Snowshoe maker shares craft he and father honed
When Edmond Theriault was growing up around Fort Kent in the 1920s and ’30s, wooden snowshoes were a necessity in the winter.
Long, cold walks through deep snow prepared Theriault well for training as a B-17 pilot during World War II. Now 92, he had an easy time hiking long distances with heavy gear while his training companions struggled, Brian Theriault recalls his father telling him.
“What are you guys taking a break for?” Edmond Theriault would tease his fellow trainees, according to Brian.
The younger Theriault hasn’t had too much time for long breaks himself in the last two years. He was busy writing a guide to making wooden, rawhide snowshoes using designs he and his father developed over the last 40 years.
“We spent so much time together, talking about snowshoes all the time,” Theriault said at Presque Isle’s Mark and Emily Turner Memorial Library recently, discussing his new book, “Leaving Tracks: A Maine Tradition.” Co-authored with his dad, it offers guides to four styles of snowshoes — large and small versions of the bear paw and cross country — and pays homage to the continuing utility of snowshoes in Maine over the last century.
Theriault’s dad grew up at a time when local woodworkers in many towns made snowshoes and Norway, Maine, was the “snowshoe capital of the world.” But he didn’t really get into the craft until the 1970s, when he and his wife had kids — 11 of them.
“I guess my father was thinking there’s just too many kids and I’m going to have to make some snowshoes,” Theriault said. “We wanted snowshoes, but we couldn’t afford it.”
His father, a U.S. Postal Service worker, had learned the basics of snowshoe making from an older man in town, and was fairly successful early on.
“Eventually, once we all had two or three pairs and my father gave a bunch away, some people wanted to buy them. That’s why we continued,” Theriault said.
People used them, as they still do, for trapping, fishing, hunting, maple syrup harvesting and exploring in the snow. Back then, even with snowmobiles, “you had to stay on the trail,” Theriault said. “Not so with snowshoes. You could go wherever you wanted.”
As the third-oldest child, Theriault stuck with the craft of snowshoe making while learning carpentry and forestry and working in the lumber industry.
“I was interested in the process,” said Theriault. He and his father made snowshoes, used them, and then tried to improve the shoes and “designed everything for a purpose.”
Unlike other snowshoe makers that steam their wood to make it bendable for the frames, Theriault and his father use fresh brown ash trees, cut into strips with a skill saw. They stretch the cow rawhide in the center of the shoe, which accommodates today’s heavy boots and adds a sort of levity in keeping the walker above the snow. And they rely on a three-way pattern for stringing the rawhide, forming a series of triangles that hold the rawhide in place while letting snow pass through during strides.
“It’s easy walking,” Theriault said of a good wooden snowshoe. The metal-frame snowshoes that predominate today leave the walker “working too hard and not staying afloat,” he said.
In the Great Depression, Theriault’s dad saw snowshoes for sale for $2 — around $35 in today’s dollars. Today, L.L. Bean retails a pair of handmade white ash snowshoes for $300. On Amazon, there are Canadian hand-made bear paw snowshoes selling for $205. Near the town of Moscow, the Maine Guide Snowshoe hand-makes wooden snowshoes with rope and rawhide lacing, starting at $215.
Back in 2007, Theriault was selling snowshoes for between $200 and $230, while also earning income managing rental properties and in the lumber industry.
Now, he’ll sell them for as much as $400. But, as he nears retirement age, he’s more interested in helping people figure out how to make their own snowshoes — to preserve the craft. Although he has taught apprentices and interest in crafts has surged recently among young people, Theriault fears that the small number of people who do know how to make snowshoes is gradually shrinking. (In 2005, Presque Isle farmer Frank Hemphill passed away, leaving behind his snowshoe and cedar canoe making work.)
“I’ve worked so hard and my father has too, and we don’t want this to go away,” Theriault said. “To help keep this alive is one of my goals.”
Along with promoting the book and a DVD version, Theriault is planning to sell kits with the ash sticks or with them pre-bent into frames, with instructions for putting together the rest.
“A lot of people, they look at it and think it’s too much and too complicated,” Theriault said. “You do it process by process” — and reap a return on the investment. “Snowshoes will last two lifetimes and more, if you take care of them,” Theriault and his father wrote in their book.
