(Only in Hawaii and Montana does outdoor recreation supply a higher percentage of the GDP.) And unlike Bean’s, as native Mainers like myself call it, Old Town still makes most of what it sells in-state. Bean, which is also based in Maine, a state whose economy depends heavily on the industry. Remarkably, a mill town situated two hours north of Portland, with a population of 8,000, is indeed home to one of the oldest and most respected names in outdoor recreation retail. Old Town Canoe is right up there with L.L. Gloria Jackson, an assembler, works on a canoe at Old Town / Photo: Greta RybusĬyr joined Old Town 25 years ago, after his uncle, who worked in accounting for the company, suggested he seek a job there when he got out of the navy. As almost everyone did back then, Cyr started out in shipping. Although he misses tack spitting, Cyr-who on the day I meet him cuts a lean figure in jeans and a long-sleeve T-shirt-says he is proud to be “associated with something that’s almost global.” (The company turned its wooden-canoe business over to an independent craftsman in an adjacent county.) Today, the former tack spitter works at the new factory, producing the polyethylene kayaks that constitute the bulk of Old Town’s current business. In 2008, Old Town moved a few miles away from the five-story brick building it had occupied in its namesake town in Maine for nearly a century. His tenure, however, happened to coincide with the dwindling in popularity of boats made from organic materials, as fiberglass and aluminum canoes (and later kayaks) became all the rage.
“There’s probably a lot of Old Town canoes out there that have my DNA on them,” Cyr jokes. Inevitably, the inside of his mouth would get poked.
Like his predecessors in the trade, Cyr would keep fistfuls of copper tacks-upward of 100 at a time-lodged in his cheek as he worked, plucking them off his tongue and hammering them into cedar planking.
Dave Cyr is one of the last tack spitters. For five years, starting in 2002, his job was to build the wood-and-canvas canoes that for many decades made Maine manufacturer Old Town a household name.
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