Bark Canoes: The Art and Obsession of Tappan Adney

Geoffrey Cragg is a tenured instructor in the Faculty of Faculty of
Communication and Culture at the University of Calgary in Alberta.

Bark Canoes is a celebration of the life and work of Tappan Adney. One
of the first journalists to visit the Klondike gold rush with a camera,
Adney was also a bestselling author, an accomplished canoeist and
outdoorsman, and a largely self-taught scholar of the customs and
languages of Native Canadians. Yet he lived his later life in poverty
and obscurity in rural New Brunswick. Perhaps his greatest work is the
collection of 1:5 scale model bark canoes that reside in the Mariners’
Museum in Newport News, Virginia.

John Jennings, vice chair of the Canadian Canoe Museum and author of
The Canoe: A Living Tradition, is well qualified to record and interpret
Adney’s work. His book includes a brief biography of Adney and three
short chapters: one by Adney on the building of a birchbark canoe, and
two on the historical and cultural significance of the bark canoe. The
core of the book, however, is a large photographic section devoted to
Adney’s 110 model canoes; the photos convey his passionate concern
with fidelity to the originals and attention to detail. This brilliant
photographic record of Adney’s major work accords him the recognition
that so unjustly eluded him in his lifetime.