Grumman fleet ready for battle. PHOTO: ISTOCK / JEANCLICLAC
“Grumman learned to bend and rivet flat
sheets of aluminum into elegant, complex curves as a result of making aircraft wings and fuselages,” explains Raffan. Te process of using panels of hand-riveted, stretch- formed aluminum alloy translated ideally to canoe construction. Shortly after Hoffman’s personal canoe
was built, there came lines of 13-, 15-, 17-, 18-, 19- and 20-foot canoes. For their dura- bility, reasonable weight and no-fuss maintenance, Grumman quickly cap- tured market share. In the 1970s, for- mer Grumman employee and veteran marathon canoeist Dale Fox says the company employed 200 canoe build- ers and turned out 50 canoes per day. Fox, who now crafts FoxWorx canoe and
kayak paddles in Bainbridge, New York, had only been in a canoe once before he took the job of turning gossamer sheets of stretched aluminum skin into canoes with a drill press, rivets and hammer. He picked up marathon canoe racing shortly thereafter, and remem-
bers a time when 18-foot Grumman Light- weights were the boat to beat in New York’s General Clinton Canoe Regatta—a 70-mile race in Bainbridge. Aluminum canoes were equally capable
wilderness trippers. Eric Morse, the first to popularize the notion of long-distance canoe tripping in the Canadian arctic in the 1960s, paddled 17-foot Grummans on many of his explorations of the Far North.
paddled aluminum on his first trip down the Northwest Territories’ South Nahanni River. Similarly, Raffan remembers guiding Black Feather trips in the 1970s on arctic rivers in aluminum canoes, and went on to outfit the outdoor education program at Queen’s Uni- versity with a fleet of Grummans. Fox says most canoeists still have a Grum-
man in their backyards, which serve as inde- structible memories of their paddling past.
It typically takes only brute force and liquid solder to return a battered Grumman to a reasonable likeness of its original form.
Bill Mason, the famed canoeist and film-
maker most noted for his rapt love for tra- ditional wood and canvas Chestnut canoes, called the aesthetics of aluminum canoes “the pits,” their handling “sluggish [and] noisy.” Still, he chose a Grumman nicknamed the Queen Mary for family trips on the French River, Georgian Bay and Lake Superior, and
Tis is perhaps the aluminum canoe’s ulti- mate legacy: Long after the last cedar-ribbed Prospector rots to pulp, aluminum canoes will still be going strong. Archeologists will unearth Raffan’s aluminum planter, pry, le- ver and patch his river-worn wreck back into shape, and future generations will enjoy the wonders of canoeing.
www.canoerootsmag.com 35
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