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Families learn history of a homegrown icon at Peterborough’s Canadian Canoe Museum

Click to play video: 'Canadian Canoe Museum Holiday family Activities'
Canadian Canoe Museum Holiday family Activities
WATCH: The Peterborough museum, which has a huge collection of notable canoes and other watercraft, is offering family activities with a historical theme over the holidays – Dec 28, 2017

With Thursday’s frigid temperatures and the kids off school, many families headed over to the Canadian Canoe Museum in Peterborough to take part in holiday activities designed to highlight the importance of the canoe in Canadian history and culture.

The museum, which has several hundred historic canoes and watercraft in its collection, welcomed adults and kids alike on Thursday to take part in crafts and other interactive experiences that explored the significance of canoes in the life of Canadians through history, such as those engaged in the fur trade.

“We find we have a lot of new families as well, people who  have just moved to the area, so they are looking for things to do in their new community,” says museum staffer Haley Nabuurs, an anthropology graduate from Trent University. “And we still have people come in saying [they] didn’t even know we had a canoe museum in Peterborough.”
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Established in 1997 and  based on a collection of canoes gathered by outdoor-education pioneer Kirk Wipper, the museum is always looking for ways to engage with the community.

“We were looking for something to do, get the kids out of the house — it’s freezing cold outside, so I noticed there were kids’ activities taking place here and I haven’t been in a while, so we came,” said visitor Eliza Nicholson. “There’s lots of hands-on activities — the kids are learning a little bit about history.”

Family activities continue at the museum until Jan. 7.

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