At the Canada Science and Technology Museum, Marine Transportation and Forestry constitute a single curatorial area consisting of two primary subject areas and collections.

Cape North Lighthouse

In the history of Canada, marine transportation and forestry are very closely linked. The large-scale harvest and export of Canadian timber in the nineteenth century fostered a dramatic expansion of shipbuilding, creating one of our earliest manufacturing export enterprises. In central and eastern Canada, river systems provided a ready-made transportation network for delivering the timber to port for shipment overseas, while on the Pacific coast, the transportation by sea of cut timber and forest products was and remains essential to the industry. Not surprisingly, the harvesting of our forests has inspired some of the most notable Canadian contributions to the evolving technology of ships and small craft.

Northern Forest

While they are linked historically and curatorially, these two subjects and their respective collections have been developed as separate technological traditions.

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