Joe Calnan

is the author of “The Unbeatable Batteau.”

He’s a two-time recipient of the Henry N. Barkhausen Award for Original Research in Great Lakes Maritime History for his investigations into seventeenth-century French boat building on the Great Lakes. Calnan trained as a boat-builder before moving to Nova Scotia’s French Shore in 1988 to work in the last days of Canada’s commercial wooden boat building industry. He teaches at St. Lawrence College in Kingston, Ontario, and consults and contracts on heritage craftsmanship projects.