The aim of the Canoe Store project is to restore the art of the birch bark canoe. Here is a recreation of the part that birch bark canoes played in transportation and communication some 250 years ago.
“I want to revitalize the building of these canoes,” says John Lindeman, owner of the Bark Canoe Store in Spokane, WA. “I want to see more building going on.”
SPOKANE, WA—The Bark Canoe Store opened in 2000 in Spokane. Originally it began operating by making birch bark canoes and it expanded to provide birch bark for cabinet and furniture and construction. Then it expanded to accessories and things that might go along with birch bark canoes like Hudson Bay axes, packs, materials. Then came delivery of birch bark canoe building classes.
“We are known for taking courses to communities, often First Nation communities,” says John Lindeman, owner. “I wanted the building of birch bark canoes to revive by going to the people who originally built them, starting in Minnesota, going as far as Alaska, also to Nebraska, school museums around the country, wherever they wanted, building birch bark canoes in as little as three weeks to a month.”
These canoe construction classes reach everyone from kids to elders. “We were doing camps in Canada, also holding classes in Spokane where people got together and each made a single canoe in a group project. In other classes individuals came to build one for themselves.”
Birch bark is one medium of construction for the canoes, but usage is demanding on vessels, especially in activities such as film work or cultural reenactments. “A crowd wanted a resilient fiberglass replica, so we make a whole variety of those,” Lindeman stated.
The company sells birch bark laminates that work over substrates of plywood to make paneling for walls, cabinets, a birch bark finish that is “very pretty,” says Lindeman. “And we have lots of Canadian customers.” Panels and canoes have sold in Europe. Most of the birch bark comes from New Hampshire, Maine, Minnesota, before Lindeman found a contact in Siberia. “Now I am importing from Siberia. This birch bark is used in building the canoes.”
A lot of the birch bark is reclaimed from dead trees found near the border of Nelson, B.C. “There is a lot of dying birch. I take the birch bark found there for furniture, not canoes.” Regarding the dying birch, Lindeman says, “the birch tree is a canary in the coal mine.” It’s telling us something about the environment. The spindly hardwood like alder, birch, maple, poplar grows up first in clear-cut. “What they will do is defoliate to kill hardwood and do this because no market exists for the hardwood,” Lindeman says. Essentially done after a clear-cut with the potential to stay in the ecosystem for 5000 years with an invasion with chemicals.
“I deliver courses year-round and I’m very portable with this. It is an intensive three weeks, whether making one canoe or ten.” Where individuals are making their own canoe, up to four can participate in a course, which takes over 200 hours. The program works well at structured settings like museums, schools, and other institutions. “My goal is teaching the teachers at places like community centers, showing how to build any style from Great Lakes to Athabascan, Dogrib. We do all different traditional styles.”
There’s been some study done on this on Lindeman’s part. “I took a class in Wisconsin in 1992,” near Lake Superior. “Ojibwe country,” he notes. He was taught by David Gidmark, who was trained by Algonquin elders in Quebec. “I’ve done two-seat miniatures up to 26 feet long, most typically 14 to 18 feet.” One fiberglass 36-foot canoe replica he made was used on the Hudson River in New York. “They bought a 20-foot birch bark and a 36-foot canoe that was featured in the 500-year anniversary of Henry Hudson going up that river.”
Lindeman has made canoes for movies as well. “There is an on-going demand for this kind of building. Every customer has their own unique situation from store to museum, and some canoes may never been seen alight on the water. The original canoes are, not surprisingly, kind of expendable, like the 26-foot Ojibwe canoe that traveled from Keese River, Wisconsin, to the Pacific by the Mackenzie River. At the end, the canoe was ceremonially burned. To those who lamented this happening, it is worth knowing even Mackenzie’s canoes were destroyed by the end of the voyage.
The aim is to restore the art of the birch bark canoe. “I want to revitalize the building of these canoes, which were formerly practical, and now exist as an art form,” continued Lindeman. “I want to see more building going on.” He explains that the birch is used in multiple ways, from building to medicine. “Medicinal companies are exploiting the birch tree, and it is known that birch bark is resistant to mold, and furthermore is used as an inner sole for shoes because it kills athlete’s foot.”
The fact is that those in the market for buying canoes for schools say that to start a racing program, they would have aluminum and plastic canoes. They don’t want to bang around birch bark canoes. That is the idea of the fiberglass racing canoe, to re-establish a cultural practice in this form of canoe. “Fiberglass will take a beating,” says Lindeman. “You take care of the wood on the gunwales but the hull, you can leave it outside, and you can ram it into the shore.”
