Thursday, October 1, 2026
Held every March in Madison, Wisconsin, Canoecopia is the world’s biggest paddlesports event. Over three days, 15,000 paddlers swarm the Alliant Energy Center for deals on gear and to attend more than 100 presentations. Madison’s Rutabaga Paddlesports store puts on the event. Last fall, when Rutabaga owner Darren Bush announced he was closing the store, paddling enthusiasts feared Canoecopia would follow.
“There’s nothing else like Canoecopia,” said Danny Mongno. Mongno is the Field Marketing Manager for NRS, the Idaho-based manufacturer of paddling gear. Mongno has attended Canoecopia for 25 years to showcase his company’s paddleboards, lifejackets, and drysuits. In past years, Mongno would drive a circuit of paddling events in early spring, including a show in Maine, Midwest Mountaineering’s Outdoor Expo in Minneapolis, and the Jersey Paddlesports Show. Those paddling expos have since closed. “With the industry shrinking a little bit,” Mongno said, “Canoecopia is the last man standing.
When Bush announced Rutabaga was closing, Mongno said he was: “really close to not going to Canoecopia this year. It’s a massive expense for us, not only in the money it costs, but also in the time I personally put into organizing it. I think other people probably feel the same way—is this something that’s going to be worth my time if there’s not going to be one in 2027?”
Darren Bush started working at Rutabaga in 1990 as a second job. His main career was as a statistician with the State of Wisconsin, where he compiled numbers like the state’s cancer rates and unemployment levels. Bush had been born in Los Angeles County, though he said, “I never felt California was home.” He started paddling in the late 1980s, in upstate New York, first getting into whitewater kayaking as a graduate student at the University of Rochester. Time on the water became increasingly important to him. “Graduate school was intense,” he said, “and my advisor was sleeping with my classmates, so, yeah, it was like, ‘Ok, I can’t deal with these people, I gotta go for a paddle.’” Bush lived in student housing on the Erie Canal. He kayaked to school by following the canal to the Genese River, which he paddled to the University’s Interfaith Chapel, where he’d come ashore and drag his kayak across the quad to his office. He switched advisors. One day, his new advisor observed, “I think you like paddling better than you like school.” Bush thought about it a moment and realized this was true. Then he married a woman from Wisconsin, and the couple had their wedding reception in Madison. Bush immediately fell for the city. “Why doesn’t everyone live here?” he asked his father-in-law. The newlyweds moved to Madison.
Jerry Vandiver is a Nashville musician and songwriter who has been attending Canoecopia since 1998. Vandiver grew up in Missouri canoeing rivers in the Ozarks. Years later, he settled in Nashville and divorced. A local friend of his was a Boundary Waters paddler and told Vandiver, “I’ve got a great place for you to go and chill out and get an attitude adjustment.” Vandiver agreed, and the friend brought him on a journey through Quetico. “I had a great time and was hooked,” Vandiver said. He later learned about Canoecopia through an online Boundary Waters forum. “People kept talking about it. I finally just put my foot down and said, ‘I’m going.’ I met incredible people and learned so much about the art of paddling.”
Vandiver has written songs for artists such as Gene Watson, The Oak Ridge Boys, and Tim McGraw. “On the side, I write songs about paddling,” he said. “I had some paddling songs in my pocket that I’m certainly not going to pitch to Reba McEntire.” He began performing his paddling songs at Canoecopia, songs like “Too Tired to Start a Fire,” “Camp Coffee,” and “The Spirit of Fishdance Lake.”
“White caps, rollers, gonna tip over,” goes the chorus of Vandiver’s song “Headwind.” For Canoecopia 2026, Vandiver will perform with his three-piece band, including him on guitar and vocals, a fiddle player, and a stand-up bassist. The trio will put on a show each of the three days of Canoecopia.
Rutabaga was founded by University of Wisconsin-Madison students to buy boats directly from manufacturers. First located in the basement of a college house, the store later moved into an old gas station. Most recently, in 2022, Darren Bush oversaw the construction of a new, carbon-neutral home for Rutabaga south of downtown, next to a pond where customers can test boats. The store’s unusual name predates Bush and comes from a 1967 song by Frank Zappa’s band, Mothers of Invention, in which the chorus goes: “Call any vegetable and the chances are good that a vegetable will respond to you. Rutabaga, rutabaga, rutabaga, rutabaga.”
Bush took over the operations of Canoecopia in 1994. He said the event began sometime in the early eighties; he’s not exactly sure when: “It’s kind of like asking how long the Olympics have been going on. It isn’t just a bunch of naked guys running around with javelins anymore. It’s evolved significantly over the past 30 years.” Since Bush took over “from a guy who couldn’t organize his way out of a wet paper bag,” attendance has doubled, presenters have significantly increased, and the event has moved into the quarter-of-a-million square feet of the Alliant Energy Center’s Exposition Hall.
During the 2026 Canoecopia, dozens of exhibitors will fill the center, including not only gear companies but far-flung environmental groups and outfitters. Gear exhibitors will comprise everything from big companies like NRS, MSR, Therm-A-Rest, and Thule, to niche brands like Old Mustache Paddles (made in Michigan), Big Ass Bandana (quadruple the size of a regular bandana), and Stormy Kromer wool caps. “It’s a chance to get really good gear that I couldn’t get down here,” said Jerry Vandiver from Nashville. “I like to touch something before I buy it. It’s an amazing opportunity to meet people, to learn, to get quality gear at a discount price.”
“We just want to look really good,” said Danny Mongno. “It’s like going and seeing the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center. It really is a special event.”
When Bush announced in 2025 that he was closing Rutabaga at the end of the year, he’d been its full owner since 2007. “I’ve been doing this a long time, I’m kind of tired,” he said. At the time of his announcement, he insisted that he’d keep Canoecopia going. Without Rutabaga to back it, however, many paddlers assumed Canoecopia would fade away. Bush began receiving offers from people wanting to buy Rutabaga.
“Most of the people who put in letters of intent are store customers,” Bush said. They prompted him to change his mind. He would not close Rutabaga; he would sell it. Carefully. Some potential buyers, Bush said, “I blew them off. I don’t need a capital investment group from Texas to run my business into the ground. I’ve seen it happen too many times. There are two ways to go through the business world—transactional or community. Rutabaga exists because of relationships and community.”
As of December, he was still working out the details of the sale and didn’t want to get into specifics, except to say a family was buying the store. Bush said, “I’m not going anywhere. When you sell your baby, you want her to succeed. I told the new owners—we haven’t inked the deal yet—’I’ll stick around long enough until I feel you feel you’re comfortable running it without me. But I don’t want to be the figurehead; I don’t want to be the guy in front of the camera, that’s you now.’”
Amidst the uncertainty of Canoecopia’s future, Danny Mongno considered not making the long trek to Madison from his base in Lake Placid, New York. “Darren is family to me at this point,” Mongno said. “He’s been a huge friend and supporter. Every step of the way, we were on the phone. He let me know there was a buyer and that he wanted to see his legacy carried on. Once I knew we were on stable ground, we decided this is something we want to support, not only for us at NRS, but for the community that builds this thing every year. I think Darren and his staff deserve so much credit for keeping this going. A lot of others have gone away. And with new ownership coming, I think it’s vital we tell the world that this shop is healthy, this business is healthy, and it’s going to be in great new hands, and Canoecopia will move on.”
Canoecopia, Bush says, is based on three components: education, sales, and the social aspect, which Bush describes as a family reunion. “My hugging muscles are tired by the end of the weekend,” he said.
The 2026 event will be as big as ever and include speakers covering a gamut of topics, from building a canoe paddle to foraging for food while canoeing to techniques for traveling through bear country. Presenters will speak about paddling destinations such as the Ozarks, the Apostle Islands, the Pukaskwa River, and Hudson Bay.
The event will run from March 13th to 15th.
Tickets and details are available at:https://www.canoecopia.com.
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