600-year-old canoe found

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Doug
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600-year-old canoe found

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http://www.fftimes.com/index.php/3/2007-01-25/29345

600-year-old canoe found
January 25, 2007

(CP)

SAINT JOHN, N.B. —Storms usually sink boats, not bring them back to life.

But it took a tempest to release a link to Canada’s pre-European past from its prison beneath a salt marsh on New Brunswick’s Acadian Peninsula.

Ella and Jean-Claude Robichaud of Val-Comeau, N.B. were walking on the beach in the summer of 2003 when they discovered a dugout canoe that experts have determined was carved by aboriginals 600 years ago.

“When I saw it, I said, ‘Oh, that’s a big piece of wood,’” Ella Robichaud recalled yesterday. “But my husband turned around and said, ‘It’s a canoe.’”

The five-metre-long white pine boat is believed to be the oldest ever found in the Maritimes.

“We were excited,” said Robichaud. “You could tell it was very old because it was all carved from one log.

“The work they did without modern tools is amazing.”

The Robichauds wanted to preserve the boat, but it was too heavy to carry. So they asked three neighbours to return with a trailer the next day and brought the canoe to their home, where it sat for more than three years.

Robichaud sought advice from the Canadian Museum of Civilization and the provincial Department of Wellness, Culture and Sport, and was told to protect it with plastic, keep it in the shade, and put it in the water.

In November, the canoe was transported to the New Brunswick Museum in Saint John, N.B., where it’s undergoing a lengthy preservation process.

It’s believed the dugout was trapped in a nearby salt marsh until a storm washed it out in 2003.

“Anything that’s wood that’s been waterlogged, once you remove it from the water, it starts to dry out,” said Peter Larocque, the museum’s curator of New Brunswick cultural history and art.

“The water in the cells of the wood evaporates, cells disintegrate and just collapse, and the whole thing would just eventually turn to dust.”

The museum is consulting with Parks Canada on a process that replaces the water with a special solvent that will allow the wood to retain its shape.
"Some people hear the song in the quiet mist of a cold morning..... But for other people the song is loudest in the evening when they are sitting in front of a tent, basking in the camp fire's warmth. This is when I hear it loudest ...." BM
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