Skip to content

Allure and charm of wood on water entices builders

Hand-built boats combine art and craftsmanship
boat builders
ROWING GENTLY: After building it with her own hands, local resident Maureen Parsons takes her wooden skiff out on Powell Lake for only the second time. Dave Brindle photo

Building a wooden boat calls for passion, patience and precision. People who have spent hours building one with their own hands say it also requires determination, dedication, desire and a dream.

According to Maureen Parsons, who built a 14-foot cedar-strip Rice Lake Skiff rowboat from red and yellow cedar and fir, a wooden boat is not a thing; it is a beauty and a pleasure.

She has christened her craft Little Red for the red cedar and “because it’s little,” she said.

For Parsons, she said part of her drive to build the boat was her love of wood and to accomplish something her father had done.

“My dad built a boat that took us up and down the coast when we were kids and I always wanted to build a small one,” said Parsons. “We lived on Powell and Haslam lakes, so I come by it naturally.”

Parsons said her father’s boat was very functional, but not very good looking. “I wanted something beautiful to look at,” she said.

Parsons said she wanted to carry on an important part of her upbringing “and I just love that woody design, that pure wood colour.”

A commitment is required to build a small craft such as a dory, skiff, canoe or kayak that, in time, can be passed down from generation to generation.

“My boys already have a claim on it,” said Parsons. “I might have to build another one. I might try a canoe.”

She said she built her boat out of a sense of nostalgia, accomplishment and function.

“I was thinking a kayak would be cool, but you can’t take your dogs,” said Parsons, coxing her border collie puppy Jiggs onboard. “That was important to me. This will be her first trip, so we’ll see. I took my old guy out, he’s 12 and was not impressed.”

A wooden boat is art that moves, according to Jurgen Koppen, a wooden-boat crafter for 40 years.

“I can work in my own shop,” said Koppen, who builds kayaks for his company Toquenatch Creek Cedar Kayaks. “I can set my own agenda and don’t really have to subject myself to pressures; I can do it when I want to. I feel totally blessed because I found a niche where I can enjoy myself.”

Much of the enjoyment, he said, is the reaction and appreciation from people who pay upwards of $17,000 for one of his kayaks, which are sleek and shiny with elaborate inlay designs, sometimes with first nations influences.

“I certainly have been quite inspired,” he said. “I did build some boats in the past that had extensive Haida inlay; it really lends itself for inlay work.”

According to Koppen, one of those designs was by celebrated Northwest Coast artist Glen Rabena.

“He is quite famous for his designs and gave me permission to transfer his design to a deck and it looked great,” said Koppen.

Koppen said his work is rewarding and satisfying because people have emotional responses to it, but he finds what he does hard to distinguish between art and craft.

“The division lines are not quite clear to me,” he said. “A craftsman builds something that has utility and, in a sense, I use the kayaks as a canvas to put some art onto it; so it’s mobile art.”