The Prospector
lots, their adventure-seeking owners having long since done their own version of returning to dust. The Prospector has been a workhorse of the wilderness for more
T
than eight decades, and its reputation has become rich like aged cedar as the stories and trip reports of one generation have become the leg- ends of the next. But what is a Prospector? And more to the point, can all the past and
present versions labelled as Prospectors be much like the real thing? Prospectors came into being to meet the needs of an industrializing
country and the urges of its citizens to travel, explore and ultimately exploit the Precambrian Shield. According to Roger MacGregor, author of The Chestnut in Flower, it was designed to service the railway survey companies, timber cruisers, trappers and men with wide-eyed Gold Fe- ver. It was popular because it was good at what it did. And what it did was work hard. It was, and is, in essence a high-capacity gear-hauler; a wilderness
transporter with lots of freeboard that was designed to be paddled load- ed. Even the shorter 16-foot version could take you “out” for a month or more. Its classic construction was a complex, time-consuming feat of woodworking expertise involving white cedar ribs and planking and spruce gunwales; it was a melding of the design features demanded by laden travel over rock and rivers. Cedar-canvas canoes had appeared in the 1870s but didn’t come into
general use until after 1904. It was then that William and Harry Chest- nut of Chestnut Canoes in Fredericton, New Brunswick, were granted the Canadian patent for that type of construction.
he bones of countless battered Prospector canoes have rotted to dust on empty shorelines over the last century, but many more have died quietly in city backyards and northern
is good at what it does.
And what it does iswork hard. It was an important time in the history of canoeing.
The evolution of the factory-produced canoe in those years from heavy ship-lapped planking to light cedar- canvas rescued wilderness travellers from much tortur- ous work, a technology shift as liberating for the human spine as the introduction of Kevlar 80 years later. Chestnut’s Prospector model, fi rst produced in 1923,
was so successful that the Geological Survey of Canada, with half a continent to survey, ordered 25 to 35 of them every year. It was built without a keel—unless specifi ed by the customer—and was symmetrical—unless you wanted the V-stern version to have the option of using an outboard motor. It had moderate rocker compared to today’s more dedicated whitewater hulls, though in longer lengths the rocker became much more pro- nounced. It was available in a diversity that General Mo- tors would appreciate; there were six diff erent models from 16 to 18 feet in length. For 55 years Chestnut stamped their name to the
deck plates of Prospectors, right up until the company closed shop in 1978. In fl attering gestures that the hold- ers of the original Chestnut moulds have not always ap- preciated, dozens of canoe makers hoping to gain both credibility and add a sure best-seller to their stock have since produced their own version of the design. Hugh Stewart of Headwaters Canoes in Wakefi eld, Que-
bec, builds 15 to 18 canoes a year from traditional materi- als. Given that he actually owns two of the original Chest- nut forms, and does extensive hard tripping in his own Prospectors, he has an authoritative take on the design. “These boats are not to be thought of as Chippen-
dale furniture,” he says, “They are tough, fi eld-repairable working machines. Their primary characteristic is their great bow buoyancy under load.” Rather than push water, the bow cuts it sharply and
then, ideally just forward of the bow paddler’s knees, the hull fl ares gracefully at the waterline into its full width and volume to provide the buoyancy needed to carry the work gear of the past, and camping gear of today. Despite its utilitarian genesis, it combines lines no
barge operator would recognize. The upward slope of the gunwales at the bow and stern, the fl aring hull shape and the slight tumblehome make for a sympho- ny of curves for those with the eyes to see it. The original Chestnut Prospector forms have scat-
tered across the continent and met various fates, though some of them, like Stewart’s, are still turning out “real” Prospectors. Many newer moulds turn out variations on the same design in all manner of materials. So, it is up to the buyer, to the eyes of the beholder,
to decide if their modern version of the Prospector is deserving of the name and comes close to the original 85-year-old idea. You may decide you want a real card-carrying Pros-
pector, one built from cedar sheeting and canvas in which you’ll go forth and seek your adventure. But if you do, caution your children sternly not to leave your legacy outside in the backyard after you pass on.
BRIAN SHIELDS paddled his fi rst Prospector at the age of 10, a story he recalled in “Bred in the Bone” [Canoeroots, V6, I2].
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