Susan's Spot: Canoeing-Polynesian Style

June-July 1995

This is an article from WaveLength Magazine, available in print in North America and globally on the web.

by Susan Noppe

Tom Rosser carving out the inside of his outrigger canoe. His son, Kupe, named after a famous Maori navigator, leans on the spruce stern piece donated by a Haida chief from British Columbia. Photo: Susan Noppe

Hang out in Hawaii for more than a few hours and you'll probably start wondering what the island has more of-coconuts or canoes.

Within our first 24 hours on Oahu we tripped over a canoe race with over 100 racers (the one-man sit-on-top style) at Hawaii Kai, counted over twenty boats on roof racks over a fifteen kilometre stretch of road and then out in the countryside near Kaneohe came across a local man carving out a six-person outrigger canoe.

Tom Rosser, the canoe builder, has an ancestry similar to most locals. The son of a Maori woman and a U.S. navy man, Tom married a local Hawaiian woman and with her has two children. For him, the canoe is symbolic of ancient traditions as well as a form of recreation. "Amongst the Maori, when you're asked who you are, you don't say your name, you say your waka, your family ancestral canoe," explains Tom.

The canoe that Tom is building will be used to meet the paddlers returning May 10 from the Hawaii Loa (an outrigger race from Hawaii to Tahiti). It's taken him a year and a half of Sundays to get to the point of near completion. For the first year of construction, most of the work was done up a mountain in the woods where he found the straight stout tree to build the canoe from. Tom laughingly admits to using a chainsaw for the initial shape: "it's not traditional but it works." When I visited, he was using a toki, a tool he made from a Japanese gardening tool, to carve out the inside of the boat. In keeping with local traditions Tom will have the canoe ceremoniously blessed by the local minister before it's launched.

The high regard held for the canoe in Hawaii is understandable. Settled only as recently as a thousand years ago, migrations to the islands required arduous canoe journeys of a few thousand kilometres or more with nothing but the stars to guide the way.

Historians have concluded that, judging by the animals and crops introduced to the islands, paddlers arrived on ocean going outrigger canoes from many islands throughout Polynesia . A second theory suggests there were also migrations from South America, indicated by a similarity in jewelry styles, stone wall construction, feather work and linguistics. A likeness in canoe construction techniques has raised suspicions that Haida Indians may also have migrated to the islands at some point.

For Rosser, the Hawaii Loa race is like a reunion of many families that are all somehow related. Rosser was excited when 82 year-old Haida chief Woody Morrison, from the Queen Charlotte Islands, donated spruce bow and stern pieces for Rosser's canoe. "When the Haida we met showed us pictures of their wakas, they seemed different than the Hawaiian style but very similar to the Maori style," remarked Tom "which is amazing when you realize they're 7000 miles away."

Rosser still has to install the six seats into the canoe, rig up a sail and seal the boat with preservative to prevent termite damage. This boat won't be relegated to a museum once its formal duties in greeting the returning paddlers are complete. Instead, Tom plans on putting the canoe to good use. "We're a practical people; if this boat doesn't catch any fish we'll use it for firewood," he jokes.

The construction of the canoe has been a labour of love but at this point time is running short. In April the Kaneohe Canoe Club, where Tom is working on the boat, will be inundated with over 60 kids coming down after school to practice for the summer outrigger racing series. In Hawaii, canoe racing is just as common as summer baseball or soccer leagues are on the mainland. Oahu alone has over 30 outrigger canoe clubs.

Although for many of the kids, canoeing is simply a recreational pastime, there are still many like Tom Rosser around to keep reminding us of the rich history of the canoe and of the many peoples that have been brought together by its existence.

Going paddling on Oahu?

• You can try out six-person outrigger canoes by renting from the beach boy services along the beach in Waikiki.
• Better still, drive to Kailua on the windward side of Oahu and rent sit-on-top surf skis from local manufacturer Twogood Kayaks (808) 262-5656 and paddle out to the nearby Mokolua Islands. The owner, former national kayaking champion Bob Twogood, can tell you a thing or two about kayak surfing the big waves.