Lower Fort Garry

That was the place to take our visitors from far and near when I was a teacher at a school just north of Selkirk, Manitoba for a few years.

All were impressed by the fort's big stone buildings, the historical artifacts and the stories related by the guides in their old-fashioned outfits. And, invariably, the outing involved a group photo around the cannon in front of the governor's mansion. All that was back in the early seventies. That's why the picture is in black and white.

A few years later I was teaching history at a private boys school in Rosseau, Ontario. With history, the challenge is always to make something real. Especially when the students are a bunch of boys in grade nine with anything on their minds but history. Even something as down to earth as the Hudson's Bay Company and the fur trade seemed boring to them.

Fortunately the school was small enough to give teachers some leeway in how they approached their subjects. So, why not make history real?

Instead of talking about York boats and their use in the development of western Canada we decided to make one. Actually, I decided, and the class 'volunteered.' After all, York boats were simple wooden craft that had, in the old days, been made with simple hand tools wherever and whenever there was a need. Not much higher on the scale of complexity than building a raft to cross a river. Right?

I even remembered seeing a York boat at Lower Fort Garry both as a static display and as a means of reenacting the governor's arrival at the fort. I tried to remember its construction.

It seemed simple enough. But a couple of letters to the fort asking for pictures and measurements met with little success. They did, however, suggest that we contact Parks Canada, the parent organization.

The blueprints arrived in a few weeks. Yup, a whole sheaf of impressive looking plans as well as pictures of a boat under construction. These were, apparently, for other displays about to be constructed by Parks Canada somewhere. The plans were for a craft thirty-six feet long! More than your average backyard boat- building project. And something beyond the budget of our small school.

However, to quit at that stage would have been like telling a history class that history can't repeat itself. The class set to work, scrounged lumber from a sympathetic sawmill operator, bought some of the essential hardware like nails and bolts, found an old shed on the school property in which to work, and set to it. The boys learned how to use a brace and bit, draw knife and plane. They also learned that making oars from trees is a time consuming business and that clinching nails through the hull of a boat takes teamwork.

To make a long story a bit shorter, the York boat was built and officially launched the next spring. It was three feet shorter than the boat in the plans because the shed was only that size and even had to be modified to extract the thing. Another lesson learned. We also learned that oakum and pitch is a messy business.

The York Boat was used for outdoor education trips for the next two years. One year from Georgian Bay to Lakefield on the Trent-Severn Waterway, and the next the rest of the way from Lakefield to Picton. On each outing a crew of eight boys learned things about that waterway and some of the history associated with it.

They also learned that York boats, although provided with a square sail, do not sail all that well. Many hours were manned on the long oars that took teamwork as well as strength. The only fair and following wind was across Lake Simcoe to the next leg of the canal north of Beaverton. History probably never seemed so real.

With thanks to Lower Fort Garry and Parks Canada for their assistance.

— Harry Kleinhuis, finalist in the Canada's History Storied Places contest, 2010.