Forest Rangers, Lake Timagami, Ontario. {Canadian Pacific Railway 

 Company photo.) 



bottom length would be 30 feet, and in a 4J^-fathom 

 canoe, 27 feet; the beds would be some 6 feet longer 

 than these lengths. 



As the canoes at Christopherson's were built for 

 speed and rarely measured more than 48 inches beam 

 between the gunwale members, the building frame 

 was about 32 inches wide amidships, or appro.ximately 

 two-thirds the beam inside the gunwales in a 5-fathom 

 canoe. The beam of his 43^-fathom canoes was less, 

 say 42 inches inside the gunwales and 27 or 28 inches 

 across the building frame, with a depth, bottom to 

 top of rail cap, of between 19 and 21 inches. A 

 5-fathom canoe of this narrow model would carry 

 nearly 2)^ short tons with a crew of six, while the 

 smaller model would carry nearly 2 tons. However, 

 the capacity of a wide canoe was much greater. A 

 6-fathom canoe, the Rob Roy, built by another post 

 about 1876 to bring in the bishop for the consecration 

 of a church at the Lake Temiscaming post, was 

 described by Christopherson as being about 6 feet 



beam on the gunwales. Considered a fine example 

 of a freight canoe, the Rob Roy was afterwards loaded 

 with 75 bags of flour, totaling 3)2 tons deadweight, 

 and carried as well a crew of seven and their provisions 

 and gear. 



The bark cover was commonly in two lengths on the 

 bottom of the canoe, summer bark being used. The 

 post maintained a supply of bark for canoe building 

 and sheets 4 fathoms in length and 1 in breadth were 

 not uncommon. Such sheets would have been ample 

 for the cover of a small canoe but would not be 

 expended so needlessly; hence, the canoes, large or 

 small, had two lengths of bark in their bottoms. The 

 lap was toward the stern. In what appears to have 

 been a local characteristic of the canoes built at 

 Christopherson's posts, the bows were indicated by 

 making the thwarts toward that end slightly longer 

 than those toward the stern, so that the forebody was 

 fuller at sheer than the afterbody; the canoe master 

 could thus instantly see which end was the bow 



147 



