Help ID canoe manufacturer

[Stuart Inglis]

Hello to all the great wisdom and experience at WCHA. I live in Halifax, Nova Scotia and have built a 6 cedar strip canoes, so I'm still pretty wet behind the ears. Recently however, I acquired an older Wood Canvass canoe that to my untrained eye needed a lot of TLC. But that the best way to learn and I can basically keep messing about with boats.

Story from the seller is: he was the third owner, and the nephew of the second owner, who bought it in 1952. The story goes that his uncle bought it in Ontario (somewhere), (or could have been Quebec) and claims it was 12 years old at that time. (so he dated her circa 1940). I'd like to verify the make and model etc. It was at some point fibreglassed. What a chore that was to remove, but so worth the effort to restore.

I'm now cleaning the inside and removing the what I think was a dark walnut looking stain. That is coming off well with a heat gun. On the bow stem I uncovered this serial number:
26P 9900 (I'mm 94.8% sure of the 26P, and 100% sure of the 9900)

Can anyone help me with that small tidbit of information?




Stuart Inglis

 

[Dan Miller]

Hi Stuart,

Your canoe is a Peterborough Canoe Company Champlain model (later High-End Champlain, to differentiate it from a different canoe model with the same name). I've attached a representative catalog page from 1938.

 

[Stuart Inglis]

Well thank you Sir. And the 9900 would be the 9900th built?
Hard to know what year it was made eh?
S

 

[Andre Cloutier]

The 9900 is a reference to an as yet unknown number system that most likely relates to a production order. 26P is as good as it gets and gives you a window of time for production but nothing more.