Louis A. Picard
Bonjour,
The information comes from the current owner of the company. I have more material that will be available when I finish the write-up. The Picard family have been building canoes for 250 years Louis A. Picard (still living) owned the company from about 1947 to 1995. His nephew, Christian took over in 1995 and has 35 years experience making canoes. Christian tells me he could probably give a built date on canoes made before 1967. His father, grand-father and great-grand-father all used the same basic construction but small variations allow an approximation. Since 1967 the canoes are stamped with a serial number on the inside face of the inner rail near the seats on both sides of the canoe. The rough format is "ZLP 345678". ZLP identifies Louis A. Picard as the builder, QPK identifies Christian. The last two digits give the built year give or take a few years. I will need to have another talk with Christian, some details are not clear...
One last tidbit... The arrow-head deck and the double ribing are characteristics of the Picard canoes. Christian says these were naturally omitted for canoes built under contract for Chestnut, Rice, St-Maurice and other canoe manufacturers.
Hope this helps,
Best,
Louis Michaud