainforest Dance paddle, c. 1930's painted with natural earth ochres. Via LewisPaul.com

A fine and very rare rainforest paddle with traditional diamond patterning in ochres to the front and back of the bi-convex ovoid 'head', with an undecorated carved wood handle. Paddles such as this are clearly related in shape to the traditional rainforest clubs, which in their early 20th century incarnations were also painted with ochred designs related to those on the large shields. As opposed to those traditional large softwood shields, which were used in warfare, these later variants, together with the smaller early 20th century rainforest shields, were used purely ceremonially, usually in dance. There are very few examples known of this 'dance specific' paddle format, as opposed to 'fighting format' artefacts (clubs, shields, boomerangs) brought over into the realm of ritual by appropriate decoration.

Published: Christie's catalogue Australian Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, 30 August, 2005 (lot128).

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Even though I haven't really paddle any significant white water (easy Class II at most), I wanted to try the White Water paddle design in Graham Warren's book. The write-up mentioned that it should be made from a stronger hardwood and left a bit thicker in order to prevent a breakage when in use. I decided that this would be a great time to try out some Soft Maple (actually quite hard) for this attempt. I ended up with a great 5/4 piece (10 ft long x 8.5 inches wide) that I had Century Mill plane down to 1 1/8th and cut into two 60inch long boards. One of these would be the whitewater and the other is still in locker room waiting for a paddle selection.

Unfortunately, I ended up not taking any photos of the process, including the technique for carving out the angled T-grip...something I regret. But I do have pics of the final work. The artwork was inspired by my 2007 Summer trip to the High Arctic (800+ km north of the Arctic Circle). A soft eco-adventure stay at Arctic Watch Lodge included some amazing vistas, 30 polar bear sightings, a local muskox herd, and amazing birdwatching. While on a daytrip rafting down the Cunningham River back to camp, our 13yr old inuit guide spotted a lone bull muskox. We pulled ashore and stared at it for quite a while before it snorted and slowly hunkered back over the tundra. These become my inspirations for the artwork


With the completed paddle back in August


The Muskox side of the blade


The other side


The Polar Bear side of the blade
Overall, I found the maple a bit of challenge to work with, but I later found out it was because I had dulled the spokeshave blade after making 4 hardwood paddles with it...so a sharpening stone and honing guide were necessary purchases at this point to keep this hobby going. Maple is also a very dense wood, resulting in a heavier than normal paddle I would want for a whitewater run. I'm already considering making another in the future from lighter woods and laminating hardwood edging.

A great little visual article from Boys' Life April 1953 outlining how to make a paddle from a salvaged, broken oar.

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Even though traditional canoeing in my area of Canada evolved for the many inland lakes and rivers in the region, I've also been interested in the large ocean-going, cedar dugout canoes of the North West coast. The Indigenous Peoples of the this Region carved amazing, exotic shaped paddles from the prevalent cedars found in that part of the country.

Warren's Canoe Paddles book has a outline sketch of one particular North West coast paddle made from the Nootka People, more correctly known as the Nuu chah nulth. It is a peculiar in that it has a large area, sweeping blade that ends in a protruding tip and a long, flattened shaft region with roll-style grip. The few online versions I've been able to find are high end artworks decorated in the amazing style of the region. On the right is an example I found on the Inuit Gallery of Vancouver website (Scroll down in the Northwest Sculpture section to find it). The paddles details:

Eagle Design Paddle
by Morris Sutherland
Nuu chah nulth
Carved paddle of yellow cedar and abalone
65" x 7" x 1.5"


What a beauty! Upon doing some more research, I found out that "yellow cedar" is not a true cedar at all, but a member of the cypress family. It's other common name, Nootka Cypress, and latin name Callitropsis nootkatensis, are named in honour of the Nootka people. My local supplier didn't carry it and finding quality (non constuction grade) Western Red Cedar was also challenging. In the end, I thought I would use another "yellow" wood that is also not a member of the tree family its name implies...Yellow Poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera), a member of the Tulip family and apparently not a true poplar at all.

This is another paddle in which I never took any pictures of the carving process (done up at the cottage over a sunny weeklong holiday in the summer). It also contained what I perceived as my first major error in paddlemaking. While sawing out the blank, I cut too deep into the shaft area, resulting in an extremely narrow (less than 1") throat area. My only consolation is that cedar & cypress wood are quite soft requiring thicker shafts, but Yellow Poplar is a hardwood that could probably withstand this error if used lightly. A roll style grip was carved (similar to the Cherry Fusion Paddle) but it was left protuding much more than other Nootka paddles I had seen. This was done for my own preference of a larger grip area. I took it out for a test run on the lake in order to wet the grain before final sanding and even though it was meant for ocean-worthy dugouts, I found the shape and style conducive to solo style paddling in a smaller canoe.

As for decorating, I wanted to maintain the native decor and ideally burn a Raven image, seemingly appropriate for this work. Months went by before any suitable idea could be found. On my last visit to Canadian Canoe Museum in the fall of 2007 (can't get enough of that place), I took a shot of some Haida paddles on display with a dugout canoe. I really liked the 2nd paddle from the top, an elongated raven image.


A few days later, I was reading a back issue Canoe Roots magazine (Fall 2006), where there was an article discussing Kirk Wipper's history of collecting canoes that ultimately formed the basis of the museum today. In it was pic of a Haida canoe with an identical Raven image painted on the bow. Check out the specific page on the online archive here. So I burned this image, flipping the orientation so that the "beak" of the bird pointed towards the tip while adding some extra background markings on the blade. By burning at high temperature, the wood was charred almost black, nearly mimicking the effect painting with black acrylic. Here are the results:



Haida Raven on the Blade


My interpretation of a Nuu chah nulth Paddle

Yellow Poplar doesn't have the rot-resistant properties of cedars / cypresses, so this paddle will need to be varnished before use, but I haven't done that yet and am debating of leaving it as as another wallmounted showpiece