Canoe Restoration

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White clapboard houses on the right and a towering church and hay field on the left frame the dirt road across from the Underhill general store. From there it is a short drive to the 19th-century barn where John Connell keeps a tidy workshop devoted to building and restoring wooden canoes. Visitors are greeted by a row of sunflowers and his very friendly dog, Sonny.

Connell, whose formal career has been in education, has been a schoolteacher, school director, and dean. He can hold his own on a wide variety of subjects, from sheep farming to education theory, but today we talk of old canoes as we sit at a picnic table in a barn that houses parts, forms, and tools from another era, as well as a modern table saw, joiner, and band saw.

Connell got his start restoring old canoes made of wood and canvas by accident. He was a teacher in a school that featured alternative educational programs for what he calls “banged up kids.” It was a work-based program featuring farming, gardening, and academics.

“We had an open house and a guy asked if I wanted an old canoe for the kids to work on,” he said. From that inauspicious beginning a vocation grew. He still works with at-risk children to restore old canoes, and the end result is a boat to ply the waterways as well as a vehicle for hands-on instruction in self-esteem and the value of work. He uses the process of working with poor young people to break the cycle of poverty.

“People donate canoes and when they’re finished, the kids get some of the profit,” he said. “Once we pay for time and materials we’re able to get the canoes back on the market at a fair price. It’s money the kids can use to pay their car insurance or some other expense.”

Connell says that restoring canoes provides a medium to learn to solve real problems without going for help. He pushes his students to stretch, to reach for self-imposed deadlines, to raise their own bar and clear it. His love for the people he works with shines through in his enthusiasm.

“A canoe can be a vehicle to learn about work, authority, and initiation,” he said. “The kids find pride and accomplishment in finishing a boat.”

Canoes arrive at the shop in various states of disrepair. Most are constructed with ribs of steam-bent ash and planking of white cedar that is covered with a treated canvas and painted. The first order of business is to remove the old canvas, replace any broken parts, and then the long process of sanding and filling begins. Once the hull is ready, Connell puts it in an envelope of new canvas. He starts in the middle, cinching it tight and stapling it to the boat. The canvas is coated with a silicon-based filler that is much safer than the lead-based filler of old.

His current project is an Old Town Otca that was built in the early 1940s, but he has restored other canoes that are over 100 years old. The Otca has lines much like a modern canoe, but the thwarts (the braces across the canoe), and seats are mahogany, as are the beautifully curved pieces that cover the top of each end. The canvas was removed, and it was clear the canoe had seen many hours of sanding, with more to come.

Connell doesn’t see the hours of sanding as a burden. It fits into his philosophy of making work his exercise, and he compares restoring canoes to farming, or to cycling for transportation.

“The physical demands of my work aren’t separate. If I am doing something with my head and I have to work my body, the outcome is far more exciting than exercise for its own sake,” he said. “What motivation is there other than to get stronger? To me that’s not deep enough.”

Connell uses what he calls a “glorified tea kettle” to generate steam for a wooden box he built to hold strips of wood. After steaming a quarter-inch thick piece for 15 minutes, he has up to 5 minutes to bend it and secure it into place. Most of his wood comes from mills in Hardwick and Greensboro, and he prefers it free of knots, which can split when the wood is bent.

Before 1950, there were thousands of canoe builders and as many variations in design. One of the variables in hull design is called “tumble home,” which is the rate that the hull curves from the keel at the bottom of the boat to the top edge of the canoe. More tumble home means there is less surface area in contact with the water and so less drag, making the boat faster. The trade off is that it is less stable.

Connell is proud of the canoe form he got from Horace Strong, an old canoe builder from the Craftsbury area, called the “Hosmer New Queen,” named after a pond in the area. Connell can use the form to make a brand-new wood and canvas canoe.

“The Hosmer Queen had too much tumble home and the New Queen has less,” he said. “To me it’s a really nice compromise between speed and stability.”

Once he started on his vocation to restore old canoes, Connell’s natural thirst for knowledge drove him to discover others with the same interest, including the Wooden Canoe Heritage Association (WCHA). The WCHA is a great place to start the search for parts, advice, and canoe shows, or to buy a restored boat.

“There are people all over the country who share an interest in old canoes,” he said. Connell recently had 10 canoes donated by the Darrow Camp in Grand Lake Stream, ME. “I’ve thought about starting an apprenticeship program,” he mused “But I’m not there yet. I have enough now that there is more room for people to participate, to learn about restoring old canoes.”

Once finished, the restored and repaired canoes are sold through the WCHA classifieds at www.wcha.org and on the Vermont Craigs List. John Connell may be reached at 802-899-5141 to donate, buy, or even just talk about old canoes.

John Bauer is a father, writer, and marketing consultant who is always looking for an excuse to find something new to experience and write about. He lives in Jeffersonville and enjoys skiing, camping, and boating. You can reach him at bauer.vt@gmail.com.

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