The amphibious tugboat pictured here was invented in 1889. Called an “alligator,” it is a wood-fed paddlewheel steamer capable of warping 60,000 boom logs in a day, then winching itself on a temporary railway of logs overland to the next lake. Built in 1905 and taken out of service in 1946, the William M. is one of only three alligators remaining in existence. For the last 49 years, it has rested on the shore of a small creek 600 metres down a wheelchair accessible, stone dust path at the Algonquin Logging Museum.

Located on Highway 60 just inside Algonquin Park’s east gate, the Logging Museum has a bookstore, theatre and souvenir shop, but it’s outside—in the bush, above a log chute, behind the wheel of the William M. and aboard a locomotive—where Algonquin’s logging history really comes alive. The Logging Museum, like hundreds of others across the country, didn’t make this issue’s list of North America’s top six interpretive centres. Nevertheless, it is outdoors, interesting for kids and within an hour’s drive of my house, putting it at the top of my family’s favorites list.

By comparison, a 10-minute drive deeper into Algonquin Park is the Visitors Centre—a state-of-the-art interpretive facility opened in 1993 and heralded as a must-visit on any trip through the park. We do visit. However, all of the exhibits are indoors—like a museum, complete with a cafeteria. My four-year-old son refers to the Visitors Centre as, “you know Dad, that place where we eat pie.”

Stuffed wolves hide safely behind Plexiglas well protected from curious little fingers. The French lumberjack’s story of the log drive is interesting to small children for all of 10 seconds. After an hour inside the Visitors Centre, both kids and parents go crazy like moose with brainworm (see the exhibit if you have time). Quick kids, back outside to the wheelhouse of the William M.

In a hurried, blackberry-driven, concrete world so focused on higher marks and organized sports, it’s alluring to blow into these visitor centres for a canned, one-hour educational tour. However, study after study from education and health organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics says free and unstructured child-centred play is healthy and even essential to the development of children. Free play is even more beneficial when it’s outdoors in nature. This means that if we want our children to learn more, be more active and be socially and emotionally well balanced, we need to turn off our ringers, get them outside and let their imaginations lead the way.

Dan Strickland, author of the Logging Museum’s interpretive guidebook, writes that the twice-rebuilt alligator will never again belch out smoke and sparks as it struggles across Algonquin’s lakes. Perhaps, but in the imaginations of my children, the log drive has just begun and there are plenty of trees to be floated downstream. “Stoke up that fire Katie, we need more steam.”

—Scott MacGregor

This article appeared in Canoeroots & Family Camping, Early Summer 2009. Download our free iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch App or Android App or read it here.

This article originally appeared in Canoeroots and Family Camping magazine.

If there’s one thing that most people think they know about canoe design, it’s this: A longer canoe is always faster than a shorter one.

Well over a century ago, British engineer and hydrodynamicist William Froude came up with a simple formula that, to a certain extent, proves this theory. Froude determined that the top sustain- able speed in knots of a watercraft is equal to the square root of its waterline length multiplied by a constant value of 1.34.

This means that a 16-foot canoe would have a hull speed of 5.36 knots, or roughly 10 kilometers per hour. Of course, it’s possible to propel a 16-foot canoe faster than 10 kilometers per hour, but according to Froude, beyond this speed frictional resistance increases rapidly.

However, it’s clear that Froude wasn’t thinking about paddlers. There is a threshold where a canoe becomes excessively long and in- efficient. Naval architect John Winters, whose designs are built by Swift and Hand Crafted Canoes, recalls a man who entered a “very long canoe” in a marathon race. “Despite a superhuman effort, he lost,” writes Winters in The Shape of the Canoe, a comprehensive book on canoe design. “Excessive wetted surface…did him in.”

A pair of paddlers can move a 16-foot prospector faster than two paddlers in a 26-foot voyageur canoe because of the greater surface area (and corresponding resistance) of the larger hull.

So where does this fit into canoe design? According to Winters, length is only one element juggled in the conception of a canoe.

First off, Winters outlines the canoe’s desired usage—flatwater, whitewater, sporting or tripping, solo or tandem. Then he sets an ideal cruising speed for the hull and works backwards to determine a possible length range.

Beam, draft, displacement and dozens of other measurements are compared as a ratio to length to yield values to estimate how easily the canoe will move through the water and how well it will suit a given application. This is why “boats of widely different lengths can have similar performance characteristics,” says Winters.

The reason tandem recreational canoes typically measure 15–17 feet while solos are traditionally a foot or so shorter is simply a matter of stability and space. These lengths essentially yield the most user-friendly ratios when compared to the appropriate widths to make a canoe sufficiently comfortable and voluminous.

Did the generations of Aboriginal builders who designed canoes have their own mathematical formulas? Not very likely, says Winters. “Thousands of years of trial and error are bound to get close, even if it doesn’t explain why it works.” —Conor Mihell

This article appeared in Canoeroots & Family Camping, Spring 2012. Download our free iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch App or Android App or read it here.

I have a lot of Jimmy Buffet on my iPod. I can sing along to more than Margaritaville and I’ve read all his books. In 1998, when Jimmy turned 50 and I was toying with the idea of starting a whitewater magazine, he wrote his autobiography, A Pirate Looks at Fifty.

On the jacket of my hardcover copy Buffet summed up his life in 400 words and I thought I’d try to do the same someday. Looking down the losing end of 39, here are my 400 words, in case I don’t make it to 50.

I survived my small-town youth of motocross, snowmobiles and four wheelers. I drove an 18-wheeler hauling gasoline for awhile, graduated high school not being able to spell, and went off to university to become an engineer.

I did my first canoe trip, wrecked my grandfather’s cedarstrip, sold all my things with motors, dropped out of school and protested the first Gulf War. I got a job at an outdoor center, learned to paddle whitewater, grew my hair and got back into school in an outdoor program. I became an open boat instructor, got a job as a raft guide, swam a lot and drank too much warm beer.

I re-met the right girl (she was in my kindergarten class and I kissed her in grade two), went on to teachers’ college, graduated and sea kayaked 1,600 miles through the Great Lakes. We learned to snowboard, blew off to the mountains, slept in my truck, ran out of money, missed warm rivers and drove home.

I helped start the Paddler Co-op, a non-profit paddling school, and got the idea to start a magazine. I left the paddling school, broke up with the right girl and moved to a rented shack by the river in Palmer Rapids.

I got lonely, proposed to the right girl, bought my first computer, racked up every credit card that arrived in the mail, and launched a 16-page trial issue of Rapid. I paddled every day, learned to use spell check, ate too many frozen pizzas, married the right girl and started a sea kayak magazine and, a year later, Canoeroots.

I hired an editor, started a paddling film festival, built a house in the Valley, moved out of the shack, drove a Corvette, had a little boy, cut my hair, took over a paddling festival and bought another magazine, for a dollar—Family Camping.

I bought a good camera, took a photo of a friend running a dam, ran the photo in Rapid, almost got arrested and nearly lost my business to the hydro power company—the owner of the dam.

I launched a kayak fishing magazine, had a baby girl, lost the fight to save national river navigation rights, bought property on the river and started a web-based paddling television show. We became the magazines of the American Canoe Association, I cancelled a family paddling trip, realized it was time to slow down a little and gave up the paddling festival. I took my kids paddling.

When I realized I’d be 40 this year, I stopped drinking coffee, found my running shoes, ordered another boat and booked my first northern river trip.

Now I’m trying to figure out what comes next. 

This article originally appeared in Rapid, Early Summer 2011. Download our free iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch App or Android App or read it here.