War Canoes — Carleton Place Canoe Club – Clippings Photos

Another photo from my family archives about Jim McKittrick from Ron Ashmore

John Edwards

Every member of the crew received a small version of the large poster. The large one was three to four feet in size. It was in the front window of McCann’s Billiard Hall right into the late 1960’s when, I believe, the Pool Hall closed. This was likely the most honoured location in town for it.

As the victory was national in scale and since most of the crew went to war in a year or two, the townspeople must have felt very special about the crew members.

Anyone who’s ever paddled in a good war canoe team will know about the pain and bonding which comes with the synchronicity of the strokes over a long distance. There are no heroes. Every paddler is equal and must dig deep on every stroke.

Marlene Springer When we had the parade for John Edwards I remember I brought my air horn to the parade and I think I emptied the HOLE CANISTER the town was SO PROUD (1972)

Carol Kwissa

My grandfather is in this photo Russell Waugh and yes for years it was in the pool hall window for all to see

Trisa McConkey

Written by Theresa Fritz 

CLIPPED FROM

THE OTTAWA CITIZEN

Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

30 Jul 1973, Mon • Page 14

1940 Carleton Place War Canoe Champs.. No names.

1915 Carleton Place – Ottawa – War Canoe Trophy.

This is the first Carleton Place Canoe Club’s all woman’s war canoe crew. Darlene Page’s grandfather was the coach–Her aunt’s also in the photo too (lady girl on the right) Her grandfather, Clarence Waugh, was in the middle standing. Darlene’s Aunt’s name was Deloris Agnel, maiden name Julian. The year would be 1940s

Carleton Place and Beckwith Heritage Museum

  · 

Men’s 1/2 Mile and Mile War Canoe team, Carleton Place Canoe Club 1907. Members were: (Left Side, looking toward the front of the canoe) H. Morphy, A. McCaw, W. Hunter, A. Dunlop, J. Winthrope, M. Lamb, A, Robertson. (Right Side) C. Lamb, W. Knox, J. Hockenall, M. Ryan, F. Milliken, G. Gordon, N. McGregor, A. Keyworth (capt.). The Carleton Place Canoe Club is visible behind the canoe and to the left is a house that was torn down, and the Navy Corps building is now in that location.

Shane Wm Edwards

This was a Canoe Club awards dinner. — in Carleton Place, Ontario.

Jack Shail, Jeremy Bell, Marty Laskaris, Shane Edwards, Peter McGregor, Richard Cook, Mike Roy, Logan Trafford, Roger Gardiner. Shaking hands with Jack Shail is “Bunny” Bond. Brother of Joey and a member of the Canadian Champion war canoe of 1920. He and the Sinclair brothers always came to the annual regatta.

Carleton Place and Beckwith Heritage Museum

  · 

This image from the 1920 Canadian Canoe Association Regatta shows the war canoe team reaching shore. Events took place at Lake Park on Mississippi Lake. “Carleton Place proved a genuine surprise in the CCA Regatta held here today. The Junction town humbled the haughty Parkdales in the half mile war canoe race in a magnificent finish and were second in the mile. the romped away in the Senior Fours in another stirring finish.” – Ottawa Evening Journal, August 9, 1920.

First photo Carleton Place and Beckwith Heritage Museum

Second photo Below–Wendy Healey–The picture you have posted with the girls war canoe has Lisa and Louise Armour, Heather Kneen, Tracey Mills, Deanna Barry, Julie Kirkpatrick, Linda Black. Probably in the back may be myself, Wendy Armstrong, Catherine Elliot, Margot Findlay, Debbie Hine, Louise Hine etc. The war canoe changed every year…

Did you know that the Canoe Club held weekly sports in front of their club house at the foot of Charles Street: tilting jousts, four man canoe racing against the war canoe crew, crab and gunwale races were some of the events staged.

This hand drawn map from 1888, shows details of the Caldwell Property, which later became Riverside Park. It’s very interesting. The building marked as “Carriage and blacksmith shops” later served as the Canoe Club headquarters.–Carleton Place and Beckwith Heritage Museum-Carleton Place and Beckwith Heritage Museum

Carleton Place and Beckwith Heritage Museum

  · 

This amazing postcard was part of a recent donation. Wow! It’s a composite photo by Hammond Studios of Carleton Place, and celebrates the 1907 Carleton Place Canoe Club War Canoe CHAMPIONS OF CANADA!

The C.C.A. was held in Montreal that year, and the C.P.C.C. decisively took the half mile and the mile War Canoe events.

The town organized a “grand procession” for the boys when they returned. “Headed by the Citizen’s Band, Commodore Cram, the Mayor and council, club patrons, the victorious crew paraded from the clubhouse to town hall in a handsomely decorated and illuminated carriage, followed by a crowd of citizens and about 200 boys with torches, many in costume. The town hall was packed in every part – it was jammed inside and outside. By the time the procession arrived pandemonium reigned. ” Carleton Place Herald, Aug. 20, 1907

1977..Dartmouth…Canadian Championships…Ivan and I were going up to the Start….Frank Mills was on the balcony of the MicMac Club as we passed…he heard people laughing and guffawing about us as we passed by……we won Sr. Men’s C2 1000m by open water…. John Edwards

The Almonte Canoe Club Clippings

Canoe Club History- 1976 Dave Findlay

The New Carleton Place Canoe Club 1955- 1957

Ottawa Valley Canoe Association– (Carleton Place Canoe Club) and Lake Park Gala August 16 1893

The Devil, a Regatta, the Enterprise and a Gale

Carleton Place in 1907–Town Likely to Boom Once More

Know Your Carleton Place Olympians!

The Ministry of Propaganda in Carleton Place — Carleton Place Canoe Club

Looking for Information on Pooh Bell & The Powder Puffs

Three Cheers for Dave Findlay –The Movie

Who Was Mickey Morphy? Noteworthy Paddles to Portage

Family Photos– Mississippi Lake– Darlene Page

The Young Olympic Hopefuls-1970’s Carleton Place Canoe Club

The Almonte Canoe Club Clippings

1973

As the weather seems to -be turning, to the better– the paddling season draws near, this year’s Executive is attempting to get an early start on planning of activities and the purchasing of new equipment. Before the adoption of the plans drawn up can be put into motion, the annual meeting of members must take place — this meeting h open to all interested persons who wish to become members of the Club.

This will take place on April 2 at Almonte High School at 7.30 p.m. This year’s Executive is made up of the following: Greg Merrithew Commodore; Les Ladoticeur. Vice Commodore; Doug. Walker, Treasurer; Eileen Pommerville, Secretary. As last year was considered a success in recreational paddling, the Executive feels that emphasis this year should be put on family recreation and pleasure canoeing.

Also this year the Club will be organizing week-end excursions. If interest in this type of canoeing is high, the Executive will consider purchasing some more pleasure canoes. Also, it has come to the Executive’s attention that past members of the Club have expressed their desire in competing in Eastern Ontario regattas in a War Canoe and in a C4 (four man canoe). However, these crafts could not be acquired if there was not enough demand shown for them.

This year competitive members have already begun training so as to try and gain entry into the Canada Games. Any person wishing to compete in Flat Water Racing or wanting further info about the Club should contact Greg Mrtrithew.Many people in this area do not know just how big a sport competitive racing is in Canada. For their information the Almonte Canoe Club belongs to the Canadian Canoe Association. This Association is a Government Sponsored program, and is one of the highest ranking sports organisations to receive financial assistance from the Government. Also, Just recently the Provincial Government formed an organization called Canoe Ontario for the purpose of giving financial assistance to groups to Ontario for the sport in the province. With all this assistance being given to the sport, it would be only right to have as many people involved in it as possible. 

John Edwards

Dave Findlay was very hopeful to get the great Almonte athletes turned toward the water. Getting the two towns to ‘egg each other on’ would surely produce more champions at high levels.

The first regatta was at the fairgrounds but there was a shallow rock ledge in the river which wasn’t good for racing.

Second regatta was up the river at Russell Turner’s farm.

All fun!

Click to read clipping.. someone asked me about the Almonte Canoe Club that once existed.The Almonte Canoe Club was founded in 1967 as the Almonte Municipal Recreation Club and took out associate membership with assistance from Carleton Place’s Dave Findlay. The following year saw full membership and a name change to the Almonte Canoe Club. They hosted a succesful regatta in 1968 and competed in the Eastern Ontario Division for five years until 1973, failing to rejuvenate the club afterwards. There was another canoe club in existence at the time known as the Mississippi Mobile Canoe Club. This organisation, originally known as the White Ensign Canoe Club, took out associate membership in 1971, a status that remained inconsistent for the next five years before disappearing altogether.

Clipped from The Ottawa Journal, 15 Sep 1967, Fri, Page 1

1967

The Chamber of Commerce’s Amazing Race

In July 28 of 2019 we had the first Carleton Place Amazing Race held at the Market Square and in the same month in 1956 the Carleton Place Canoe Club had the first annual 7 mile race from Almonte to the Carleton Place Town Hall. The only notable person from Carleton Place to ever come near the top every year during those races was Dave Findlay. In 1959 the Chamber of Commerce took over and in 1963– the Annual Seven-Mile Road Race ran under the sponsorship of the Carleton Place Chamber of Commerce. That year, three additional events were added. The top award given out was the Queens Hotel Trophy which was allegedly filled with beer.

Missanoga Rock? Bon Echo Rock? Mazinaw Rock?–THE CANOE TRIPS TO THE ROCK 1895 and Ontario’s Answer to the Overlook Hotel

CLIPPED FROM
Owen Sound Sun
Owen Sound, Ontario, Canada16 Nov 1917, Fri  •  Page 11

I wrote an interesting story about a Lanark Cave a few months ago Mystery of the Lanark Cave — Lanark Village and this week I came across stories of a cliff rock with Indigenious markings called Missanoga Rock and could not find much about it– so I started to dig more.

CLIPPED FROM
The Menasha Record
Menasha, Wisconsin28 Feb 1920, Sat  •  Page 4

It seemed it was called Missanoga Rock, Bon Echo Rock was Mazinaw Rock. Even in the history of the rock called the Gilbraltar of Canada there was mention of it being called Missanoga Rock. But it was, and even the Bon Echo Lodge called it that. In my confusion I had no idea as I had already written about the Mazinaw Rock–read Where Was Meyers Cave?

CLIPPED FROM
The Washington Post
Washington, District of Columbia10 Jun 1910, Fri  •  Page 14

The history goes that Missanoga Rock/Mazinaw Rock rises 330 feet from the placid surface of Ontario’s Lake Mazinaw. This majestic rock has lured travelers for centuries, beginning with the Algonquin Indians who, on this rock, documented pieces of their lives, some hundreds of years ago. So we know In total, the Algonquins painted over 260 pictographs on this rock, using red ochre, a natural mineral, mixed with animal oil–creating the largest collection of its kind, in Southern Ontario. Mazinaw comes from “Mazinaabikinigan-zaaga’igan,” meaning “painted-image lake” in Algonquian– and I fear we will never know why it was called Missanoga.

In 1880, 1892, and 1895 a few local private journeys were made to Missanoga Rock. In those days it was so renowned and any journey was documented in the local newspapers. The gentlemen on one exhursion in 1892 were not believed, and the newspaper reported the local gossip that “they probably only made it as far as Innisville and camped out in the Innisville Hotel.”

Back Where I came From — Innisville

1892 Carleton Place

CLIPPED FROM
Ottawa Daily Citizen
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada06 Sep 1892, Tue  •  Page 8

CLIPPED FROM
CLIPPED FROM
The Lanark Era
Lanark, Ontario, Canada02 Oct 1895, Wed  •  Page 1

Sept 11,1895- Party of Caldwell and Drummond

THE CANOE TRIP TO MISSANOGA

Part 1- Sept 11 1895

CLIPPED FROM
The Lanark Era
Lanark, Ontario, Canada11 Sep 1895, Wed  •  Page 3

18 Sep 1895— Part 2

Meyer’s Cave is mentioned here and the search for gold-Where Was Meyers Cave? and Meyer’s Cave — John Walden Meyers

CLIPPED FROMThe Lanark EraLanark, Ontario, Canada18 Sep 1895, Wed  •  Page 2

September 25,1895— Part 3 They reach the rock–

CLIPPED FROM
The Lanark Era
Lanark, Ontario, Canada25 Sep 1895, Wed  •  Page 2

Was this the Joe Baye he was talking about? Joe Baye — Donna Sweeney Lowry

There is also a massive fading tribute to Walt Whitman etched into the rock.

CLIPPED FROM
The Edmond Sun
Edmond, Oklahoma30 Oct 1919, Thu  •  Pag

The Weekly British Whig
Kingston, Ontario, Canada
Mon, Aug 18, 1919 · Page 6

for more CLICK here.

Bon Echo Inn

 Flora MacDonald Denison, an Ontario-based inn owner called The Bon Echo Inn had her favorite poet’s words etched forever into a granite cliff. Mac-Donald-Denison decided to model her quiet piece of paradise after the spiritual humanism and democratic idealism of her poet hero, Walt Whitman. She started The Whitman Club at the inn and a small number of people in the Canadian arts world began to see Mazinaw Lake as a retreat.

In the sultry summers of the 1920s, however, bohemian holidayers from Toronto, controversial young artists like Arthur Lismer and A.Y. Jackson, emerging authors, influential journalists having frolicked for some days or weeks in a rustic idyll beneath the great Mazinaw Rock at Bon Echo would converge on what was then Tweed’s Orange Hall to stage one of Merrill Denison’s “rollicking” entertainments.

It took a full day to make the 55-kilometre trip from Bon Echo. The amateur thespians would squeeze into Denison’s McLaughlin Buick for the bone-bruising drive along a dirt road (now Highway 41) to Kaladar where they’d catch a train to Tweed. The merrymakers would mount a quick rehearsal in the Orange Hall auditorium before bedding down in a local hotel.

There are old CBC radio Interviews with Merrill Denison speaking about the bygone days of the Bon Echo Inn and about the curious mysticism that surrounded the place (there are references to seances and ghosts etc) . When I saw clippings of the register I realized that these guests were the very best of the Canadian arts society. I think occultism was much more a part of the mainstream arts culture back then. It kept reminding me of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining…read-The Devil’s Telephone? The Ouija Board or Strange Stories from the Past

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flora_MacDonald_Denison

Denison was already a successful Toronto business woman when she took over ownership of the Bon Echo Inn in 1910. An early feminist Denison had started the Canadian Suffrage Association with a number of like-minded female activists, and was also a staunch proponent of the arts, especially writing. When she and her husband took over the Bon Echo Inn, she turned it into a haven for artists and thinkers, a quiet place in the Ontario wilderness where they could work and relax. Read more here click

CLIPPED FROM
The Lanark Era
Lanark, Ontario, Canada21 Aug 1918, Wed  •  Page 5

CLIPPED FROM
The Daily Standard
Kingston, Ontario, Canada14 Jul 1926, Wed  •  Page 3

CLIPPED FROM
The Kingston Whig-Standard
Kingston, Ontario, Canada23 Jul 1925, Thu  •  Page 1

CLIPPED FROM
The Weekly British Whig
Kingston, Ontario, Canada30 Jul 1925, Thu  •  Page 7–Ruth Scripture moved to England from Toronto and died in 1935 in the UK

CLIPPED FROM
The Windsor Star
Windsor, Ontario, Canada14 Sep 1936, Mon  •  Page 2

CLIPPED FROM
The Daily Standard
Kingston, Ontario, Canada14 Jul 1926, Wed  •  Page 3

Mystery of the Lanark Cave — Lanark Village

Where Was Meyers Cave?

Meyer’s Cave — John Walden Meyers

THE CAVE AT POOLEY’S BRIDGE STORY

Historical Caves — Pelissier’s Caves

Snow Road Adventures- Hikes in the Old Cave — From the Pen of Noreen Tyers of Perth

So Where Were the Caves in Carleton Place?

Now You see it, Now You Don’t: The Disappearing and Reappearing of the Tim Horton’s Subterranean

Robert Bryson and Stuart Dunn — Canoeing Down the Timber Slide

Victoria Mill Slide- Almonte.com

Almonte Gazette

That fine old Scotch couple, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Bryson, once of Union street, had an interesting chat about the days long gone by, and learned of an incident which he takes the liberty of telling the readers of this paper. It was away back in 1835 or there about that the  first “ timber slide” was built in Almonte, for the purpose of avoiding the great height of falls which the lumbermen had to overcome in some way. 

In 1835  Hon. (then plain Mr.) George Bryson and Mr. Simon Dunn established shanties throughout-Ramsay in the neighbourhood of where the Drummonds and the Kennedys and other pioneers lived then, as some of them still do. In those days the logs were hauled to a point opposite Messrs. Timmins & Co’s present store, and were left there until the river opened in the spring, when they were put down the slide into the Bay below. 

At that time the slide extended from the Bay up to the lower end of Mill street. When the logs had all been put through the slide in 1835 there was great talk among the shantymen about running the slide in canoes, to avoid portaging, but when it came to the point most of the men thought twice.   

However, Mr. Robert Bryson, then a sturdy young fellow of 18, decided to risk the trip, in company with his brother’s partner, Mr. Simon Dunn. They had a splendid large pine log canoe, and ventured on their risky trip, full of courage, both being skilful canoeists. The canoe and its occupants shot down the steep decline at a rapid gait —as rapidly as a toboggan goes down its slide in winter—and all went well until they came to the fourteen feet of a drop from the end of the slide into tho Bay.

As soon as the canoe left the slide it split into two pieces—right down the middle—and the two passengers were immediately submerged in the rapids below. However, they were soon- fished out and given attention, and were none the worse for their involuntary endeavour, and they were many a time afterward congratulated on their nerve and daring expedition and established a record for the first trip by boat down the Almonte slide. They lost a fine canoe, but that was a small matter compared with the fact that they accomplished what none of the other men dared to attempt. Afterwards “ aprons’ were put on the various slides, rendering them navigable for canoes when skilfully handled. 

https://searcharchives.vancouver.ca/shingle-bolt-flume-in-capilano-canyon

Vintage logging – flumes and sluiceways click

Remembering the Old Log Timber Slide

Canoeing Down the Mississippi River Blakeney 1970s Photo Essay

 

Please play while viewing photos

 

All photos from the Canadian/ Gazette files from the 1970s. Carleton Place and Beckwith Heritage Museum. Is this Blakeney? Anyone know anyone?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blakeney Rapids Trail-

This meandering trail has a beautiful and magical feeling. Lots of mossy trunked trees.

There are a few nice foot bridges. Also a nice sunny lookout from the rocks over the rapids.

On a hot summer day it’s fun to climb around on the rocks in the water, but be sure to bring water socks. CLICK HERE–

 

 

 

 

The Beauty of Blakeney by Jim Collins

So I Walked Into a Candle Holder and Blakeney-ed Out

Rolling down the Rapids –Journey to Lanark Part 5

Do Not Try This at Home Kids- Carleton Place Rapids Swim

With files from The Keeper of the Scrapbooks — Christina ‘tina’  Camelon Buchanan — Thanks to Diane Juby— click here..