The Canoe Collector TORY BY HOWARD MEYERSON | PHOTOS BY JUDITH STRIEBY-RASKA Kelly is smitten by the old-world charm
of wood and canvas canoes, particularly those of the early 20th century—models paddled by men courting women. It was a period full of music, mischief and romance. “The magic for me is the beauty of the
wood, the quality of the craftsmanship and the feel of them on the water,” says Kelly, a wine dealer who owns 22 antique canoes in total. His private collection is one of the largest in North America and one of the highest quality collections of courting canoes anywhere in the world. While Kelly’s boats span nearly 90
years of North American canoe history, most were built for romance and style during the early 1900s, a period when courting your gal in cities like Boston, New York, Detroit and Minneapolis, meant heading out on a moonlit river for a little smooching in the canoe. It was a time when young women let their suitors do the paddling and the canoes were accessorized with phonographs, picnic baskets and pillows, all the better to canoodle with. The ardor of that era began to cool in the 1920s with the ad- vent of the Model T Ford—couples had more options. Kelly’s favorite canoe of that era is his
1915 Alden Kingsbury, a long-nosed, 16- foot canoe he had meticulously restored. It is one of many designs that originated on the Charles River during a period when canoe builders competed for pub- lic attention; a time when “social canoe- ing” was popular recreation and area boat houses rented to couples for an afternoon or evening. “It’s stylish and fast, and when I heel it
over in the traditional Canadian style, it has a sweet spot and becomes very stable. It’s a slippery design that I like to paddle solo,” says Kelly. The 58-year-old is also
SInside the wicked romance of America’s largest private pleasure craft collection
There’s more than just a little wickedness in the history of the canoe, and the largest collection of it resides in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in the possession of Ken Kelly. His collection of old-style courting canoes, vehicles of furtive love in a bygone era, fills the rafters of his quaint northern Michigan cottage, garage and the second story of a nearby warehouse.
the president of the Wooden Canoe Heri- tage Association (
www.wcha.org), a non- profit group with 1,650 members across North America and Europe. WCHA is made up of antique wood ca-
noe enthusiasts, some of whom are collec- tors, though the membership is mainly comprised of folks that have one or more wood canoes that they intend to restore or enjoy paddling. The organization hosts its 35th national assembly this year at Paul Smith’s College in the Adirondacks. Drawing 300 to 400 people and their ca- noes every year, it’s the largest gathering of its kind in North America. Kelly joined WCHA in 1994 and was
elected president in 2009. The challenge today, he says, is getting paddlers inter- ested in the old-world beauty, lore and po- etry of wood canoes, when the attention is elsewhere. “It’s a challenge trying to think of what
we can do to get people who are doing the same thing in plastic and Kevlar, into wood canoes and out on the water. The on-water experience in wood is unsur- passed,” says Kelly. His fascination with antique canoes de-
veloped in 1994 after learning he could not have a motorboat on the lake where he and his wife have their cottage. He had been looking for a vintage Chris-Craft runabout and shifted to considering a wood and can- vas canoe to compliment the 1933 hand- crafted log cabin on the property. His first was a 16-foot Old Town OTCA,
built in 1963. It cost $800 and needed some work. “It was nice and had a painted design on
it, but I decided to repaint it,” Kelly says. “I went to put it up on the cabin wall for win- ter storage and thought it looked pretty nice; why not leave that one up there and get a second one to use.
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