recreational
To the Ends of the Earth (and Behind the Woodshed)
HOW ALUMINUM RESHAPED RECREATIONAL CANOEING FOREVER BY CONOR MIHELL
W
hen he presents a visual case for why the canoe is a Canadian treasure, author and executive director of
the Canadian Canoe Museum James Raffan has little use for aluminum canoes. Slides of his perennial-filled Grumman planter and the ice-flattened “aluminum hulk” he found washed up on the shores of the Coppermine River elicit chuckles and guffaws. “The photo of the planter always gets a laugh when I
say this is the best use I’ve found so far for a Grumman canoe,” says Raffan. “Canoe trippers love to malign alu- minum canoes.” Te aluminum canoe’s lack of refinement makes it an ide-
al target for verbal abuse. Aluminum canoes are obnoxious- ly noisy, numbingly cold and leave hands and paddle shaft coated with a metallic tinge of aluminum oxide. Despite its pitfalls, it can be argued that the hapless,
American-made aluminum canoe did far more for the popu- larity of recreational canoeing around the world than stuffy museum-worthy specimens of cedar and canvas. Te Grumman was the first true recreational canoe. It’s maintenance-free, stable, user-friendly and relatively cheap.
34 SPRING 2010
Its lifespan is virtually unlimited, and it can be stored on sawhorses behind the garage or on the ground beneath a snowdrift. Should a Grumman get damaged—either pinned by a mid-rapid boulder or crushed by a fallen tree—it typi- cally takes only brute force and liquid solder to return it to a reasonable likeness of its original form. As much as many canoeists would hate to admit it, “truth
is that aluminum canoes float just as well as any other, they are seriously durable and, in the case of Grummans, have quite elegant lines,” concedes Raffan. In the beginning, canoe building was a novelty sideline
for the Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation, which was the world’s largest producer of World War II aircraft car- rier-based fighter planes. In 1944, Grumman vice president William Hoffman came
up with the idea of a lightweight, stretch-formed aluminum canoe—after lugging a waterlogged wood-canvas canoe across one too many portages on a fishing trip in New York’s Adirondack Mountains. A year later, Grumman’s Long Is- land aircraft plant produced its first canoe: A 13-footer said to weigh 30 per cent less than a comparable wooden canoe.
PHOTO: ISTOCK / KRIS HOLLAND
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64