Canoeing and Canadian Art‪.‬

LIKE the looping curve of the central channel through a beaver swamp, the theme of canoes and canoeing is one that meanders through Canadian culture and art from prehistoric times to the present. Yet to date no study has been made of the canoe and canoeing in Canadian visual art. (1) A little research reveals that consideration of the portrayal of the canoe and the role of canoeing in Canadian art opens up one's focus and perspective. A surprising number of contemporary artists have used the canoe image in their work, and still others engage in canoeing as an activity - either as recreation, to get to landscape sites for painting, or even, as in the instance of the Ontario printmaker Ed Bartram, as a convenient and practical vehicle (in Bartram's case, to pick up Georgian Bay rocks and sand for use in creating his earthy and abstracted geological etchings). The manner in which artists have depicted the canoe has changed over the years as a result of shifts in the interpretation of its image. From simply being portrayed and read as an element of Indian culture, and as an indispensable and irreplaceable means of exploration and development (in works like the Codex Canadiensis, c. 1675-80, for example), the canoe image in more contemporary work can be an ambivalent one. For instance, it can be portrayed as yet another device or agent responsible for the devastation of both the native way of life and the Canadian wilderness, since the canoe made exploration, trade, mapping/surveying, and ultimately colonization and settlement possible. Ironically, of course, the canoe was co-opted by white culture from the Indians. So perfect and practical both in design and form, the canoe is still the most appropriate way to travel through boreal country.