Mark Morgen – Building the Wood Canvas Canoe

Mark Morgen and his wife Carol moved to the Grand Marais area 6 years ago after retiring from a 37-year career as an engineer for 3M Company. He has built over 20 canoes and kayaks, as well as one sailboat. The next current project will probably be a tandem sea kayak. He enjoys camping and canoeing and is learning to sail. Morgen also has a part-time summer job with an outfitter, running the tow boat on Sag.

The wood canvas canoe was a direct offshoot of the Native American’s Birch Bark Canoe. In the early 1900s, using modern (for the time) materials and leveraging the American public’s thirst for outdoor recreation, several canoe companies began building wood canvas canoes on forms, revolutionizing canoe building. This talk will primarily focus on wood canvas construction techniques and how they differ from bark canoe construction, as well as more modern construction.