I Love Paddling

Nick Turnbull and Murray Jowett, two University of Winnipeg students who were attempting to canoe from Winnipeg to New Orleans this fall, have changed their plans due to an accident last week. The pair had their canoe swamped by high winds and waves on the Mississippi River near Muscatine, Iowa.  The duo lost much of […]

Old Town Canoes & Kayaks, a storied name in North American canoe-building, has moved its operation into a single new factory, Johnson Outdoors, Old Town’s parent company, has announced. Previously, Old Town built boats in two facilities in Old Town, Maine, work which will now be carried out in a new 136,000 square-foot facility. In […]

You never can tell what you might discover on a canoe outing.  Mastodon tusks, however, rank fairly low on the list likely finds. But for paddler Glen Keeton of Mount Hope, New York, tusks of the extinct mammal were exactly what he found one year ago on a canoe outing with a friend down New York’s Wallkill River.  Keeton spotted […]

Maori artist George Nuku is restoring an early 19th century war canoe known as a “waka” at the National Museum of Scotland. As the BBC reports, HERE, Nuku, a carver and sculptor from New Zealand who is tattooed with traditional Maori facial markings, is restoring the boat with a blend of traditional and contemporary designs […]

Renowned Canadian canoe-builder Walter Walker of Lakefield, Ontario died on Monday.  He was two weeks shy of his 102nd birthday. Walker was inducted as the first “Canoe Builder Emeritus” in the Canoe Builders Hall of Fame established by the Canadian Canoe Museum. He received numerous awards and certificates for his work in the canoe industry. Walker’s […]

We expect the paddling season to wind down when winter-like conditions come early to the Midwest, but we were surprised to see it’s also wrapping up in far-off Hawaii.  For the inter-island racers who paddle outrigger canoes at least, the season climaxed last weekend with the Super Bowl of outrigger racing: the Moloka’i Hoe.  The 41.7 mile paddle […]

Was New Zealand originally settled by canoeists from Hawaii? It’s a possibility seen in a study of traditional Pacific Ocean canoe designs undertaken by Stanford University researchers Marcus Feldman, Paul Ehrlich, and Deborah Rogers. The trio examined a 1930s-era study of traditional canoe designs by A.C. Haddon and James Hornell in order to track the […]

River of Action, a 350.org initiative, recently posted an open letter to the paddling community, inviting canoeists, kayakers and paddlers of all kinds to join them in the International Day of Climate Action on October 24th. Paddlers around the world will gather on their local waterways to form the number 350. According to the letter, […]