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INUVIK
Kevin Floyd says sometimes you can't improve on the past.

Kevin Floyd has one of the traditional kayaks he's been experimenting with strapped to the roof of his vehicle. The avid outdoorsman has founded the Inuvik Qayaq Club to bring back an appreciation for traditional kayak construction. - Shawn Giilck/NNSL photo

Floyd is an expert Inuvik outdoorsman and the president of the Inuvik Qayaq Club. For a few years now, he's been working on restoring an appreciation for the traditional kayaking knowledge, designs and techniques of the Mackenzie Delta region.

That's one of the main reasons why he founded the club, to foster a renaissance of traditional paddling activities.

He's been doing that by building boats by hand that closely approximate those old designs and tapping into the knowledge of the remaining elders who remember the ancient skills.

In the process, Floyd has found out how well-adapted and intelligent that traditional knowledge truly is.

His latest boats use modern materials, such as Kevlar instead of animal skins, but otherwise closely approximate what he believes the traditional skin-boats to have been like.

Floyd said he first began dabbling with the idea of researching and resurrecting the delta traditions while living in Victoria. An acquaintance introduced him to a traditional paddle design, and it didn't take long for Floyd to recognize the benefits.

That paddle was quieter, and allowed him to manoeuvre closer to shore without disturbing wildlife such as seals, Floyd said.

That got him thinking about what a traditional boat could do. At the time, he was also plotting a solo voyage from Vancouver Island around Alaska, and into the Beaufort Sea and on to the Delta region.

That project fell by the wayside, Floyd said, as life intervened, but the desire to experiment with the traditional ways didn't.

Some time later, he found himself in the Delta anyway, as both he and his wife Jen Lam had jobs offered here.

It didn't take long for him to rekindle his interest in paddling on the home waters. It took longer to track down the basic information he needed, though.

Some of that vital knowledge was found in books, Floyd said, while much of it came from conversations with local people, particularly elders, who remembered much of the kayaking traditions.

"That was just lucky," he said, that so much knowledge remained.

He has yet to give his replica traditional Mackenzie Delta boats a full workout and test on the river and the Delta, but what Floyd has seen so far has left him deeply impressed.

"They far outperform any manufactured boat I've tried," he said. "They are more agile, they're fast and they're stable."

He spoke of how, during a session at the Midnight Sun swimming pool, he was able to paddle one of his most recent boats backwards and remain tighter to a post than he had ever been able to do before.

"It was incredible," Floyd said. "I think these boats will have a reasonable cruising speed, but they will have a high sprint speed, and they're agile too."

All of those are elements honed over generations by people with a need for a practical, functional boat, yet one that still retained some elements of style.

Floyd said his latest boats feature the typical horns on both the stern and bow. He's not sure of the exact function, and neither is anyone he's talked to. That leads him to suspect it might simply be ornamentation as much as anything.

He's planning to spend some time over the remainder of the summer testing the boats out on the Delta.

There's been a lot of interest locally in the boats, and no lack of people wanting to try them out. Interestingly though, Floyd said he has had trouble recruiting Inuvialuit into the program.

"I get maybe one or two a year," he said.

In years to come, Floyd said he hopes to continue building the boats. Eventually, he's hoping to garner enough interest to train people to use them to return to their roots in whaling and hunting.

"That would be cool," he said.

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