We lost our canoe last week at a lake in northern BC near Chetwynd. We unloaded it at a dock when we first arrived and the next day was rainy so we went driving and didn't use it. We were camped about 100 feet and saw it high on the shore in late evening. In the morning it was gone.
It was a red canoe that I painted with white canoe paint so it was a unique peptobismal pink when stolen. We looked all over the lake and two other lakes. On the way home we stopped at a canoe rally and looked for pink among the 60 canoes.
In retrospect, I should have moved the canoe along the shore so it was out of plain sight and would require more work to steal.
Not bad to have only one theft in more than 30 years of camping - most of them with that canoe.