No problem looking up another record for you Roger-- it's important to have the right record with the canoe! And, it's always interesting to me.
Old Town 141288 was built while WWII was winding down, and one can't help imagining what was going on in the hearts and minds of the people working on this canoe. I began wondering if Old Town, like many other factories, hired more women to work during WWII because the men were off to war... anyway, this sort of thing adds to the boat's history!
The canoe was half-built in December of 1944 and shipped June 25, 1945... so it saw VE-Day.
The build record states that this canoe is a 16 foot AA grade Otca... and then it goes on to say the open gunwales are ash and the decks are ash and thwarts are ash... and that's CS (common sense) grade. There's no notation visible beside the seats (no quotation marks to indicate they are also ash) and no statement about slat seats. I would assume slat seats were used, because of the war and the unavailability of cane. The canoe has a keel and outside stems-- the outside stem is an extra strip of hardwood wrapping each end-- adds to the look of the canoe and helps protect it from enthusiastic campers, heading straight for the dock.
This canoe was originally painted bright red on the top and guide special green on the bottom before shipment to Anawana Camp in Hurleyville, New York on June 25, 1945.
I hope that's the right one. Copy of the scan is below. Scans of approximately 210,000 records were created with substantial grants from the Wooden Canoe Heritage Association (WCHA) and others. Additional information about the project to preserve these records is available at
http://www.wcha.org/ot_records/ if you want more details.
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http://www.wcha.org/wcha/ to learn more about the WCHA,
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Kathy