Outreach Exhibit

The Museum is pleased to work with partners across the country in the display and promotion of its 1,500 square-foot national outreach exhibit entitled The Canoe: A Canadian Cultural Icon.

Canada exists today because of the canoe.  Part of the Museum's travelling exhibit explores the enduring significance of the canoe to the people of Canada.  This exhibit began circulating the country as part of a national Millennium project, sponsored in part by the Canada Millennium Partnership Program and several private donors.  This exhibit made its debut on July 3, 2001, at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in Yellowknife, NWT.

Featuring several artifacts from the Museum's renowned collection, this exhibit looks at how the history, culture, society and economy of Canada are intertwined with the unique qualities of the canoe.  For thousands of years the canoe has played an important part in the lives of Aboriginal inhabitants.  Later the canoe became the vehicle of the fur trade, an enterprise that formed the foundation for Canada's boundaries and cooperative character. 

An innovation of Aboriginal peoples, natural building materials, such as bark, cedar and skins, were used to produce varying styles of canoes and kayaks, each designed for different water conditions and functions.  The exhibit includes a 14-foot birch bark canoe in mid-construction, giving visitors a chance to see the remarkable craftsmanship of these beautiful vessels. 

The canoe's use and size expanded with the development of the fur trade, playing a key role in the formation of strong economic relationships between First Nations and Europeans, particularly the French.  In one part of the exhibit, visitors can actually try to figure out how to load a North Canoe with trade items as it prepares for its journey to the fur-bearing regions of Canada's northwest. 

Today, the canoe remains an important symbol, which can still be seen in advertisements and popular images of the land.  Canadians continue to define themselves as canoeists, as people from across the country paddle their way through wilderness parks, cottage lakes and urban waterways.