A quiet end is coming to one of America's great outdoor traditions. Rutabaga, the paddling shop in Madison, Wisconsin that ran Canoecopia — the largest paddlesports show in the world — is shutting its doors this December, and the show itself has been cancelled for 2027 and beyond.
The story started in September 2025, when owner Darren Bush announced he wanted to close the shop to pursue a new calling as a hospice chaplain. Loyal customers pushed him to sell instead, and he met with several potential buyers. No deal materialised — likely a mix of a tough economy, online retail pressure and the hard economics of a niche paddling business. Now the store is liquidating its remaining PFDs and gear, and selling or leasing the building it only opened in 2022.
Bush's ties to Rutabaga run deep. He joined in 1990 selling canoes part-time while working as a statistician for the state of Wisconsin, moved into management in 1994, became general manager in 2000, co-owner in 2002 and sole owner in 2007.
The bigger loss for the paddling world is Canoecopia, which grew from a humble sidewalk sale into a three-day Madison expo drawing more than 20,000 visitors each spring. It packed in 110 seminars across six speaker rooms seating 200 to 500 people, plus cooking demos, pool sessions, workshops and talks from big names in the outdoor community — a sort of modern voyageur rendezvous where paddlers waited out the last of the ice on the lakes.
Bush cited health reasons for ending the show: he had a heart attack a few years ago and didn't want to risk another. The show was also structurally inseparable from the shop — Rutabaga bought nearly all the inventory vendors brought, then sold it through the rest of the year, which spared canoe and kayak makers the cost of shipping unsold boats home. Without Rutabaga, there was no Canoecopia. Some attendees also report the 2026 edition felt diminished, with thinner crowds and, by several accounts, a noticeable absence of Canadian visitors and presenters amid cross-border tensions.
For paddlers, the takeaways are simple. If you wanted Rutabaga gear, the going-out-of-business sale is the last chance. And the spring calendar has a hole where the world's biggest paddling gathering used to be — smaller regional paddling events and club swap meets are the likely places the community will regroup.
