Contact me at: douglasingram1963@gmail.com or by phone 204.878.2524

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Lots of stuff goes on in this shop, located in Lorette, Manitoba.

Primarily it's the building and repair of classic wood & canvas canoes, and the making of premium canoe paddles. I also do custom boat building, composite fabrication, and special projects. A growing passion of mine is the making of classical guitars, I'll post about that, too.


I want to be able to share with my clients the progress of their commissioned work. Later I started thinking that there might be other people who are interested in what goes on inside a wooden canoe shop operated by an artist and a recovering teacher.

If you have any questions please feel free to contact me by email, phone, or by post. My mailing address is:

Red River Canoe & Paddle
24249 River Rd
Lorette, Manitoba
Canada
R5K 0Z6




Thursday, 16 August 2012

John Duncan, Federal Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development was in Fort Severn to announce the construction of a new school.  While in the community he and Kenora MP Greg Rickford dropped by the canoe shop to see what is going on.

 
 
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A few photos from Fort Severn.

Early morning fog as seen from just outside my hotel room door.



Full moon over the community, from in front of my hotel room door.


The old Anglican church cemetary.


Boat and canoe anchored by the river bank at high tide.


My first opportunity to go for a walk about town and I get to see a house fire!  The building was an old and abaondoned house, nobody was hurt, though some of the local kids were alarmed at the sight.


Late evening sunshine, as seen from my hotel room door.


I had my camer out during some rain earlier this day, when I picked it up to take a couple of shots of the day's work this is what I saw!  At first I was dismayed, then I realized the potential.  The results look really old school without photoshop.


The old Catholic church as seen from the river.  This church is abandoned now.
 
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I'm back from my most recent three week stint in Fort Severn.  By the time this session had concluded the shop program had put out 10 canoes.

One of the early tasks was to make up three sets of outer gunnels and three sets of keels.



Rib repairs on some of the canoes-in -waiting were started.


Canoes got sanded and painted.


And our 20' canoes were dwarfed by this leviathan.  The photo actually makes it look much bigger than it is, but it really is big.
 
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Saturday, 4 August 2012

I'm up in Fort Severn, Ontario, working on the canoe shop again.  I've been very busy and it was only just yesterday when I realized that I hadn't been posting.  I forgot the cable for downloading photos from my camera, too.  I'll post about the work up here once I get home.  I have one more week of work here.

Monday, 16 July 2012

The current big project in the shop is this 18' Kildonan freighter "Y" stern canoe.  Lots of work ahead of me on this one!

Currently, I've been working my way through lots of small jobs that are easy to put off but need to get done.

 
 
 
 
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Too many people, while driving across the priaires, forget to consider the sky as a landscape feature.  Manke sure you look up!

 
 
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Its slow, slow work, but the grooves for the inlay are done and I have started making progress on inlaying the veneer lines on the viola da gamba back.

 
 
 
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