Paddle carving

Three Canoe Schools and a "Canoe U"

One of the foremost goals of The Canadian Canoe Museum is to inform young Canadians about their history and the land in which they live.  With the intention of building an inclusive and experiential education program, we have created three "Canoe Schools" and a small "Canoe University" to house offerings for students from kindergarten to post-secondary, as well as professional development for teachers.

We invite educators and students of all ages to join us for fun and learning in our first set of curriculum-linked offerings, selecting first a 90-minute core experience followed by one or two options, and building the whole experience into on-going work in the classroom.

Note: While our eventual goal is to offer a fully bilingual curriculum, currently French instruction will be offered on a limited basis.

	Canoe Primary School
	Canoe Middle School
	Canoe High School
	Canoe University
	Optional Programs
	Building Your Education Experience
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The Flying Canoe

Across cultures and throughout Canada, canoes have been used to cross from one world to another.  In a Mi'kmaq creation story, Glooscap arrived from away in a white canoe, as did Dekanahwideh the "Heavenly Messenger" who brought peace to the Iroquois Confederacy. 

Canoes are associated with birth, marriage, and death rites, a symbol of transit from one world to another.  The Neutral Indian legend of The Maid of the Mist, in which a young woman is sacrificed in a canoe to give thanks for the harvest - this too was fundamentally about the canoe as vehicle for moving from one world to another.  In the folk tale La Chasse Galerie, a flying canoe transports lumberman from a lonely camp back to their loved ones in town. 

For others, including former Prime Minister Trudeau, Canada's beloved filmmaker and environmentalist Bill Mason, and many other recreational canoeists, the canoe was, and is, a connection to wilderness.  Ojibway artist and Educator Rick Beaver writes: "In Indian Tradition, it is believed that we are able to travel to the land of spirits to converse with them and to return with messages that help us back here on Turtle Island. The canoe is often the vehicle which carries us across the seas of space to the land of spirits." 

So it is with the idea of canoe as connector that our education programs begin. Come canoe with us.