Mohawk College builder creates canoe using First Nations’ knowledge

Ancient First Nations technology is meeting modern times in Hamilton this week.

A two-week project at Mohawk College is nearing completion as a master builder, Chuck Commanda completes work on a birch bark canoe.

Commanda is putting final touches on the kind of watercraft that was a main means of transportation in Canada long before European settlement. He is building a traditional birch bark canoe using the First Nations’ knowledge he learned from his grandparents, along with a sense of spirituality.

Commanda harvested the materials for the canoe from the forest himself from 5 different types of trees. “What we’re trying to accomplish is return the craft to the Indigenous people because through residential schools we lost a lot of that,” Commanda said.

Along with birch bark, spruce roots for the bindings, cedar for the planks, ironwood for wooden nails in the gunnels, and ash for the crosspieces.

Commanda is passing on his knowledge to his apprentice, and students working with him on the canoe at Mohawk College.

The project sponsors say the canoe will be used along with the tugboat Theodore Too to focus attention on protecting Canada’s water.

The canoe represents a technology that goes back as much as 3,000 years among First Nations people in North America.

Commanda says this is also a chance to help First Nations people to overcome the modern hopelessness that can exist on Canada’s reserves.

“When I get to an Indigenous community the feeling I get is despair but once we start building it that disappears replaced by a feeling of pride,” Commanda said.

The project is also a chance to bring together cultures as more and more non-First Nations groups ask him to share his traditional canoe-building skills with them.

The canoe is to be launched on Friday in Hamilton.