This article first appeared in the Winter 2012 edition of The Newcomer Bulletin. So much of the history of Canada is the history of the newcomer; because few written records exist of the Indigenous peoples in this country before the Europeans arrived, our impressions of our nation are almost always seen through the eyes of people experiencing each other’s culture for the first time.  No where is that more clear than at the Canadian Canoe Museum, which chronicles the individual struggles and  triumphs of people making their way through the land with little in common besides their mode of transport – the canoe.