DCHP-1 Online

Northwest canoe Hist.

• a birchbark canoe 25 to 35 feet long, 5 to 6 feet wide, and 2 to 2 1/2 feet deep, capable of carrying some 1 1/2 to 2 tons of goods, a crew of 8 or 9, and 2 or 3 passengers, used primarily on the waterways north and west of Lake Superior.

  See also: North canoe  

  • 1793  (1911)  I went to-day for the first time in the North-West canoe.
  • 1823  (1954)  An ordinary Northwest canoe, manned by five men, carries about 3,000 pounds, and seldom draws, when laden, more than eighteen inches of water.
  • 1905  (1954)  The usual route with northwest canoes, via Saskatchewan Fort Assiniboine and Athabaska river, took us to the source of the latter, where is Jasper House (so named frome Jasper Hawse, a northwest company's clerk in the early part of the century).
  • 1963  On the same day . . . forty-two colonists left for Canada in North West canoes. . . .