Kejimkujik National Park is open again for the season and they’re launching a new project that aims to egange both visitors and Mi’kmaw youth in Mi’kmaw heritage and traditions.
The Kejimkujik Birch Bark Canoe Project will see two birch bark canoes built at a new workshop on MerryMakedge Beach.
Youth from Pictou First Nation and Bear River will help.
The public can also stop by to watch and ask questions throughout the summer and for a fee, can take part in the build on Sundays.
Sophie Borcoman, Keji’s visitor experience manager, says it’s part of a broader effort to help foster traditional knowledge sharing with Mi’kmaw youth.
“Mi’kmaw youth will actually be apprenticing with Todd Labrador who really is one of the master Mi’kmaw canoe building craftsmen.”
Labrador grew up on nearby Wildcat Reserve and spent much of his childhood in the national park with his father.
“I always felt connected to that area and really felt the presence of our ancestors, the spirits of our ancestors there,” he says.
Labrador says he wishes he had learned to build canoes in his youth, which is why he says he’s happy to head up the workshop at Keji.
Although his great-grandfather was a master builder, Labrador is mainly self taught.
Labrador says his father was raised by his great-grandfather, who hid his father and other children in the woods when police came to take them to residential schools.
That allowed his family to maintain a lot of their traditions.
Labrador learned a lot of crafts but wasn’t taught how to build canoes.
He sought knowledge from other Mi’kmaw elders in the province and in the US and he says just working with the raw materials taught him a lot.
He’s glad to now pass that knowledge on.
“I could build canoes in my workshop and close the door and I’d probably get the canoes built fairly fast but for me, it’s not about that,” says Labrador. “It’s about sharing this rare tradition with the Mi’kmaq people, with Nova Scotians, with Canada with the world.”
Labrador involves his own family as much as he can, including his 6-year-old twin grandchildren.
Although he’ll be spending most of his summer building canoes, Labrador is already thinking about new projects.
He says he’d love to build ocean going canoes for the upcoming North American Indigenous Games and for future Tall Ships visits.
“I think it’s something we are able to do and I think we need to do this, it’s a part of the culture and the traditions here in Nova Scotia that we did have at one time and we need to get back.”
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Contributed photo
Story by Brittany Wentzell
@BrittWentzell
