Our Canoeing Heritage
Paddler Profiles
This page provides profiles of selected paddlers who have contributed significantly to Canada's canoeing heritage in recent history.
William and Mary Commanda
Builders and Artisans
William Commanda
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William (Morning Star) Commanda and his wife, Mary (née Smith; deceased) both learned traditional skills from their families, and together built more than 100 birch bark canoes, as well as snowshoes, exceptional wooden furniture, leather, bead and quill work. They strived to keep these skills alive among the Algonquin of Western Quebec, through books, documentaries and workshops, which William continues to conduct.
William lives in Kitigan Zibi (Garden River), located 130 kilometres north of Ottawa in the Gatineau River valley. He teaches traditional skills to international audiences, reflecting his life experiences and the knowledge entrusted to him through ancient artifacts he has inherited.
Today, healthy birch trees, large enough to harvest for canoe building, are rare, and if this tradition is to survive, William Commanda urges us to rekindle our relationship with the Earth:
"The Creator's gifts from our Mother, The Earth, have been good and kind to us all, sustaining us throughout our history. Today, if we look around, we can witness the results of our disregard for her well-being. It is now time for us to recognize her needs, to care for her, to rebalance our relationship with her, for if we do not do this, our children and their children will have no future. This will require us to rightly assert our love for all things and each other. Today is a good day to begin this work."
Victoria Jason
Adventurer & Author
Victoria Jason helping Inuk paddler
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Victoria Jason was the first woman to kayak the Northwest Passage. She accomplished it in four summers, two of them alone along 2,000 kilometres of the Arctic Coast. Her journey is documented in her book Kabloona in the Yellow Kayak -- One Woman's Journey Through the Northwest Passage . Living at Mile 412 of the Hudson Bay railway among Cree neighbours created Victoria's love for the North. Recovery from a stroke made her determined to travel there. Her feeling for the North and its people took her back to Pelly Bay to teach the children kayaking and to help the Inuit set up their own eco-tourism business.
Bill Mason
Artist, Author & Film-maker
Legendary Canadian canoeist Bill Mason
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As a child in Winnipeg, Bill Mason was captivated by canoes. Later when he worked as a commercial artist, he would quit his job each spring to spend the summer camping in the lake country east of Winnipeg, returning to his job in the fall. His art led to film-making, with a total of 18 award-winning films for the National Film Board, and to writing books in which the canoe was the central feature. The films Paddle to the Sea, The Song of the Paddle, and Waterwalker are only part of his legacy to canoeists.
Pierre Elliott Trudeau
Prime Minister of Canada (1968-1979, 1980-1984)
Pierre Elliott Trudeau's buckskin jacket
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As a young boy growing up in Montreal, Pierre Trudeau began preparing himself for a lifetime of exploring the natural world. At his family's summer cottage on Lac Tremblant, he trained himself to be a strong swimmer and canoeist. It was here, in the Laurentians, that forest, water and sky - the vastness of Canada - went into him and stayed with him forever.
He was the first Prime Minister to explore all three dimensions of the wild, wet part of Canada. He did this as an ocean surfer, a scuba diver and as an accomplished canoe-tripper on several of the great rivers running into the Arctic Ocean.
The canoe was one of his favourite ways of moving through the natural world. It took him to places that reflected the poetry of the nation he loved. "Paddling a canoe is a source of enrichment and inner renewal," he once told me, "It carries a man into the truest part of himself."
Dr. Joseph MacInnis, Trudeau's friend for more than 30 years
Paddling a freighter canoe in 1971
(from Che-Mun, The Journal of
Canadian Wilderness Canoeing)
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While Pierre Trudeau was Prime Minister, a record number of ten national parks were created, including the Nahanni National Park. He also instituted the Wild River Survey in which a group of young men canoed some of Canada's wildest rivers, between 1971 and 1974, using explorers' journals and some of the trip reports of Eric Morse as their guides. This led to the creation of the Heritage River System, devised to protect the future of Canada's important rivers. Trudeau was posthumously given the Bill Mason Award for outstanding contributions to canoeing heritage and river conservation, an award previously given to Bill Reid and Kirk Wipper.
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