Leacock Museum Collaboration
On Saturday, May 20th, the Northern Lakes Chapter provided some canoe-themed programming for the Leacock Museum National Historic Site in Orillia, Ontario. The weather was slightly nippy and rain had been pouring since the evening before, but luckily the showers stopped as the event was beginning and held off for the remainder of the day.
There were a few additional exhibitors including a booth by John Harrison, a local Orillia man who spends 8 months of the year in a bush camp just outside the boundary of Algonquin Park. He builds a style of fusion canoe with elements of both birchbark and modern wood canvas construction.
Roger Young brought a number of his fantastic historic model samples and was able to setup under the canopy of the main estate building. 
The Museum was launching its new permanent exhibit in their restored boathouse. Items included displays regarding the local boat building industry in Orillia and personal boating artifacts of the Leacock family. This included a finely crafted yellow canoe mounted on the ceiling. Unfortunately, the museum did not have documentation about the maker of the canoe on hand. Once more measurements are provided, an attempt will be made to identify it.
The canoe features a deeply set, semi-circular deck type that is not consistent with the three well known Canadian companies (Chestnut, Peterborough, Canadian Canoe Co) but the thwarts are relatively thin and finely carved. The varnish has darkened considerable obscuring any decals or features, but perhaps new photos at a later time with better lighting might be able to provide some additional clues. Two antique spruce paddles with painted blades accompany the boat.
The chapter also provided some items for a kid's activity table including some canoe-themed colouring pages and miniature paddle blanks to paint. These were well received by the young visitors.
Member, Lee B., also assembled a crew of paddlers and demonstrated some of the finer points of style paddling. The synchronised trio were watched closely from shore and garnered everyone's attention.
Our next scheduled chapter event is the Rideau Paddle Festival on June 17th in Smith's Falls Ontario
Fantastic writeup Murat...thank-you
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