1 Over the past half-century museums have grappled with the dilemmas of reinterpreting their artifactual collections. Collections acquired over long periods or by amateur enthusiasts may cease to speak in whole or in part either to current popular interest or to current scholarly preoccupations. Reinterpretations may require the display of artifacts not in the collection. On another level, even where artifacts inspire interest, recent scholarship often challenges long-standing popular notions of what the objects mean. Museum curators may welcome the challenge of reinterpreting their collections in order to engage visitors with alternate meanings, but the task is seldom straightforward. Volunteers committed to existing themes and messages may resist radical revisions—so may visitors. Revisions can raise serious political controversies that intimidate museum boards or managers into playing things safe (Ames 1991: 7-12; Hogan 1996: 200-32).1 Of course, there are ways of surmounting these and other hurdles to the reinterpretation of collections, but they are seldom simple (Ames 1991: 12-15; Peers 1999).

2 The experience of assisting with the design of exhibits for the Canadian Canoe Museum reminded me of how deeply entrenched a popular artifactual stereotype can be, even a seemingly innocuous one, and how a museum’s collection and exhibits can serve to reinforce that stereotype. This essay results from the reflections on that design process.

French Usage of the Canoe in New France

3 A simple inquiry into the appropriate French translation of “canoe” raised questions about the extent and use of birchbark canoes by the French in New France. In the documentation of the 17th and 18th centuries the researcher encounters complexity and ambiguity in the use of the term canot, and is reminded that the French world included a plethora of small boats other than birchbark canoes.

4 In English-speaking Canada there is a popular association of the French use of canoes with early explorers and with the large freighter birchbark canoes developed in the 18th century during the fur trade.2 This association perpetuates an old stereotype of the French as voyageur traders, despite scholarship that proves voyageurs to have comprised only a fraction of the population of New France by the 18th century. The vast majority of colonists were farmers inhabiting the St. Lawrence River valley below Montreal, with town dwellers of multiple occupations accounting for 20 per cent or so of the population (Charbonneau, Desjardins et Beauchamp 1978: 120-33; Dechêne 1992: 117-22).3 The fur trade and birchbark canoe stereotype excludes by silence the wide variety of other types of small boats employed by the French in the St. Lawrence colony. Even though the standard authority on birchbark canoes, Edwin Tappan Adney, was careful to note that the French used different kinds of wooden boats, not just bark canoes, most students have ignored his caveat (Adney and Chapelle 1983: 13). Rather, they have fixed upon a supposed French embrace of the birchbark canoe.

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5 The usual claim is that the birchbark canoe was so admirably suited to Canadian waterways that the French did not alter it, except in size, for more than two hundred years (Jennings 2002: 10, 15, 17). Yet early French sources that admire the canoe also voice the canoe’s drawbacks, notably its fragility, instability, uselessness in high winds and the great skill needed to navigate it. Joseph François Lafitau, Jesuit missionary and student of Amerindian customs, was brief in praise and lengthy in criticism of the birchbark canoe:Birch bark canoes are masterpieces of native art. Nothing is prettier and more admirable than these fragile craft in which people can carry heavy loads and go everywhere very rapidly….If these little boats are convenient, they have also their inconveniences, for it is necessary to use great care in getting into them and to be careful not to upset and keep the balance of the canoe when it is in motion. They are very fragile besides. If they so much as touch on sand or stones even a very little, they open chinks by which the water enters and spoils the goods or provisions which they are carrying; so that scarcely a day passes in which there is not some place which needs to be gummed. In gentle and quiet waters one can paddle in them seated or standing; but it is better to paddle on one’s knees in the rapids. Another inconvenience is that one cannot carry much sail and, in moderate winds, it is impossible to make use of sail without exposing oneself to the risk of perishing. For that reason, crossing lakes is very dangerous. The wisest scarcely undertake it without considering the weather. They keep as close to land as they can or cut from cape to cape, and try to reach from island to island. Every time one enters or leaves the canoe, one has to be barefooted and when one disembarks it is necessary to unload the canoe, to draw it up out of the water, and put it safely at shelter on the sand or mud for fear that the wind may break it. When cracks develop, it is necessary to gum them, as I have already said, and because of that, it is necessary to be careful to go over them almost every time…. (Lafitau 1977: 124-25)There is no doubt that west of Montreal in the pays d’en haut, or upper country as it was called, and north of the St. Lawrence valley in the Laurentians, the birchbark canoe served the French as the primary, though not exclusive, means of water transport (Kent 2001: 53, 65). In the settlement colony proper, however, the notion that the French embraced the birchbark canoe is not borne out by the evidence. The attention paid to the birchbark canoe seems due to the large place assigned to the fur trade in traditional English-speaking historiography of New France, and to the persistent attraction of the romanticized voyageur in popular imagination.4

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6 The romanticized voyageur in his birchbark canoe has been indelibly reinforced by powerful iconic representation. The numerous canvasses of Frances Anne Hopkins record scenes of voyageur work in brilliant detail. She painted these from sketches made in the 1860s while accompanying her husband, secretary to Governor George Simpson of the Hudson Bay Company, along the major canoe routes of the Great Lakes (Clark and Stacey 1990: 13-17, 19-31; Johnson 1971: 4-19). Her images of voyageurs and giant birchbark canoes, appearing at the moment when commercial canoe transport on the Great Lakes ended, provided nostalgic appeal for later generations of urban bourgeois, including historians, who found in the fur trade the genetic imprint of the developing Canadian nation. Harold Adams Innis gave primacy to commodity staples, first the cod fishery then the fur trade, in the economic development of colonies and saw “the work of the French voyageur” laying the foundation for Confederation (Innis 1930: 262). Donald Creighton attributed to the commercial empire of the St. Lawrence, first in furs then in wheat and timber, the basis of the northern Canadian nation-to-be (Creighton 1937).5 In the past half-century, this meta-narrative, the unifying Laurentian thesis of Canadian national formation, has been challenged by historical scholarship providing contradictory evidence of disunity, conflict and limited regional focus. Such evidence, however, has been ignored by much of Canada’s elite, especially Anglophone males, who have pursued avidly the nation-building narrative of their early 20th-century predecessors (Ricketts 1996: 23-41; Taylor 1990).6 Faced with industrial congestion, urbanizing society and alien immigration, many then found anti-modernist comfort in the idea of a robust, purer and simpler wilderness encounter such as the voyageurs were imagined to have experienced. Nationalism, romanticism, nostalgia and anti-modernism combined as a harmonious, irresistible siren that enticed many to a narrative that centred the nation’s values in the northern wilderness and in the fortitude of the intrepid voyageurs in their canoes (Benidickson 1997: 65-93; Francis 1997: 128-51; Hodgins 1988: 45-58).7 Nationalism craves symbols of commonality and of historical justification. The canoe has been offered up to serve both (Dean 2006: 43-67; Jennings 1999: 1-14; Raffan 1999a: 242, 1999b: 15-27).8

7 The canoe canvasses of Frances Hopkins are astonishing in their accuracy of detail and human sensitivity compared with those of other artists. Arthur Heming’s depiction of voyageurs shooting rapids is sheer fantasy but, like the images of C. W. Jefferys, widely reproduced in school textbooks and elsewhere, also reinforced the stereotype (Gibbon 1951: 66).9 Probably because Hopkins’s paintings combined authenticity with aesthetic and emotional appeal, they have been used repeatedly to illustrate historical accounts of fur trade and voyageur life, regardless of time and place.10 The Canadian Canoe Museum employs Hopkins’s powerful images extensively in its fur trade gallery.11 By simple choice of subject matter these and other images reinforce the popular stereotype of the voyageur as the significant French contributor in early Canadian history, and of the birchbark canoe as the universal vehicle of the French.

A Problem with Terminology

8 The French relationship with the birchbark canoe needs to be placed in a wider context than that of the fur trade: that of the material culture history of small boats in all of New France, not just in the pays d’en haut. There is no comprehensive study of boat building for the entire colony, but monographic and specialized studies leave no doubt that the French built carpentered boats of all sizes on a large scale from very early on. Much scholarly attention has been paid to the construction of larger vessels, especially those commissioned or encouraged by the Crown, such as the shipbuilding ventures of the Intendant Jean Talon after 1668, and the ambitious construction of fifteen naval vessels begun under the Intendant Gilles Hocquart in 1739 (Lunn 1942: 243-79; Mathieu 1971; Pritchard 1971). Réal Brisson has documented construction at Quebec from 1663 to 1763, finding references to almost 700 boats of all sizes having been built, of which 450 were small bateaux plats for military troop transport. He enumerated 146 marine carpenters in Quebec over the same period (Brisson 1983: 215-43; 246-57; 275). And Brisson’s documentation would not include small boats—bateaux or canots—built by habitants on the shores of the St. Lawrence, or in the jurisdictions of Montreal and Trois Rivières. Nor would it include all the small craft built by ship carpenters without a notarized contract. As one would expect, these studies reveal a predilection for carpentered boats that French colonists brought with them from France. What can we say more particularly about the variety of small boats and the extent of their use in the colony?

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9 There is diverse terminology in the documentation of the 17th and 18th centuries, but to begin, it will help to understand what the French in Canada understood by a canot. Prior to Christopher Columbus’s encounter with America, the word does not exist in the French lexicon (Godefroy 1883/1961).12 All authorities are agreed that the French canot and the English canoe derive from the Spanish canoa, which was the Arawak term introduced by Columbus to describe the dug-outs, or pirogues, of the Caribbean peoples (Huguet 1932; Imbs 1977; Rey 2000).13 The word canot does not appear in French sources until the end of the 16th century. Jacques Cartier referred to Amerindian canoes as barques; André Thevet used the word canoue (Biggar 1924: 23; Huguet 1932: tome 2). However, by the time of Samuel de Champlain and Marc Lescarbot at the turn of the 17th century, usage of canot had become common to describe Amerindian canoes (Biggar 1922: 104-05, 337; 1924: 23 note e).14 Yet Champlain displays ambiguity in the use of canot by employing it to describe the small ship’s boat that he and his crew used to go ashore in their explorations along the New England coast in 1605 (Biggar 1922: 336-37).15 He thus illustrates early on a broadening, generic use of canot to describe any one of a variety of small undecked boats, whether Amerindian canoes or small French chaloupes, barques or bateaux. By the 18th century, canot could be used as a synonym for a small, open boat, or petite embarcation. In L’Encyclopédie, Diderot recorded one meaning as that of a ship’s small boat, even though his most lengthy entry is a description of various kinds of canot de sauvages (Diderot 1751-1780/1966-67: 620-21). Clearly, usage of the word canot evolved.

10 In France and in French-speaking Europe from the late 18th century, the meaning of canot continued to evolve in the direction of a generic small, open boat or dinghy, a trend possibly encouraged by the cutting of ties with New France. In Canada, where Amerindian canoes remained ubiquitous and interior commerce continued to use them, canot retained its more specific meaning of an Amerindian canoe. A century later, with the development of carpentered and light board canoes associated today with recreation and sport, North American French usage continued to describe them as canots. In French-speaking Europe, on the other hand, all these new sporting canoes, though modelled on Amerindian templates, were referred to as canoës, a term evidently borrowed from English and American usage where the new phenomenon of competitive regattas—reflecting increased leisure—first flourished (Imbs 1977: tome 5, 114; Johnston 1988: 59-72).

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11 The problem of interpretation can be attributed to the documentation of the 17th and 18th centuries. When a reference to a canot is encountered, how does one know which kind of small boat is at issue? It could be an Aboriginal birchbark canoe; a dug-out or pirogue; a variety of barque, chaloupe, bateau or other petite embarcation, as all these terms are found repeatedly throughout the documents. These documents include numerous series in the official correspondence in the Archives des Colonies; notarized contracts and judicial records in the Archives Nationales du Québec; and various journals, histories and correspondence of contemporary observers. In many instances the documents are explicit about what is meant by reference to a canot. Elsewhere, the context in which the word is used will usually suggest the meaning. In some cases, however, meaning is ambiguous.

12 We can infer from an ordonnance issued by the intendant, Michel Bégon on June 28, 1720, that the trois canots to which he referred were dugout canoes. A partnership of entrepreneurs with a contract to supply masts for the King complained to Bégon, “that the habitant named Le Sage of Rivière du Loup cut up one of the masts they had prepared and made three canots out of it, the said masts being about 96 feet long by thirty one inches in diameter at the large end” (LAC MG8, A6: 4v-5).16 The intendant was ordering Le Sage to Quebec to answer the charge. A cut pine log of that girth must have been irresistible to habitants whose farms bordered the river. Robert Lionel Séguin (1967), the noted historian of Quebec’s rural material culture, concluded from his study of inventaires de biens, or estate inventories, that the boats most often used by habitant farmers were canots de bois, which he interpreted to be dugouts, rather than birchbark canoes (1967: 581).17

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13 Although the term canot de bois could refer to a dugout, or pirogue, it appears frequently to have referred to a carpentered boat of some kind. Small carpentered or board boats often were described as bateaux or barques, though there is evidence of them also being referred to simply as canots (Brisson 1983: 215; Pritchard 1971: 11).18 An ordonnance of Bégon of June 15, 1717, mentions bateaux and canots with ambiguous distinction.Having been informed that habitants of some quarters have carried off bateaux or canots belonging to the King, and have taken them home either to use them or to dismantle them for their nails and boards, we order all who find canots or bateaux belonging to the King to notify within twenty four hours the local captain or officer of the militia, whom we direct to advise us: we forbid the said habitants to appropriate or dismantle the said canots on pain of condemnation to be pilloried and to reimburse the King the price of the said canots…. (LAC MG8, A6: 284-284v)19The use of canot here implies a generic meaning for more than one kind of small boat. Elsewhere we can find legislators more careful to distinguish between various kinds of small boats. A règlement of the Conseil Souverain de Québec of May 11, 1676, forbade people from stealing, moving or otherwise helping themselves to small boats and their equipment moored or beached in the harbour and anchorage of Quebec. In this case specific reference was made to “des chaloupes, canots de bois ou d’écorse” (LAC MG8, C6, article xxiii: 269-70). The reference to canots de bois may nevertheless refer to a variety of dugouts, bateaux or other small carpentered boats.

14 This generic meaning of canot as a synonym for any small boat occurs frequently. In 1736 the Superior of the Hospitaler nuns of Québec complained that habitants bordering on their seigneurie of St. Ignace in the parish of Charlesbourg were regularly helping themselves to the boats belonging to the habitants of St. Ignace. Not only did this prevent the habitants of St. Ignace from crossing the Saint Charles River for their business, those who stole the boats then used them to steal wood and resources from the nuns’ seigneurial property. In his ordonnance of November 21, 1736, to condemn these acts of theft, the commissaire, Honoré Michel de la Rouvillière, referred to these boats interchangeably as embarcations and canots (LAC MG8, A6, vol. 25: 3v-4).

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15 A special kind of canot de bois makes its appearance in the records at the end of the 17th century, underscoring the need for care when interpreting the documentary references. This was a carpentered board canot, patterned to some degree after the Aboriginal birchbark canoe. On June 5, 1700, in Quebec, the Intendant Jean Bouchart de Champigny contracted with a ship carpenter, Guillaume Pagé de Carsy (Quercy), to build three wooden boats patterned on bark canoes (“canots de bois en façon de canots d’ecorse”) (ANQ, Greffe Genaple no.1622, Marché). The contract describes in some detail how they were to be constructed. They were to be 30 feet (9 metres) long and four feet one inch (1.2 metres) wide amidships. The bottom was to be three pieces of oak planking, and the sides were to be pine, all no more than half an inch thick. Ribs of cedar were to be placed seven to eight inches apart, over which were pine floor boards. There were eight thwarts between the gunwales. Characteristic of boats of European construction, tar, caulking and nails were required. The price for each of these boats was 300 livres.

16 How closely the appearance of these canots de bois resembled Aboriginal birchbark canoes is not entirely clear. Certainly they tapered to a point at both bow and stern, and most likely had a sheer that curved upwards from amidships fore and aft. The proportion of length to width and the placement of ribs and thwarts followed that of bark canoes. However, we do not know if the bow and stern were curved and shaped like birchbark canoes or whether they were straight, or whether they were vertical or tapered. Likewise, we do not know if they were flat-bottomed with a hard chine and vertical sides, or rounded like birchbark canoes. The reference to the bottom being made of three oak boards may or may not suggest a flat bottom. And there is no indication from this contract whether they were to be fitted with oars and rowed, or paddled like a canoe, which would have been practical given the narrow beam of this canot de bois (Lom d’Arce 1705/1974: 41; ANQ, Greffe B. Basset, Montréal, Marché).20 But in view of the explicit instruction in the contract to make these carpentered canoes “en façon de canots d’écorce,” one would expect them to have followed closely the lines of a birchbark canoe: soft chine, graceful sheer and curved bow and stern. The craft, though larger, may have been similar in appearance and construction to the Gander River Boat, adapted from freighter canoes in Newfoundland two hundred years later at the turn of the 20th century (Rich 1999: 36-38; Saunders 1986).

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17 How common were these canots de bois patterned after birchbark canoes? The notarial greffes contain scores of marchés, or contracts, for the construction of chaloupes and larger boats, but few for canots de bois of whatever kind. However, two marchés in Montreal in 1740 and 1741 give us a glimpse of widespread use of something similar. On March 6, 1740, a carpenter of Chambly, Michel Lagu, contracted to produce a carpentered canot de bois for Paul Tessier, a stone-cutter of Montreal who presumably needed it for bulk transport of stone from a quarry. It was 40 feet (12 metres) in length, tapered at both ends with thwarts across the gunwales. The following year, on February 20, Jean Chevalier, bourgeois of Montreal, ordered an identical canot from Lagu (ANQ Montréal, Greffe J. B. Adhémar, Marchés). If used as bulk carriers, these canots de bois were likely a variant of flat-bottomed bateaux. The absence of notarized marchés for canots de bois for the Crown is probably explained by an alternate procedure of procurement. Instead of ordering canots, the Intendant contracted the labour of craftsmen by engagement. An example is that of Jean Thomas, maître charpentier de navire, who on August 19, 1701, signed an engagement in Montreal. The following year on August 28, Charles Viger, charpentier de navire in Montreal, signed an engagement, “…to work on the construction of canots de bois and on everything that he will be ordered to do in the service of the King…”(ANQ Montréal, Greffe A. Adhémar, Engagements; LAC MG8, A6, vol. 27: 21-21v).21 These ship carpenters were paid a salary to produce whatever small boats the Crown required. The absence of notarized marchés to build individual boats for the Crown is therefore not surprising.

18 The annual bordereaux of general expenses for the colony provide additional evidence of the variety and extent of carpentered boats used by the Crown for civil and military purposes in the 18th century. Each year several thousand livres were expended on the construction, maintenance and purchase of bateaux and canots (AN Col., C¹¹A 113: 200, 281v, 286v).22 Following the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1713) the bordereaux are more detailed in itemizing expenditures. In several years expenditures are recorded for the construction of between two and four canots de bois, or “canots de bois façon de ceux d’Ecorce,” at 300 livres apiece to replace those worn out (AN Col., C¹¹A 113: 295v, 319-19v; 114: 365v, 411, 446v; 50: 305v). A distinction is clear between these canots de bois and the bateaux that were also being constructed almost annually for only 40-50 livres apiece. The more expensive canots de bois, equal in price and probably in template to the canots de bois that Champigny ordered from Guillaume Pagé in 1700, were used by the governors, the Intendant, majors, commissaires, controllers and other officers “in the travel that they are required to do in the service of the King.” 23 They were the government and military VIP limousines of the St. Lawrence River. In 1719 there were fifteen of these canots in the colony (AN Col., C¹¹A 113: 295v-96). The less expensive and more numerous bateaux, numbering between two and five for each of the twenty-six companies of troupes de la marine in the colony, were used for troop and other transport. The bordereaux of expenditures also reveal extensive support services required to maintain the King’s fleet of small craft in the St. Lawrence colony. Apart from the annual construction, repairs and maintenance, there were boat sheds that had to be built and guarded, and a clerk to administer the whole operation (AN Col., C11A 113: 298v-99). In pursuit of le canot in New France, we need to revise the exclusive characterization of the fur trade birchbark canoe as symbolic of the French use of le canot.

19 Notwithstanding the above, the birchbark canoe is, of course, abundantly in evidence as well. Its primary domain was the interior rivers and waterways of the pays d’en haut above Montreal, in the Laurentian Shield to the north and in the unsettled areas of Acadia. It was also commonplace in the settled area of the St. Lawrence valley, used by the several Aboriginal communities who resided there (Kahnawake, Kanesétaki, Odanak, Bécancour, Jeune Lorette), by the colonial government for police and military purposes and by French outfitters and voyageurs engaged in the interior commerce and who are the basis of the popular stereotype. Significant numbers of Aboriginal travellers in birchbark canoes visited the settlements and towns annually on official and private business.

The Freighter Canoe

20 Because the interior commerce, or “fur trade” as it is commonly known, has attracted the attention of historians, we tend to know most about the large fur trade canoes produced specifically for this commerce. A frequently quoted passage from the journal of Louis Franquet, a military engineer visiting the colony in 1752 and 1753, identifies Trois Rivières as the location where the best canots d’écorce were manufactured. The large trade canoes measured about eleven metres in length, one and a half metres in width, and about three quarters of a metre in depth, and cost 300 livres apiece (Franquet 1889/1974: 17).24 These were the large “Montreal” canoes that carried cargoes between Montreal and the major posts on the Great Lakes, and were the mainstay on this leg of the transportation route well into the 19th century. Away from the Great Lakes on rivers and shallower waterways smaller “north” birchbark canoes were used, about seven-and-a-half or eight metres in length. Although scores of these canoes were produced each year, notarized marchés for their purchase are extremely rare (ANQ Trois Rivières, Greffe L. Pillard, Marché).25 The reason for this is probably the steady demand for them, which assured builders that they could sell all that they could produce. Three families of builders are prevalent in the canoe building trade of Trois Rivières: Le Maître (also Auger), Leclerc (Leclair), and DuGuay (DuGuey). By the 1750s the three families had intermarried, and had extended their union to Montreal families as well (Kent 1997: 37-63, 314-18). The name of the canoe-building clan of Le Maître became an alternate appellation for the large, eight place Montreal canoe – le canot du Maître.

21 The Crown likely maintained some of these large freighter canoes in its military fleet for service to and from the pays d’en haut, but the more frequent annual purchases were for smaller and less expensive birchbark canoes for police work against illegal traders and fugitives from the law in the Montreal area (Franquet 1889/1974: 17; AN Col., C11A 113: 296; 114: 365v; 50: 305v-306).26 The requirement of birchbark canoes for this task underscores the environmental factor in determining the choice between birchbark canoe and carpentered boat. Where pursuit of an outlaw led to shallower rivers, swift water, rapids and portages, there was no substitute for a birchbark canoe. The Montreal region, as the departure point for the vast pays d’en haut or for contraband trade with Albany, was the locus for prohibited commerce and fugitives. Both these purposes were abetted by the Mohawks resident at Kahnawake who, despite their ostensible attachment to the French alliance, in fact exercised their sovereignty and independence as regular carriers of commerce between Montreal and Albany (Lunn 1939: 61-76). They showed little hesitation in selling canoes and provisions to French colonists evading the law, a practice that the Governor General of the colony was powerless to prevent (Eccles 1984: 475-510; LAC MG8, A6, vol. 22: 67v-68).27 So common was the use of birchbark canoes for these outlawed ventures that mere ownership of one in the Montreal region raised official suspicions, especially following the Peace of Utrecht in 1713 and the reopening of commerce in the pays d’en haut. On December 23,1723, the Governor and Intendant proclaimed an ordonnance requiring the registration of all birchbark canoes in the colony, on pain of confiscation of the canoe and a fine of 300 livres. If the canoe was used, rented or sold for the purpose of unlicenced commerce in the pays d’en haut the fine was 500 livres, and for the purpose of unlicenced travel to the English colonies, 1500 livres (LAC MG8, A6, régistre 10: 79v-81).

22 Warfare in the pays d’en haut increased the demand for birchbark canoes. In 1728 Governor Beauharnois purchased and commandeered 334 canoes from as far down river as the Isle d’Orléans to transport a force of 2000 men in a campaign against the Mesquakies in the Wisconsin region (AN Col., C¹¹A 50: marginal note 305v). Following the campaign against the Chicasaws in 1739, commanders at some western posts sought reimbursement for canoes they had been obliged to purchase for the transport of returning militia and Amerindian allies (AN Col., C¹¹A 73: 193, 209, 219).28 It is safe to assume that most of these references to canots for service in the pays d’en haut are to birchbark canoes. They also underscore the fact that the Crown, like French merchants engaged in the interior commerce, purchased directly or indirectly a significant number of the canoes they needed from Aboriginal sources. It should come as no surprise that French canoe builders in the St. Lawrence colony employed Aboriginal labour, notably women and children (Dechêne 1992: 13; Franquet 1889/1974: 17; Kent 1997: 45-46).29

23 Clearly then, the French found they could not do without the birchbark canoe in war and commerce in the pays d’en haut. As Champlain and numerous subsequent observers exclaimed, lightness, portability, maneuverability, serviceability in the forest and substantial cargo capacity rendered it indispensable for transportation on the fast-flowing rivers and extensive waterways of the Canadian Shield and boreal forest. But Frenchmen were also acutely aware of the shortcomings of the birchbark canoe: it was unstable, depreciated rapidly because it was easily damaged in rocky shallows, could not be used on open water in windy conditions, and required a high degree of skill to operate. As a result, the French never abandoned the search for more durable substitutes. As early as 1671 Governor Daniel de Rémy de Courcelle, in order to impress the defiant Iroquois with his ability to reach them on Lake Ontario, mustered a force of volunteers with a large, flat-bottomed bateau to carry heavy supplies up the St. Lawrence River despite the rapids (Eccles 1964: 75; Preston and Lamontagne 1958: 104). Two years later his successor, Louis Buade de Frontenac, in order to build a fort at Cataraqui, sent a large contingent that included two bateaux to carry six small cast iron cannons (Preston and Lamontagne 1958: 110).30 The use of bateaux to transport men and matériel to Lake Ontario became regular practice. For transport between the posts of Frontenac, Niagara and Toronto on Lake Ontario, colonial officials authorized the construction of two sailing barques (AN Col., C11A 113: 339-39v; 114: 450v). Wherever conditions permitted, the French introduced carpentered boats.

24 Even where conditions were marginal, carpentered boats were contemplated. In October 1728 the Governor, Charles de Beauharnois, and the Commissaire, François Clairambault D’Aigremont, appealed to the Minister of Marine and Colonies for permission to build one hundred canots de bois to have at the ready for military campaigns against the English or to respond to Amerindian wars in the west. Beauharnois cited an increasing scarcity of canots d’écorce in the colony, their higher cost and several other shortcomings.These canots [de bois] would cost the King 60 livres each and would last five or six years, whereas bark canoes, which cost much more, last only one campaign and are subject to frequent damage: moreover, not anyone can navigate a bark canoe, whereas anyone who comes along can handle a canot de bois. (AN Col., C¹¹A 50: 3-4)31Although denied for financial reasons, the governor’s request underscored a military bias in favour of more durable craft than the birchbark canoe. There was no love affair here with the canot d’écorce.32

Conclusion

25 None of this diminishes the importance of the Aboriginal birchbark canoe in the history of the pays d’en haut and in the commerce of the northwest. On the contrary, try as they did, the French were unable to develop satisfactory substitutes for all transportation and communication on the rivers beyond the St. Lawrence valley. Yet in the settlement colony, where the vast majority of French colonists lived different lives, the identification of the French with the voyageur trade canoe, or the birchbark canoe more generally, is a misleading stereotype. As with their social institutions and other objects of material culture, the French in Canada brought their metropolitan nautical craft and preferences with them. These bateaux, barques, chaloupes and other petite embarcations inexorably replaced the birchbark canoe wherever possible. And as with social institutions, there were some visible adaptations. One certainly was the canot de bois à la façon de canot d’écorce, a carpentered watercraft patterned on Aboriginal bark canoes, making its appearance at least a century-and-a-half before new industrial technologies made possible the development of carpentered canoes on a mass scale and of a lightness and versatility that matched that of the original Aboriginal birchbark models. The love affair with the large birchbark canoe of the fur trade is a reality more in the nostalgic and myth-prone hearts of the present than with the early French who turned to a variety of serviceable small boats.