THE WESLEMKOON ALLIGATOR The accompanying photo is of the alligator, The Weslemkoon (meaning bank beaver), that was employed to tow logs on Lake Weslemkoon during the 1890’s. It is a photograph taken during a picnic as the craft was travelling from Weslemkoon down the Mississippi branch of the Madawaska River past McArthur’s Mills to the […]
BANCROFT SHRINERS AFTER DINNER SPEECH Wasn’t that a fine meal? It reminds me of two down and out Irishmen, Casey and Murphy. As they passed a restaurant they spied a sign that proclaimed: “If we don’t have it we’ll pay you 100 pounds.” “Let’s try it,” said Murphy. “We haven’t got any money. What if […]
SCHOOL EXAMS June Examinations, 1922 LOWER SCHOOL ZOOLOGY (a) State two points of difference between (i) a spider and an insect, or between (ii) a butterfly and a moth. (b) Name two harmful insects which infest orchard trees and two which infest garden vegetables. State the injury done by any two of them and the […]
EDUCATION IN NORTH HASTINGS The first Bancroft Public School was built circa 1870 just south of Quarry, a.k.a. Marble Lake, on the old Hastings Settlement Road. William Davy, Senior, originally settled his family on land between L’Amable and Quarry Lake. According to the author who signed his name I.W.T. (guess what those initials mean) “the […]
BIA DINNER MARCH 5, 2005 The following was a presentation at the Bancroft Legion. Good evening. Before I start I would like to point out that the easiest way to stay awake during an after-dinner speech is to deliver it. By the way, your museum, next to the post office, was built in 1879. While […]
TRAVEL IN ALGONQUIN PARK The first Europeans to travel throughout today’s Algonquin Park were explorers such as Champlain and David Thompson. In their wake came the trappers, lumbermen and settlers, roughly in that order. Indigenous to the Algonquin Region was the lightweight birch bark canoe, a mode of travel vastly superior for exploration than tramping […]
ALGONQUIN R & R Algonquin Provincial Park, “7600 square km of wild rugged beauty” quoth The Raven, Algonquin Park’s official newsletter, found between latitudes 45 degrees 10 minutes – 46 degrees 10 minutes and longitude 77 degrees 30 minutes – 79 degrees 15 minutes, within the Madawaska Highlands of the Laurentian Shield. The Precambrian Shield […]
ALGONQUIN BREAKUP When the gentle zephyrs of a changing season first blew through the Algonquin forests their warmth issued a wake up call that signaled the coming spring. As the ice pack groaned under the vast white weight of winter the Lumbermen could hear, and feel, the impending climax to their camboose shanty sojourn. An […]
John F. Kennedy – President of the U.S. of A. People usually have “I know where I was when that happened” moments. For example, I was in Mr. Pipe’s grade 12 chemistry class on Friday November 22, 1963 when it was announced that J.F.K. was assassinated. (Mr. Pipe resembled a popular Popeye cartoon character, Wimpy, […]
ALGONQUIN PARK – RICH IN TRADITION One of the six original aims of the Algonquin Royal Commission in recommending the creation of Algonquin Park was to promote it as a health resort, a place of recreation. This was to be a serious attempt to keep the tourism dollar at home, to stem the tide of […]
