Dartblog

All communities should have a person that everyone knows and that everyone considers a friend. In Hanover, that person is John Chapin, the owner of the Canoe Club restaurant on Main Street. Formerly the owner of restaurants in Farmington and Hartford, Connecticut, rumor has it that John also has law enforcement officer somewhere on his resume.

The Canoe Club opened in November 2003 in a space that has a storied Dartmouth past. For many years, it had been part of the Dartmouth Co-op, where pea-green freshmen, including your humble servant, purchased gear for Freshman Trips and the ubiquitous down vest of yore. Under the pressure of high rents, the Co-op retrenched to its present frontage, and Nigel Leeming, the owner of Murphy’s, took over the premises and fitted it out as a Mexican restaurant. That establishment had a half-life on the order of a highly fissile material, and it then remained boarded up for many months. Finally, John took it over and kitted it out in a North Woods theme (while parsimoniously keeping the Mexican terra cotta tiling in the bathrooms — now you know why!).

John has the gift of communicating with sincerity his interest in your life. And he can magically recall everything that you told him the last time that you spoke. Ah, the stories that he could tell — but he doesn’t. Beyond offering filling food in its restaurant, the CC’s bar area often hosts hordes of Tuck students, and John has been known to acquaint of-age Dartmouth seniors with the intellectual complexities of single-malt whiskey.

Hanover would be a lesser town without him.