Trent University History Professor Emeritus Dr. John Jennings (O Ony) is a celebrated author, scholar and a driving force behind Peterborough’s Canadian Canoe Museum.

The canoe is considered one of Canada’s most important symbols, and a vessel from which the story of Canada can be told across centuries. Prof. John Jennings believes the canoe is the only symbol that is still truly Canadian.

"The Mounties have been given away to Hollywood and Disney. Our brand of hockey's been debased. The canoe is the closest thing we have to a national symbol," he said.

Professor Jennings’ scholarship focused on the history of the Western Canadian and American frontier and in Canada's relations with the world during the twentieth century. His research and writing focus on with the early relations between the Mounted Police and Indigenous People, the ranching frontiers of Canada and the U.S., and early exploration, especially by canoe.

Prof. Jennings book: The Canoe: A Living Tradition (https://quillandquire.com/review/the-canoe-a-living-tradition/) is considered to be an important publication on Canada’s canoe history and culture. Professor Jennings was appointed to the Order of Ontario, the province’s highest honour, in 2021.

One of Canada’s foremost historians of canoe history, Dr. John Jennings was a central figure in the creation and development of the Canadian Canoe Museum in Peterborough — now a nationally recognized Canadian institution, which educates Canadians about the contribution of the canoe — a national iconic symbol,” reads a media release announcing the appointments.

Originally from Calgary, Alberta, Jennings moved to Peterborough and began teaching history at Trent University in Peterborough in 1976, where he was introduced to canoeing.

“I started becoming fascinated with the canoe and took my first canoe trips when I came to Trent and got involved with a small group of faculty who were passionate canoeists,” he said in a 1999 interview with Jim Barber published in Trent magazine.

That group of Trent professors eventually turned into a committee (and then a board of trustees) that worked to fulfill the dream of University of Toronto professor Kirk Wipper to create a national canoe museum (Wipper had collected more than 600 canoes). The committee’s original idea in 1982 was to establish the museum on Trent’s main campus, but that plan was shelved.

“We officially acquired the collection from Professor Wipper in 1995, but up until that time we stored canoes in barns around the Peterborough area,” Jennings said in his Trent magazine interview. “We realized that a permanent site was needed.”

In 1990, the city of Peterborough and the Otonabee Region Conservation Authority offered the board four acres of land on the Trent Severn Waterway, near Beavermead Park, as a site for the museum. (Ironically, this is now going to be the location of the museum’s new facility after the museum abandoned the site beside the Peterborough Life Lock due to chemical contamination of the soil).

Despite fundraising for buildings on the site, the board was no closer to constructing the new museum. Then, Outboard Marine Corporation, which has closed its factory in Peterborough in 1990, offered the board all of its property and buildings on Monaghan Road.

The Canadian Canoe Museum was established at the Monaghan Road location in 1997. The following year, Jennings was featured in a New York Times story about the new museum.

“The canoe is really the closest thing Canada has to a national symbol,” Jennings said in that story.