03/31/2026
With a Mon amie complete another is begun. This canoe has become the flagship of our fleet, so to say. It took me thirty years to design. And by that I mean it took thirty years of canoe-building and just enough courage to strike out on my own.
I had begun building wood and canvas canoes in 1980 and in the process gotten to know a good many historic canoes. They spoke to me in a way the Grumman I grew up with couldn’t. Appreciating the nearly voluptuous shapes of some, I gravitated toward the simpler shapes common in Canadian designs.
This design definitely owes something to the Peterborough all-wood canoes and the Chestnut wood/canvas. The name, My friend, in French is to place credit for the Chestnut Pal design, but the intention was to make a canoe specifically for the canoe camping common to the Quetico/Boundary Waters region. This was the same desire Joe Seliga had as he turned the Veazie-Morris canoe of his father’s into a canoe for the northern lakes and streams.
With the Mon amie I hoped to accomplish what Joe had, though in a lighter weight. I also hoped to create a design that would both turn and track easily without a keel. A boat that would carry a load but also be steady and comfortable paddled empty. It was a steep challenge.
I had already failed a number of times, having abandoned a dozen or so designs. And when I finished the first of this design I was not sure I had succeeded. In fact, since the original rolled out in 2010, it has only been the last few years that I find myself satisfied. Maybe I’m just tired, or maybe I have finally realized that “perfection” is more about how we relate to the “good enough”. I will be paddling this new canoe and I’m quite sure it will be good enough.
