Tumpline CANOES | EVENTS | CONSERVATION | TRIPS | NEWS | HERITAGE | Inside Hurley Canoe Works HQ.


of wall space. The dust, combined with the high-pitched screaming of saws, planers and sanders hardly makes for an ideal life-long work environment.


F


For more than 30 years, Hurley has worked in his cramped world of dust and noise. Though he’s still a few years short of 60, the machinery has stolen a lot of Jack’s hearing and the fine chok- ing cedar dust has given his breathing an audi- ble whisper. A life devoted to the cedar-canvas canoe has come at a price.


Epicentre You’ll find him, in work clothes crusty with stain and wood shavings, near Dwight, Ontario, just west of the gates of Algonquin Park. Quirky, creative and sentimental, he works about 10 paces from his house, across a yard littered with canoes. The sign over the door reads “Hurley Ca- noe Works.” Within 30 kilometres of Jack’s shop you can


find 10 other builders doing what he does. They are close to the wood that they need, surround- ed to the horizons by portage-connected lakes and immersed in the culture of canoes. “Where else in the world,” Jack will ask you,


“can you see every fourth car carrying a canoe? Where else will people line up to bring you de- crepit neglected wrecks of rotted canoes and pay you more than they were worth new to bring them back to life?”


Secret Stash Wood quality is everything to his finished prod-


14 SPRING 2009


uct; wide, open-grained outer cuts of clear cedar from an overlooked ancient stand of trees in the logged-over Madawaska Valley bring a magi- cal glowing quality to his work. The location of this precious remnant cedar will forever be his closely held secret, but it’s central to a style of work that aspires to flawless finesse. If pressed, he’ll admit he thinks the other


canoe builders turn out a somewhat “rougher” product. The skills he developed in his shop were learned one at a time, quietly and slowly.


Quiet Joy He builds four different models that are repro- ductions of Chestnut Canoe Company originals and he supplies and maintains a canoe fleet for a local summer camp that only uses traditional canoes. In this age of Kevlar and ABS he’s mak-


[ events ]


FEB 13–14 Wilderness Canoe Symposium Toronto, ON www.wcsymposium.com


FEB 21–23 Outdoor Adventure and Travel Show Toronto, ON www.outdooradventureshow.ca


MARCH 13–15 Canoecopia Madison, WI www.rutabaga.com/canoecopia


APRIL 17–19 East Coast Canoe and Kayak Festival Charleston, SC www.ccprc.com/kayak.html


ine cedar sawdust floats throughout Jack Hurley’s cluttered shop. You can taste it in the air. A thin film of it coats even the old photographs that cover every available inch


ing sure a new generation knows the feel of wood and canvas. It takes 120 hours of methodical patience to


coax a traditional cedar canvas canoe out of a pile of rough-sawn lumber. But sometimes even when the canoe is finished, Hurley isn’t. “Sometimes, after taking a canoe off a form,


I’ll go back in the shop at night and stare at it, thinking, doesn’t that look beautiful.” Those moments of pride and quiet joy in


creating things of great beauty are probably as good as it is going to get. The simple life of a traditional canoe builder does not nor- mally end with a long period of comfortable ease—and this is not lost on the sentimental woodworker. “I think I may move away from here soon,” he


says. “But then I also think I’d really like to die somewhere out on a canoe trip. I’d like to set my canoe down on the water and stare at the beauty of the thing just one last time. And then let them find me there beside it. Can you imag- ine a better way to go?” » BRIAN SHIELDS


Official Ride and exclusive spOnsOR


MAY 15-17 Rapid’s Palmer Fest and Single Blade Symposium Palmer Rapids, ON www.rapidmedia.com


JUNE 24–28 Yukon River Quest Whitehorse, YT www.yukonriverquest.com


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