The new Canadian Canoe Museum in Peterborough, Ont., will feature a waterfront campus and Gathering Circle thanks to a gift of more than $1.7 million from entrepreneur and former CFLer Stuart Lang and his wife Kim.
The museum on Thursday announced the gift of $1,775,000, which will support the Lakefront Campus and Gathering Circle for the museum on Ashburnham Drive on the shore of Little Lake. Construction continues on the $40-million, 65,000-square-foot facility, with an opening expected in late summer or early fall.
Museum executive director Carolyn Hyslop said the Lakefront Campus will be a 5.3-acre, multi-purpose outdoor classroom with 1,200 feet of shoreline, canoe and kayak launches, a canoe dock and house and wetland spaces, all of which will offer activities on and off the water.
She said the docks will allow the museum to offer voyageur canoe tours, rentals, paddling programs, certification courses, and regattas.
The redevelopment of the waterfront will also include an accessible, year-round boardwalk connecting the museum to the Trans Canada Trail and the shoreline, she said.
Featuring a number of natural elements, the Gathering Circle outside the museum’s main entrance will include a water infiltration garden, wood slat benches, and a small amphitheatre surrounded by large granite boulders and white pine trees. Hyslop says the area will offer visitors “a space for reflection and education before or after their adventures.”
“We are incredibly grateful and fortunate for the passion, vision, and generosity of the Langs,” Hyslop said.
“Stu has taken great pride in helping craft an active waterfront that can complement the museum, with many of the ideas for the Lakefront Campus coming from Stu himself. This gift, confirmed in the fall of 2022, has grown to the transformative gift it is today because of the Langs’ commitment to excellence and elevating the museum to a national level.”
The Langs are well-known in Guelph, Ont., with previous major multi-million dollar contributions to the University of Guelph (the Lang School of Business and Economics is named after Stu’s father Gordon), the Ontario Veterinary College (OVC), the Guelph Humane Society, Guelph General Hospital, and to Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont. (their alma mater).
Stu won five Grey Cups with the Edmonton Eskimos (now Elks) of the Canadian Football League before joining the family business CCL Industries. Kim was formerly the artistic director of the Eden Mills Writers’ Festival and currently sits on the OVC Pet Trust board of directors.
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The couple says they have a passion for camping and canoe tripping, having attended The Taylor Statten Camps in Algonquin Park. At these camps, they say they developed a life-long passion and interest in canoeing, the outdoors, and educating youth about Canadian history.
“The Canadian Canoe Museum’s world-class collection deserves an outstanding home,” Stu said. “A fully realized Lakefront Campus and Gathering Circle are essential. They will showcase the canoe’s incredible history and cultural significance and connect people to the land and water in a way that only hands-on experiences can.
“The new museum will be a place where people can come together, learn by doing, and be inspired by the stories and traditions of the canoe,” he added.
“It’s an investment in our past, present, and future, and we are proud to be a part of it.”
The new museum will showcase more than 600 watercraft, 500 paddles and hundreds of other artifacts, books and more. The building replaces the cramped and aging museum on Monaghan Road which closed in September 2022. The Monaghan Road site used to be a factory for the former Outboard Marine Corp. but closed in 1990.
“We are so grateful to Stu and Kim Lang for their transformational donation that has led to the creation of the Lakefront Campus and Gathering Circle,” Hyslop said. “The Canadian Canoe Museum and community will feel the impact of this donation for years to come.”
The museum says more than 95 per cent of the $40-million cost for the project has been raised thanks to donors and funders across Canada along with municipal, provincial and federal contributions.
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