1935 Silent Movie

[beaver]

Cheenama The Trailmaker.....This early documentation film takes the form of a story and aims to show the life of a family of Algonquins through different activities of everyday life including building a birch bark canoe.http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=subject%3A%22Algonquins%22

 

[Blue Viking]

Thanks for submitting that Beaver....I was totally immersed in watching it from start to finish....Who says we have a better life these day!

 

[chris pearson]

Ferdy,
You freekin rock!!

 

[tostig]

Nice film. Did you notice the nose piece of the first canoe? The gunwale was curved to point back in. When I was learning to build my first canoe, I read somewhere that the canoes you see in cartoons that showed the gunwale curving back in was a myth. They were only bent straight up.

Also, when the (second) canoe was finished, Cheenama flipped it on his shoulders without a tumpline. So it can be done without a yoke.