The prince has been a bit of a canoeist. In late July of 1987 he and his then-wife, Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, flew into a remote Canadian Barrenlands river for a couple of weeks of paddling. I spoke this weekend with a friend of one of the guides on that trip, who declared the young couple decent folks, but deplored the horde of media personnel, who requested the tents and campsites to be set up several times daily in order that they all might get photos of the event. The prince’s marriage is long gone now, but he apparently remains a pal of canoeing. The new Lakefield (if Mr. Walker is able to finish it) will be a beautiful addition to the museum.

Gazing at it on the stage, or inspecting it close up, inevitably prompts speculation about what other objects built by human beings might be as beautiful. It seems to me that, whatever they are, they must be at least minimally utilitarian, like a fine violin or cello; and that they most likely imbibe an aura from their surroundings or personal associations, like my treasured old Winchester Model 94. Being a guy, I tend to envision, as I sit here, automobiles as works of art; and the ones I consider most beautiful are the least utilitarian, like the Bugatti Royale or a roadster I once fell in love with, as remotely and hopelessly as with Sophia Loren – a 1956 Ferrari 2.7 liter 12-cylinder rocket. Those cylinders must have been about the size of a demitasse.

When I ask Mother, however, what she considers the most beautiful objects, she comes up with very disappointing answers, generally associated with house furnishings. Limoges china is the ultimate for her. She gets out her treasured set of gold-leaf teacups whenever special people show up between lunch and happy hour. It is thus impossible to get her excited about the subtleties of canoe design and performance, and features like volume, rocker, and tumblehome, all of which significantly affect the relationship between craft and paddler.

The auditorium here is jammed with hundreds of people – reserved seating only; it fills up every year – for whom those features are of interest. I can watch them looking at the Lakeside up on the stage and see them wondering: How fast is it? How heavy? Could I swing it up onto my shoulders and carry it? How is it in waves? In rapids? Would I dare take that beauty into a rapid?

You never could convene this symposium during months when the rivers and lakes of Canada are ice-free. That’s when most of the people here are on holiday, battling the bug-haunted bush of the so-called Near North, above Lake Superior; descending the fierce, waterfall-strewn rivers of eastern Labrador; or cruising the vast, open Barren Lands through herds of caribou and musk oxen. Canadians love canoes, and their nation to a large extent was explored and developed by men with paddles. What we Yanks call a canoe is in the rest of the world called a “Canadian canoe,” and in Europe a “canoe” is what we call a kayak.

There are reasons canoes developed and explored north of the border. Perhaps most important, Canada has major east-west water routes; ours run mostly north and south. So they paddled, and we walked. Another reason is that the range of the paper birch, the best natural material for building portable watercraft, grew mainly north of the 45th parallel. The Iroquois had a little of it, but most of their canoes were clunky, leaky imitations of elm, cedar, and spruce bark. The English, who settled south of the St. Lawrence, were essentially interested in recreating the English countryside – farms, barns, roads, fences – in the New World; so they moved on wheels. The French, interested in trade more than settlement, adopted native techniques, and explored all the way to the Rocky Mountains on native routes and in native boats.

As the fur trade developed, there was a need for larger boats, and the birchbark canoe expanded to 12 meters – the spectacular canot d’maitre. French-Canadian voyageurs paddled west and north as much as a thousand miles each spring, loaded with trade goods, returning in the fall with canoes full of furs for the European market. Following their routes today, equipped with plastic boats, laminated paddles, personal flotation devices, fleece jackets, and satellite phones, I can hardly imagine how they did it. Some of the rapids they dared in their huge eggshell canoes have many times frightened us ashore to prudent portages.

Yesterday we visited the Canoe Museum, and wandered past dozens of watercraft from dugouts and kayaks of almost unknown age to pleasure and kids’ camp canoes to modern racing and whitewater boats. Today we’re listening to stories and watching slides of trips some of those boats have made – all the way across Canada; all the way around Canada (incredible!); on rivers where almost no one else ever goes. Through all the stories runs the love affair between paddlers and their canoes: silent, portable craft perfectly designed for passing through wild country. As we listen, we remember our own voyages – fierce rapids that brought every nerve to full attention, long slogs against strong headwinds and waves, motionless drifting on oily current to watch white wolves watching us, and the sleep of exhaustion at the end of the day. Winter’s the time to dream.