Cedar Strip Canoe Building in British Columbia: Methods and Centres

This article covers background on cedar strip construction as practised in British Columbia. It does not provide step-by-step building instructions.

The Material: Western Red Cedar in BC

Western red cedar (Thuja plicata) grows along the Pacific coast from northern California to Alaska and throughout the interior wet belt of BC. It is the timber most closely associated with the coastal cultures of the Pacific Northwest, where it was used for everything from house planks to bent-wood boxes and ocean-going canoes. Its properties — light weight, straight grain, natural oil content that resists rot and repels moisture — make it among the best woods available for boat planking.

In strip-plank construction, the cedar is milled into narrow strips, typically 3/4 inch wide and between 1/4 and 3/8 inch thick. The strips are edged with a cove on one side and a bead on the other, which allows adjacent strips to seat into each other without gaps as they follow the curve of the mould. This bead-and-cove profile is the standard for canoe and kayak hulls; for heavier hulls, flat-sided strips are used and the builder fills any gaps with glue before planking proceeds.

The Construction Sequence

A cedar strip canoe is built over a series of temporary plywood moulds, called stations, set up on a strongback — a stiff beam or ladder structure that holds the stations at the correct spacing and alignment. The moulds represent the cross-sectional shape of the hull at intervals of roughly 12 inches along the length. They are cut from plywood using a published plan or a design developed by the builder.

Once the strongback and stations are set, planking begins at the gunwale — the top edge of the hull — and works down toward the keel. Each strip is glued to the one before it with waterproof glue applied into the cove profile. Staples or clamps hold the strips in place until the glue cures. On a 16-foot canoe, planking typically requires 50 to 70 strips per side, depending on the strip width and hull shape. The planking process takes the most time — a first-time builder working alone typically spends 60 to 100 hours reaching a fully planked hull.

After planking, the hull is faired — sanded smooth to remove any irregularities between strips — and then sheathed in fibreglass cloth set in epoxy resin. The cloth is laid dry over the hull and saturated with epoxy, which bonds it to the wood surface. Once cured, the laminate is sanded and a second fill coat of epoxy is applied. The inside of the hull receives the same treatment. The result is a wood-core sandwich with fibreglass on both surfaces, which gives the hull its final strength and makes it waterproof regardless of surface damage to the outermost finish coats.

Gunwales — the structural rails along the top edge of the hull — are added after the hull is removed from the mould. Thwarts, seats, and a carrying yoke complete the interior. Finished canoes typically weigh between 14 and 22 kilograms depending on hull length, strip thickness, and how much resin was applied.

Active Programmes on the BC Coast

The Cowichan Bay Maritime Centre, on the Saanich Inlet south of Duncan on Vancouver Island, has been the most visible site for wooden boat building and heritage preservation on the BC coast since it was established by the Cowichan Wooden Boat Society in 1987. The centre operates a well-equipped workshop that has been used to build dinghies, large wooden masts, and canoes, alongside restoration work on classic wooden boats. Its Snuhwulh'e'w't-hw (Canoe Shed) exhibit documents dugout canoe history in collaboration with Quw'utsun elders and holds examples of traditional small craft that shaped the region's watercraft tradition before strip-plank methods arrived.

The Pender Harbour Living Heritage Society, operating in the Sunshine Coast area of BC, has run cedar strip canoe building courses as part of its heritage programming. A January 2026 build session saw a small group of participants work through the full construction sequence from setting up the mould stations to glassing the finished hull — a format that has been repeated in various forms across the province for decades.

Carrying Place Canoe Works in Ontario has documented its cedar strip process in detail and its published accounts have been used as reference material by builders across Canada, including in BC. The overlap between Ontario and BC canoe-building traditions reflects the portability of the strip-plank method — the tools, materials, and plans are standardised enough to be used almost anywhere in the country.

Indigenous Canoe Traditions as Context

Strip-plank canoe building in BC does not exist in isolation from the Indigenous dugout canoe tradition that preceded it. The two are different construction methods — dugout canoes are carved from a single cedar log rather than planked — but they share a material and a set of design principles shaped by the same coastal environment.

The Cowichan Bay Maritime Centre's canoe exhibit is one of the more carefully documented intersections between the two traditions in BC. The centre has worked with Quw'utsun elders to create records of canoe types, construction practices, and the role of small vessels in community life on the Saanich Inlet. This context situates the strip-plank canoes built in the centre's workshop within a longer history of cedar watercraft on the same waterway.

Several First Nations communities on the BC coast have also maintained or revived dugout canoe carving as a distinct practice separate from strip-plank construction. The revival of ocean-going war canoe paddling — particularly the Pulling Together canoe journeys that began in the 1990s — brought renewed attention to large dugout canoe construction and the cultural knowledge embedded in it. These are not directly connected to the strip-plank tradition but they share the broader context of wooden watercraft on the Pacific coast.

What the Current State of BC Cedar Strip Building Looks Like

As of 2026, cedar strip canoe building in BC is concentrated in community heritage programmes, small independent builders, and occasional school or club projects. It is not a commercial industry — production volumes are low and the market for new strip-plank canoes competes with mass-produced kevlar and fibreglass canoes that are lighter and less expensive to purchase if not to build.

The method persists because the build process itself has value. A cedar strip canoe takes 150 to 300 hours of work from raw materials to a finished, varnished hull. Most people who build one keep it and use it for decades. The craft knowledge involved — reading wood grain, achieving a fair hull surface, applying fibreglass laminate cleanly — is retained by the individual builder and does not require institutional preservation to survive. Community build programmes extend that knowledge into a social context where it can be passed between generations, which is the primary reason organisations like the Cowichan Bay Maritime Centre and the Pender Harbour Living Heritage Society continue to structure programmes around the full build sequence rather than finished-boat appreciation.