Traditionally, a wood/canvas canoe has a cedar hull. Some of the early builders chose red cedar for planking and white cedar for ribs, with a clear finish that permitted the color-difference to stand out.
Cedar is light weight and rot resistant. Looking at the old catalogs in "the Historic Wood Canoe and Boat Company Catalog Collection" CDs available from
http://www.wcha.org/catalog/ and
http://www.dragonflycanoe.com/cdrom.htm on the web, I've noticed that B.N. Morris initially used pine planking for the hulls of second-grade canoes, but early-on he switched to using cedar for the planking on all his canoes. Decades later, many of these canoes are still in use. Cedar is the standard, for planking a wood/canvas.
Mahogany has traditionally been the wood species used by many of the early canoe-builders for trimming the hulls of first-grade wood/canvas. First grade Rushton Indian Girls were trimmed in cherry. Seems to me that "fashion" influenced what was thought of as "first grade"... but weight of the wood, durability, ease of use (in bending and shaping) and other factors probably influenced what was "fashionable".
As Paul said, the choice is up to the builder-- here is where you can make your mark, follow your artistic dictates as well as consider what's practical.
Evan Gerrish used American Chestnut to trim his early canoes.... beautiful grain (similar to oak), yet very light in weight. Too bad it isn't available anymore (unless you cut up an old diningroom table). It's one of my favorite woods. I think we all have favorite woods, just as we have favorite colors... and you can use your favorites on your canoe.
Kathy
