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1939 Canoe Technique film..traditional style!

He must have had a great time practicing all those manoeuvres! I don't think I'd be using any of my canoes as a dock ramp though.

Great video!
 
Wow...what a great find YC! Really fantastic footage...especially like all the confident canoe surfing near the end.

Sweeper, he looks to be paddling an early form of Peterborough / Lakefield area canoe - totally makes sense since he is filming in Stoney Lake, Ontario near the heart of that historic canoe building area. These were all wood canoes that evolved over time - his looks to be longitudinal cedar strip nailed to the many 1/2" oak ribs. You can see a similar 1930's era one below...

LakefieldSailingCanoe001.jpg

Original Link Here

This style of construction didn't use an inner gunwale...just an L-shaped outwale shaped to cover the tops. As I understand it, the term closed rib usually applies to cedar canvas canoe construction where ribs are sandwiched between inner and outer with a separate topwale to cover it up, similar to birchbark canoes.

By the way found another page featuring a restoration of a similar canoe over at DouglasCanoes.ca if interested.
 
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That's what threw me, closed gunwales weren't made much after 1905ish. That make it a 30+ year old canoe.
 
Film is dated to 1934-1935. Omer would've been a young gentlemen - definitely not him in the video. Although I do recall something of how there is an instructional film of Omer out there (filmed at a much later date) made to accompany his booklet...

newcanoemanual.jpg


Haven't ever been able to ever see a the video...might be privately owned / copyrighted by the family?
 
I really enjoyed that, thanks for sharing. A member here told me how he watched Omer Stringer perform his skills for the campers at the camp he attended in Algonquin a few years back. Great seeing this performance, I might give that way of emptying a canoe of water in the opening few minutes a try, looked easy...Haha
 
I saw Omer put on a demo at Canoe Lake years ago, what he could do with a canoe should be illegal :), his son David was no slouch either!
For those of you looking for Omer's booklet, The Friends Of Algonquin have reprinted it and it's available on their website- I give a copy to my Scouts when we start paddling training every year- it's a great little resource http://store.algonquinpark.on.ca/cgi/algonquinpark/00134.html
 
Way to go YC. That's the video that I saw playing in a corner of the Canadian Canoe Museum.
I've been trying to get a copy for a long time now.
It's a fantastic video. That must be some sturdy canoe he's walking up and down the dock.
Many thanks,
Ted
 
The video is fun to watch. At 1:30 he gives a reason for 90% of canoeing mishaps - something about what "greenhorns" do. Can anyone clarify what that is? I couldn't understand it.

Did someone comment on the rare or obsolete stroke he does at about 4:30? That's a combination sculling draw/back. It's one of many ways of combining strokes to move the canoe the way you want. I do stuff like that when doing backferries and other river maneuvers, mostly without thinking about it.

(Edit: The comment about the 4:30 point was on the Solo Canoe group's Facebook page.)
 
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I have seen old picture or videos of Omer Stringer doing things like this with a canoe. Handstand on gunnels, ....

In their book, "Paddle Your Own Canoe," Gary and Joanie McGuffin are shown bouncing on the gunwales standing up as well as doing headstands on the gunwales. My sibs and I used to do that when we were kids without knowing they were ways of developing balance. We just thought it was fun.
 
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