A Sled Maker's Journal

Sometime after the toboggan or "flat sled" arrived on the scene, experimentation began with runner sleds. The need had arisen for a more rigid sled that could support a heavy load on narrow runners...

We’ve talked a little bit about how the toboggan has evolved in Northern Canada from a hand hauling sleigh to a dog sled and then to a towing sled for snow machines. The best I can find on when wo...

The toboggan or hunting sleigh was likely to have been the first wooden winter sled used in Northern Canada. We believe that the first toboggans were long, flexible, narrow, and pulled by hand. A ...

The fall time always seems busy busy, for almost everyone and creatures alike. In the shop its working on orders and building inventory, outside its cleaning up the gardens and putting away summer...

My introduction to handcrafted toboggans and sleds came in about 1985, when my uncle, Fr. Raymond DesChenes of the Oblate Fathers of Winnipeg, Manitoba encouraged me to build toboggans for the Can...

Dad has always had a way with teaching. My brother and I have countless memories of learning of the goose migration, the conservation management of the many generations of forest, moral mushroom p...

“I have never seen anybody selling such high quality hand made toboggans.  I will gladly pass along your information to every jealous person who asks where the toboggan is from!” (Bill Grohs, Oxfor...

“Hi John, Thank you. We received the Toboggan today!  Let me rephrase that and say the BEAUTIFUL Toboggan.  Not that it exceeded my expectation because I really did expect it to be as wonderful a...

(Dave had just moved south from the high Arctic to Yellowknife NWT…) John, Just to let you know I got the toboggan tied on Saturday and took it out for a run on Sunday. I can’t say enough about the...