February 18, 2010
Media contact: Kim Lawrence
Office: 604-864-4611
Cell: 604-302-6257
kim.lawrence@ufv.ca
UFV sculpture tech builds longest canoe in North America
Most canoes measure between 15 and 18 feet long. Chilliwack resident and master canoe designer/builder James van Nostrand has just completed one 65 feet long. That’s about as long as an accordion bus….or four sedans parked end-to-end.
It has been over a century since a canoe of this size has plied the waters of the West Coast. They were once the prime method of transport for the coastal Aboriginal peoples, and were famously documented by photographer Edward Curtis in the early 1900s. By a twist of fate, the huge boat will be on display for the next few weeks on the campus green at the University of the Fraser Valley in Abbotsford, where van Nostrand works as a part-time sculpture technician in the Visual Arts department.
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The canoe on campus.
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Considered Canada’s premier canoe designer and builder, van Nostrand has been honing his skills since the age of 15. A fixture at Abbotsford’s Western Canoeing & Kayaking for nearly 20 years, he also owns two canoe-related businesses: Northbeach Design Corporation, and Magnetic North. He also designed at least two of the canoes that carried the Olympic torch on its journey across Canada.
A few years ago, he received a call from Peter Loy and Ryan Leighton of Seashore Charters near Prince Rupert, offering him a commission to build a very large canoe that would replicate the traditional Tsimshian style. The company, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Metlakatla Development Corp., serves the growing ecotourism industry, offering immersion experiences into the indigenous lifestyles of the north coast. Unfortunately, the large canoe they were using for excursions was far from representative of the local culture: it was a French-Canadian voyageur-style birch bark replica.
Van Nostrand’s initial response to the offer? ‘Too big!’ In his opinion, a 65-foot-long boat would be unwieldy and uncomfortable for groups of day-tripping tourists. It was only after researching the design and construction of the original canoes that he changed his mind and agreed to the challenge.
Van Nostrand’s own shop in Greendale was too small to accommodate such a large project. It so happened that Rayburn Yachts in Mission had an ideal space available in their facility. The crew at Rayburn were intrigued and were recruited to assist. The team constructed the entire canoe between Dec 11, 2009, and the end of January 2010, referencing a set of quarter-scale hand-drawn plans that Van Nostrand had produced on a massive drafting board in his Sardis basement.
The finished boat looks so authentic that you might never notice that it is not a dug-out cedar log, but rather a custom fibreglass hull. It measures nearly seven feet across at its widest point, can accommodate 40 people, and carries an inflatable life-raft.
It also meets a very specific set of standards — outlined by the American Bureau of Shipping — for sea-going vessels. “Despite its size, it’s very buoyant due to its foam core construction,” explains van Nostrand.
The black canoe was painted in traditional Tsimshian style by Metlakatla artist Mike Epp, who happens to live in Aldergrove now and whose daughter attends UFV. The paint colour, a vibrant turquoise, reflects the distinct copper oxide pigment once used as a colouring agent in the north.
The design features the four clans of the Tsimshian people: the raven, wolf, killer whale, and eagle. Epp worked with Fraser Valley artist and UFV alumnus Dean Lauzé to convert and scale his original drawings digitally, creating adhesive stencils to help in the application of the paint.
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Mike Epp (left) and James van Nostrand
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The boat was delivered to UFV by Eagle West Cranes on Feb 18 and will be on display there for several weeks. (Van Nostrand had to commit to bailing out the rain over that time.) It will be transported to the Prince Rupert area later this spring, where it will be named and officially launched.
Van Nostrand plans to give a presentation chronicling the canoe’s creation at some point in early March. The presentation will delivered on campus and will be open to the public.
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