"The Flying Canoe" is a lively evening of Canadian folktales and songs, celebrating rivers, canoes, and the power of love to cross great distances. The title refers to one of the best-loved folktales of the French-Canadian voyageurs, "Le Chasse-Galerie" or "Le Canot du Diable" (The Devil's Canoe), which forms Act II of the two-act show.
A brigade of voyageurs, suffering cabin fever in the North Country on New Year's Eve, make a deal with the Man in Black for a wild midnight ride in his flying canoe to return to Quebec for the New Year's dance. Like any Faustian bargain, this one has conditions: they may not swear upon the church or hit a church steeple, they may tell no one how they came, and they must return by midnight or forfeit their souls forever.
Needless to say, they enjoy the soirée far too much for their own good, and the frantic return is even wilder than the outward journey; the canoe is bouleversé and they tumble down through the sky to land with a bump before the fire, uncertain if it really happened or not.
Puppetry, slides, stage magic, dance, storytelling and choral singing in English, French, Ojibwa and Inuktitut blend in a production that brings the wonder of the Canadian wilderness to the stage, where the voice of the audience raised in song is the magic that makes the canoe fly.