June 28, 2022

NATIONAL CANOE DAY ANSWERS QUESTION ON EVERYONE’S MINDS

GRAVENHURST — How do you make love in a canoe?

Well, if you were at the Muskoka Discovery Sunday for national canoe day you’d have found out.

Canoeheads abounded at both the stern and bow celebrating Muskoka’s original mode of transportation.

And the opportunity to ask that titillating question on everyone’s minds.

“Careful,” quipped presenter who no doubt had fielded that all too familiar query more than once.

Still there was more to learn than how to stand up and pee in canoe (an environmental no-no anyway and as Tom Thomson allegedly found out).

But in addition to boat building and seat-weaving, there were of course seminars on the “Romance of the Paddle” and the official water launch of the restored Peterborough “Courting Canoe,” which councillor Penny Varney got to try out parasol in hand.

Councillor Penny Varney gets a lesson in courting in the Muskoka Discovery Centre’s century-old Peterborough Comfort “courting canoe” restored by her courtier Ron Scott and the Heritage Works volunteers.

Her canoeist and courtier, Ron Scott, showed her the secret “key” to surviving day or night on the water with a suitor.

It’s a balancing act, he said, pointing to the lynchpin locking in the beam separating the couple and which can either face the man or the woman for easiest removal depending on who wants to bail on the date or not.

The Courting Canoe, a special class of wooden boat constructed for stylish leisure and affairs of the heart were most often designed with seats facing each other. And often were accessorized with pillows, picnicking supplies, lanterns and parasols.

Volunteers at Discovery Centre’s Heritage Boatworks worked to restore their own more than a century-old courting canoe known as the Peterborough Comfort.

Afterwards a flotilla of paddlers assembled at the aft of the museum to tour Gravenhurst Bay as in the hay day of the canoe.