Daysi Tragesser

In my never ending quest to learn more about unique paddle designs, I stumbled across the page of Dr. Gordon L. Fisher describing his recent (2008) publication, Guideboat Paddles: An Adirondack Treasure. Available online is a PDF format excerpt from the book that shows some black and white photos documenting grip carving. Intrigued, I ordered a copy and recently received it in the mail.

Single blade Adirondack style paddles are quite a speciality in the paddling community. Their usage and history localized to the Adirondack region of New York state. My knowledge of guideboats in general was quite limited having assumed that they were exclusively rowed with oars rather than propelled with single blades, but an informative opening section in the book describes how many guides would silently maneuver the guideboats with single blade paddles as their sporting passengers would hunt deer and other game. Often, while one person powered the craft with oars, a helmsman would steer the boat with a single blade from the stern. Single blade paddles were therefore quite functional with guideboat touring.

The truly interesting feature of the paddles, however, are the circular grips. The book details some of the surviving historical paddles now at the Adirondack Museum and provides plenty of computer generated sketches and technical details necessary for reproducing the unique handle designs. Offset data as well as fullsized portions of the blade curves make reproduction a breeze. From a canoeing persepective, the narrow, straight sided blades would serve well for solo paddling, although the length of the paddles (and proportional blade lengths) would need to be reduced , especially when kneeling. Other than that, these are some designs I intend to replicated soon.

What I thoroughly enjoyed about the book, besides the plentiful illustrations and photos, was the historical context of each of the museum paddles described in the text. To many, a paddle is just a utilitarian object until a story is attached to it and its history revealed. All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed Gordon's contribution to the paddle making community and hope to make a trip to the Adirondack Museum one day and check these unique designs out with my own eyes.

Contact Voyaging Company has come out with some paddle art for folks who want some colourful accents to their home or cottage. They've launched a line of 56" basswood beavertail paddles, called the Semaphore Series, which is based on the alphabet flag system of International Code of Signals (ICS)


Contact Voyaging Co Paddles


Alpha (A)



Bravo (B)


Charlie (C)

While researching more info on historical canoe paddles, I of course need to mention the fantastic artwork of Frances Anne Hopkins. In 1858 she married an official of the Hudson Bay Company and accompanied him during his duties traversing the fur trade routes of North America. Many of her paintings are part of the online collection in the Library and Archives of Canada

One of her famous pieces entitled, Canoe Manned by Voyageurs Passing a Waterfall shows her seated amidships in a fur trade canoe with her husband while passing a serene cascade. A closeup of the paddles reveals the long and narrow shape, painted for visual effect, favoured by the hearty voyageurs.


Canoe Manned by Voyageurs Passing a Waterfall
(Ontario), 1869
Archives Canada Citation


Close up of paddles
In another piece, Voyageurs at Dawn, we see a voyageur camp with various actions occuring in the piece. Scattered throughout the work are some images of paddles. Closeups reveal the classic narrow painted and decorated blades


Voyageurs at Dawn, 1871
Archives Canada Citation


Decorated paddles laying on the ground
centre of painting)


More paddles leaning against a rock face
(far right of painting)
I'm not a big fan of painted paddles, but can definitely see the advantage back then both for visual reasons and preservations reasons (before the era of modern wood sealants). Given that these paddles were meant for use in a large, communal boat, I don't think their extremely narrow width and dimensions would be be very suitable for solo paddling - something I confirmed with my own experimental voyageur design made last year. Nonetheless, Hopkins' sketches and paintings of the time are a fantastic glimpse into this part of canadian history.

The tight canoeing community here in Canada is saddened by the loss of one of this country's iconic characters - Kirk Wipper, who amongst other accomplishments in an amazing lifetime, collected hundreds of watercraft that eventually became the collection of the Canadian Canoe Museum. A touching tribute can be read on CCM's site, here.

I never met Kirk personally, but it was through his efforts that the Canoe Museum was founded and this where I learned the fun hobby of paddlemaking by taking a weekend course there back in '07. I recalled that while we were busy carving away on our shaving horses on the Saturday afternoon, Kirk swung by the museum and gazed down at us, the crowd of novice woodworkers. It was almost like a proud father watching his children learning a new skill. We all paused for a moment to listen to his words of encouragement and then he was off to tour the rest of collection with a friend.

The museum has really become of favourite place of mine and for someone who rarely likes to visit the same place twice, this says a lot about the beautiful collection they have on display. So from myself and any readers who appreciate this blog, I send a heartfelt thank you to the man who is responsible for preserving this vital part of Canadian culture.