Canoe builder turns Bata Library into temporary workshop

Alex Labelle scraping spruce roots as he builds a birch bark canoe inside Bata Library. (Photo: Eddy Sweeney)

This audio story was originally produced for Trent Radio and is made available here through a creative commons license.

Canoe builder Alex Labelle has turned Trent University’s Bata Library into a temporary workshop this fall. He’s set up in the library’s atrium, where he’s building a birchbark canoe for use by the Trent community. You can learn more about the initiative by listening to the audio story in the player below.

Labelle said he learned the craft from his grandfather, who has built many birchbark canoes and shared his knowledge widely. But his grandfather wants to retire, Labelle explained. “So that’s why I’m here,” he said. “I wanted to carry on the tradition, because he’s been able to pass it on to me.”

Labelle was invited to Trent to build the canoe by Lorenzo Whetung, the cultural advisor at the First People’s House of Learning (FPHL), and by Dawn Lavell-Harvard, the director of FPHL. The idea is to build a canoe that can be used by members of the Trent community and also to teach people the skills involved in constructing one.

As Lavell-Harvard pointed out, those skills are “unfortunately disappearing.” She said it was “beautiful” to see Alex Labelle and his grandfather sharing their skills with others.

Lavell-Harvard described the canoe as an essential piece of technology for Indigenous people. “Our people were on the waterways,” she said. “The canoe was essential to our survival … The difference between surviving through the next winter or not was your canoe.”

Lavell-Harvard encourages anyone who’s curious to visit the library while Labelle is working. “You will get to actually put your hands in building this canoe and contributing,” she said. “In future generations, you’ll be able to say, ‘I remember, I helped build that canoe.'”

Labelle’s canoe-building project is expected to wrap up by October 25, with a naming ceremony to follow at a future date.

Trent Radio’s Local Journalism Initiative reporter Eddy Sweeney interviewed Labelle, Whetung, and Lavell-Harvard. You can listen to Sweeney’s story in the above audio player.