Canoe maker turns to creating “winter canoes” to keep busy
Retired-business-professor-turned-toboggan-maker Norm Betts wouldn’t advise his students to follow his path.
“My advice to anyone who wants to get into it is: You’re never going to get rich at it,” he says with a chuckle from his workshop on the Miramichi River in Doaktown, NB. “I have no aspirations of that. We pay the bills. It’s a labour of love. We really enjoy doing it.”
Betts got the idea to build classic wooden sleds after running into a Fredericton toboggan team whose members competed at the U.S. National Toboggan Championship across the border in Camden, Maine.
“It’s tough to find a good quality toboggan,” says Betts. “They had to make their own and it was quite an effort to make one.”
Making them was a natural fit for Betts, who’s been building canvas, cedar rib-plank canoes and sprucing up heirloom ones out of his workshop for more than a decade.
“I have the shop, the people. I could get the wood and I knew what to do to process it,” he says. His two workmates—retired long-haul trucker Jim Lyons and younger next-door neighbour Barry Bowes—thought the idea was nuts.
“I have crazy ideas all of the time—about one in 25 works,” says Betts, who retired from the University of New Brunswick in 2019 after more than three decades as a business professor. “I made a model for a toboggan, and it got me thinking I could sell a few.”
His company, Miramichi Canoes, started floating the notion of “winter canoes,” AKA wooden toboggans, on social media in the fall of 2020. There was only a short run of a few months until Christmas, but the idea took off.
Some of the many steps from tree to toboggan; selecting a log, sawing it and steaming the end pieces to make a curve.
He sold 30 of the $400 custom creations emblazoned with the slogan “It’s all downhill from here” and personalized with family member names. This year he’s hoping to sell 50. His team has come up with a second slogan: “It’s snow problem.”
Grandparents were among the first to line up. “They want to see their grandkids with rosy cheeks and get their faces out of computer screens,” says Betts. Active, outdoorsy parents are also showing lots of interest, says Betts. “I don’t know if it’s COVID or if there were always people like this, but there’s a whole cadre of young couples with active children and they’re getting outside and tobogganing is just one more great activity to do,” he says. “It feels great to create an activity where kids aren’t looking on their phone, although somebody said I should put a phone holder on the front of the toboggan. I don’t think I will.”
The toboggans fit right in with the buy-local trend, adding another boost to their appeal.
“If you buy one of our toboggans, I can take you to the stump of the woodlot owner who cut the tree down,” says Betts. “Every cent goes right in the Doaktown economy…The guy who cuts trees makes bit of money, the guy who trucks them to the bandsaw makes a bit of money, the bandsaw guy makes a bit of money, Jim and Barry make a little bit of money and, every now and then, I make a little bit of money.”
People are willing to pay for heirloom-quality products, he says. “I have no aspirations of making 10,000, but 1,000 wouldn’t be bad, or even 100. We’re not trying to crank anything out. We’re a craft shop.”
Betts rented a U-Haul, donned a Santa hat, and made deliveries around New Brunswick before Christmas last year. “I kind of felt like Santa Claus,” he says.
Shipping costs might limit potential sales beyond the Maritimes, although one enthusiastic buyer in Toronto was willing to pay almost as much as the toboggan itself for delivery.
Mike Durland, a retired Bay Street banker who is now chancellor of Saint Mary’s University, bought one to have fun on his farm north of the city with his new grandson, Ellis.
“We have tried it out a few times. It is a great for transporting Ellis around the farm. Catherine, my wife, has made a little seat for him to use,” says the Middleton, NS native, who has stayed in touch with Betts over the years since the two were students at Queen’s University. “We have hit the slopes with it—it is a rocket—very fast, and obviously a throwback to years gone by and the wooden toboggan.
“Not to mention—it is absolutely gorgeous.”
Miramichi Canoes makes three or four new, 16-foot, built-to-order canoes a year at $3,500 apiece. Betts, Lyons and Bowes are busiest restoring classic, 50-to-100-year-old canoes, including 30 dropped off by customers for repairs last year.
Many were manufactured by the Chestnut Canoe Factory, a Fredericton business started by brothers Will and Harry Chestnut in 1897. With demand spurred by wealthy Americans who discovered New Brunswick’s hinterlands, the company grew to produce thousands of wood-canvas canoes a year. Sadly, Chestnut went under in 1979, years after expanding and trying to ramp up in the mass market with fiberglass canoes.
“I lived through its demise. It employed a lot of people,” says Betts. “They lost their focus and went bankrupt. I always thought it was one of the great New Brunswick tragedies.”
Chestnut also made toboggans, not unlike the model designed by Betts and his crew. But he won’t be following in Chestnut’s footsteps and building wooden snowshoes, a product the iconic company churned out during World War II for Canadian troops.
“You can get a good pair at Costco for $69, made out of aluminum,” says Betts. “You cannot buy a good toboggan.”
Mass market wooden toboggans are an inferior product made out of maple, he says. His are made of white ash, a hardwood plentiful in New Brunswick that bends well and has a beautiful grain. First Nations used ash to make everything from baskets to gunnels for canoes to snowshoes, he says.
This summer, Betts started tinkering on a new product after having an “ah-ha” moment in the middle of the night: hand-crafted stand-up paddleboards made of cedar and fibreglass. “You can go to Costco and pay $600 or $700 for a blow-up paddle board, the same way you can buy a plastic canoe or cheap toboggan,” he says. “The personalization of our products is really our thing. During the season, we move from one to the other.”
Miramichi Canoes does a bit of social media promotion, but most of its sales come through word of mouth.
While he owns the business, Betts says it’s a team effort. “I’m the 75,000-foot crazy idea guy, the go-go-go. Jim is the whoa, whoa, whoa and Barry is just extremely talented. He’s very fussy. Finishing is his specialty.”
To make a six-foot toboggan, Betts, Lyons and Bowes take white ash from the bandsaw mill and turn it into 2.5-inch planed strips. Eight-foot lengths are cut, with the extra two feet to allow for the one-foot oval at the front.
They stand the strips up in steel cylinders and boil them. Once sufficiently steamed, the ends are bent and the pieces are put together in a custom mould designed by the shop where they stay for at least three or four hours.
“We can make three a day if we push it,” says Betts. “It’s just like Santa’s workshop.”
Because the cross pieces are personalized, typically with family or business names, the toboggans are made-to-order with the etchings completed before assembly. Screws are countersunk on the bottom of the toboggan. For a smoother ride and speed, Betts includes a package of old-school paraffin wax with each order.
“It’s what grandmothers used to seal a jar of pickles before mason jars came along,” says Betts. “You can rub it on the toboggan with an old iron like you would with cross country skis.”
The toboggans are designed with a double bumper at the front, an addition Betts says was fueled by personal experience. “I used to run into trees with them as a kid,” he says.
Betts is offering build-your-own classes for canoes and toboggans, with a COVID-19 pandemic-inspired staycation at the homestead he inherited from his grandmother’s family, located behind the workshop. After a week, students could go home with their own canoe, or do a toboggan-making class over a weekend. A paddleboard would take somewhere in between, with wait periods in between layers of fibreglass.
Betts and Lyons, who shared a treehouse as kids, went to Maine about 25 years ago for a similar DIY workshop on canoe-building. “We learned the intricacies of what to do and, more importantly, what not to do,” he says. “It’s become a bit of a lost art.”
“My wife makes fun of me when I sand wood and see the beautiful grain. To me it’s the Mona Lisa,” says Betts. “People tell us what we do is art. I never thought of it that way, but I guess it is.”