Profile One Harry Chestnut THE SECRET DEALS AND SLIPPERY LEGAL MANOEUVRES OF CANADA’S MOST SUCCESSFUL CANOE COMPANY
HISTORIANS HAVE YET TO UNEARTH a corporate code of ethics used by Harry Chestnut to build the Chestnut Canoe Company. It’s possible they haven’t looked hard enough—more likely that none existed. Chestnut grew up in the late 1880s in one of New Brunswick’s leading families. Harry
and his brother William spent their summers exploring the shores of the St. John River in their birchbark canoe built by a local Malecite. As a young man salmon fishing he got his first glimpse of a wood and canvas canoe from Maine. Chestnut judged it superior to anything he had paddled and saw before him a great business opportunity, quickly start- ing the Chestnut Canoe Company as an offshoot of his family’s hardware business. Chestnut never lacked audacity. Despite the fact that the wood and canvas design
was not his invention and had been in use for 30 years, he applied for, and in 1905 re- ceived, the patent for wood and canvas canoes for all of Canada. But patent or no patent, a design is no good without workers, so Harry sent his brother
William to the Old Town Canoe factory in Maine. William was able to talk himself onto the factory floor and recruit 10 experienced canoe builders to relocate to Fredericton. The Old Town Canoe Company retaliated by filing a civil court case. Chestnut ignored it. In 1923, after a fire and some poor business decisions, Harry was forced to merge
the Chestnut Canoe Company with Ontario’s Peterborough Canoe Company, creating Canadian Watercraft Limited. It was a historic union, yet the public was kept in the dark. For years after that, virtually all wood and canvas Chestnut and Peterborough canoes were quietly made in Fredericton. Identical boats would be stamped with different deck plates and sold under either the Chestnut or Peterborough name. A combination of accumulating debt, a failure to keep abreast of new building ma-
terials and a reluctance to respond to the changing needs of customers all factored into the demise of the Chestnut Canoe Company in 1979 after building more than 100,000 canoes. His competitors probably breathed a sigh of relief, but no doubt pat- ent lawyers retain some admiration for the man to this day.
DOUG SCOTT teaches at New Brunswick Community College in Saint John.
HARRY CHESTNUT, 1913. NOT QUITE ON THE LEVEL.
PANB CHESTNUT CANOE PHOTOGRAPHS: P474-24 22 n C ANOE ROOT S summer 2007
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