Natural Birch Bark Canoes (Tom Byers)

Tom Byers, a Metis birchbark canoe builder, has worked on the banks of the Vermilion River near Killarney Wilderness Park in northern Ontario since 1994. He builds canoes by traditional methods using birch bark, spruce root lashings, cedar sheathing and gunwales, hardwood thwarts and a spruce gum and bear fat sealant, without power tools, and has completed over 70 canoes.