Canadian Canoe Museum facts for kids
The Canadian Canoe Museum Building
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| Established | 1997 |
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| Location | Peterborough, Ontario, Canada |
| Type | sport museum |
| Founder | Kirk Wipper |
The Canadian Canoe Museum is a special place in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada. It's all about canoes! The museum's main goal is to save and share the amazing stories and history of canoes. Canoes have been super important to the people of Canada for a very long time. The museum has a huge collection of canoes, kayaks, and other boats that you paddle.
History of the Museum
The museum actually started way back in 1957. It was first called the Kanawa Museum. A man named Kirk Wipper founded it at a camp called Camp Kandalore, near Minden, Ontario. It all began when a friend gave Professor Wipper an old "dugout" canoe from around 1890. A dugout canoe is a boat made by hollowing out a tree trunk.
Over the years, Professor Wipper's collection of canoes grew bigger and bigger. The wooden buildings at the camp weren't really good enough to keep such a large and important collection safe. So, by the late 1980s, everyone knew the canoes needed a new, proper home.
In 1994, Wipper gave control of his amazing collection to the organization that is now called The Canadian Canoe Museum. The museum now has the largest collection of its kind in the world! It holds more than 600 canoes and kayaks, plus a thousand other items related to paddling. The museum opened its doors to the public at its new location, which used to be an outboard motor factory, on Canada Day in 1997.
In May 2006, Prince Andrew from the Canadian Royal Family became a special supporter, or "patron," of the museum. He visited on May 11 to celebrate the museum's 10th birthday. He also loaned the museum three canoes that were built in the Peterborough area. These canoes had been given to the Royal Family between 1947 and 1981.
The museum is moving to an even newer building! In July 2023, they started moving the collection to this new facility. The new building is located right by Little Lake, near the Trent–Severn Waterway canal lock.
What You Can See: Exhibits
The exhibits at The Canadian Canoe Museum show how the canoe has helped shape what it means to be Canadian. Besides the amazing canoe collection, the museum has a cool waterfall and a traditional Mi'kmaq wigwam. In the wigwam, visitors can listen to old creation stories.
You can also try building a birch bark canoe in the Preserving Skills Gallery. Or, you can imagine planning a trip to find gold, just like during the gold rush days! You can also feel what it was like to be a "voyageur" during the fur trade era. These voyageurs were brave travelers who used canoes to transport furs. The museum also shows what "cottaging" was like in the early 1900s.
A very special exhibit started in October 2001. It was called Reflections: The Land, the People and the Canoe. This important exhibit showed Pierre Trudeau's famous buckskin jacket and his birch bark canoe for the very first time in public. Pierre Trudeau was a former Prime Minister of Canada. The exhibit also featured personal items from other important paddlers like Bill Mason, Victoria Jason, and Eric Morse.
Visiting the Museum
The Canadian Canoe Museum, located at 910 Monaghan Road, Peterborough, is currently CLOSED to the public. This is because they are getting ready to move to their new waterfront location at 2077 Ashburnham Drive. They plan to open there in late summer or early fall of 2023. You can still take virtual tours online at: https://canoemuseum.ca/virtual-tours/.
Museum Connections
The museum works with other groups, including the Canadian Museums Association, the Canadian Heritage Information Network, and the Virtual Museum of Canada.
