Story by Gary Ataman, WCA Chairman
Before I tell you about the Canadian Canoe Museum’s (CMM) new home, I think it is important to understand the museum’s history.
In the late 1950s, Kirk Wipper (the museum’s founder) amassed a large collection of canoes.
Through the 1960s and 70s, the story shifted to “building a home for the collection,” a log structure on property at Camp Kanadalore near Minden, Ontario, which became the Kanawa International Canoe Museum.
In the 1980s, Wipper sold Camp Kanadalore, and began looking for a new home for what was now a unique and very significant collection of canoes, kayaks and self-propelled watercraft.
The 1980s story was “collection outgrows collectors ability to look after it”. A group convinced Wipper to move the collection to an office and factory of the Outboard Marine Corporation on Monaghan Road in Peterborough.
In October 2003, the CCM board of directors opted to close the museum until May 2004, engaging an accounting firm to consolidate its strained financial position and restructure the organization. The museum was quietly reopened in May 2004, but remained dogged by the story of the closure.
By 2010, however, after significant staff turnover and years of conservative budgets, careful management, and concerted communication efforts, the “closure” story has slowly been eclipsed, through Herculean work by everyone involved. It has now been replaced by a much more hopeful narrative about a “national treasure” proudly housed in Peterborough, Ontario—the natural home of canoe manufacturing in North America.
In 2015, a $65 million contemporary design was envisioned to display the collection beside the world’s highest hydraulic lift lock on the Trent-Severn Waterway. In May 2020, an independent investigation by the museum determined the site, owned by Parks Canada, contained the chemical compound trichloroethylene (TCE), along with a variety of other chemicals. Carolyn Hyslop, the museum’s executive director, states, “We had a beautiful, award-winning design that was perfectly suited for the Lift Lock location that is regretfully utterly non-transferable to another location,” and “We are in the process of identifying and selecting a new site for what will be a revised museum design that will complement the waterfront site selection.”
In the 2020 annual report, it was stated “we are pleased to share that in less than a year we have reimagined our new museum project and identified a preferred new site at Johnson Property on the Little Lake waterfront”.
In January 2021, it was announced that the new design and construction process was started on the Little Lake site. By September, the CMM officially owned the Little Lake property. In July 2021, the Covid-19 restrictions were lifted and the CMM reopened its doors.
2022 marked the 25th year at Monagham Road, Peterborough, and start of the “Big Lift” portage to the new site on the water’s edge on Little Lake.
The Official Opening of the CCM, in its new home on the shores of Little Lake, Peterborough, Ontario, took place on May 11, 2024. The opening presentation was simulcast on YouTube at https://youtu.be/ZmsT6gG2hyc.
The museum’s two-storey, 65,000-square-foot building is a purpose-built facility on its five-acre lakefront campus. The facility houses the artifacts and provides workshops/activities, helping to preserve history through the display, restoration, and appreciation of the canoe. The project’s fully funded cost was $45M.
The WCA executive encourages members to make a visit to the new Canadian Canoe Museum and experience the new facility first hand.
