The Canadian Canoe Museum on Monaghan Road in Peterborough remains temporarily closed due to damage sustained during the May 21, 2022 derecho storm.
The museum was original expecting to reopen on Saturday (June 4), but repairs to one section of the museum’s roof still need to be completed.
“Out of an abundance of caution and to ensure a positive visitor experience, sadly, the museum will remain closed until this work is complete,” writes Carolyn Hyslop, the museum’s executive director, in an email.
On May 27, the museum announced it was temporarily closed due to significant damage from the storm.
“If you’ve driven or wandered by the museum these past few days, you may have witnessed some of the damage we sustained during the severe thunderstorm that affected Peterborough and the surrounding areas last Saturday,” Hyslop wrote in an email at the time. “The large spruce trees on our front lawn, uprooted and leaning; our colourful, welcome signage ripped clear off the building or left dangling; and roof and fascia debris strewn all over the parking lot.”
While there were no injuries to staff, volunteers, or visitors, Hyslop addded the severe winds caused significant damage to the museum’s roof and collections centre. The winds tore large swaths of the protective membrane from the roof, some of which landed in the parking lot. The loss of parts of the membrane led to rain and moisture entering the museum’s galleries, soaking and affecting a few different areas.
Many windows in the collection centre, which houses most of the museum’s collection of watercraft, were either damaged or blown out, resulting in glass and debris in the collection centre.
“We are happy to report that the watercraft collection is safe and has suffered no damage,” Hyslop writes.
The museum does not yet have a reopening date, but will share an update on its website and social media accounts when the museum can reopen with summer hours (10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday to Sunday).
This is the final summer for the museum at its Monaghan Road location, as construction proceeds on the new museum on Ashburnham Drive beside Beavermead Park. The construction site did not suffer any severe damage during the storm, aside from a downed construction fence that has since been restored.
However, the storm did damage many trees on the property and along the Trans Canada Trail.
“Our team has done a preliminary sweep to take care of the trees that will impact the public’s use of the trail, and once more of the higher priority areas of the city and county are dealt with by our arborists, we will have our trees safely removed,” Hyslop wrote on May 27.
This story has been updated with the most recent information from the museum.
