Bangladeshi Students’ Association
Concrete Canoe Team
The U of T Concrete Canoe Team is a fun interdisciplinary team that designs, builds, and races a fully functional concrete canoe at the annual national competition. Team members spend their time during the year recruiting new members, securing sponsorships, running events, training to paddle, learning to cast concrete, doing analysis of hull designs and concrete mixes, preparing a technical report and detailed engineering notebook, as well as actually building and refining the canoe (sanding, decorating, sealing). In the past few years the team has consistently performed among the top in Canada and best in Ontario.
Key accomplishments
Canoe Casting - On March 16th, 2025 our team casted all the concrete for the canoe construction in a single day. This event was open and advertised to all, and over 40 members of the engineering community stopped by throughout the 12-hour event to help cast. These included Concrete Canoe executives, general members, alumni, and post-grad students. Members were able to experience concrete mixing (with provided PPE), hands-on casting, and understand the different aspects of the team. The overall casting day experience was also a celebration of Skule spirit where we gathered undergraduate and graduate students from all engineering disciplines to collaboratively complete the canoe construction.
CNCCC 2024 - Last May, our team went to Laval University in Quebec to participate in the Canadian National Concrete Canoe Competition (CNCCC). We competed against 17 other Canadian universities and placed 13th overall. We aim to do better this year, and have spent significant time testing new concrete mixes and examining the in-house software used to design our canoe. We improved our final concrete mix and construction and finishing methods to such an extent that our casted canoe weight was 35% lighter than last year’s and significantly smoother, which should benefit us greatly in the race portion of the competition.
CPSIF funding impact
Thanks to CPSIF funding, we were able to purchase needed PPE, concrete materials, and sanding equipment to safely cast and finish the canoe. In an improvement over last year, the team used multiple different grits of sandpaper on the canoe to achieve a much smoother finish. Additionally, the funding we received allowed us to outsource the creation of the canoe mold, which saved us valuable man-hours and provided us with a more precise mold than if we had produced it in-house. Overall, CPSIF funding made Casting Day a safe and enjoyable event, and let us produce a higher quality canoe.
Concrete Canoe executives posing with the finished canoe before shipping to Winnipeg.
Concrete Canoe executives and general members casting the canoe.
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