The Projet Pirogue was originally the idea of diver and explorer Jean-Louis Courteau. Following the discovery of an ancestral dugout canoe in Lake Papineau, straddling the Laurentides and Outaouais regions, Mr. Courteau came up with the novel idea of attempting to build one himself. He gathered together a handful of people with a wide range of expertises to do something that had never been done in Quebec before: build a real dugout canoe using the same techniques used by the First Peoples.