Gatineau Valley Golf Courses, 1903-1933

Foreword

The cover photograph for this book, Gatineau Valley Golf Courses, 1903 – 1933, shows Anson Green about to strike a tee shot at the Larrimac Golf Club in 1930, seven years after the first golf shot was struck on these golf grounds. It turns out that today the golf course of the Larrimac Golf and Tennis Club is the last survivor of at least sixteen golf courses laid out in the Gatineau Valley between 1903 and 1933.

There were four different golf courses laid out at Kingsmere between 1903 and the 1920s.

There was a golf course laid out at Kirk’s Ferry in the summer of 1911.

There were three different nine-hole layouts at Farm Point between 1912 and 1921.

At Tenaga, there were two different layouts in play between 1914 and 1930.

North Wakefield had its own golf course in the summer of 1916.

Royal Ottawa golf professional Karl Keffer laid out a nine-hole course at Blue Sea Lake in 1921.

At Larrimac, there were three different layouts between 1923 and 1928, including an 18-hole golf course.

There was also a nine-hole golf course at Gleneagle that opened in 1933 and lasted about 25 years.

And there was very nearly a spectacular 18-hole golf course built at Meach Lake in 1931.

Who knew?

Introduction: Summer Resort Golf

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, hostelry entrepreneurs developed summer resorts in the Muskoka Lakes and Gatineau Valley regions. In the Muskoka Lakes, hotel development had begun by the 1860s. The same occurred in the Gatineau Valley as of the 1870s.

The objective was to attract wealthy guests from Toronto and Ottawa, primarily, as well as other regions across Canada and the American Northeast. To do so, first-class accommodation was to be provided in a wilderness environment: electrical service, modern plumbing, exquisite dining, dance halls, and sophisticated entertainment would be provided alongside beaches for bathing, lakes and rivers for boating and fishing, manicured lawns for croquet and picnics, playing fields for baseball, and courts for tennis.

The last of the sports facilities to be developed would become the most popular as the twentieth century progressed: the golf course.

The first golf courses were not very sophisticated: there were short holes in cleared fields; putting greens were simply level areas in a field where the grass was rolled flat and scythed short. In the Muskoka Lakes, according to Geoffrey Shifflett, “The first such course appeared at Beaumarais around 1900 … and another was opened at Royal Muskoka in 1901, followed by one connected to the Monteith house at Rosseau” (“The Evolving Muskoka vacation Experience,” doctoral dissertation, University of Waterloo, 2012, p. 211).

In the Ottawa resort areas accessed via the Gatineau Railway, the first effort to establish golf courses seems to have occurred at Kingsmere in 1903.

Kingsmere

Kingsmere, often called “the Mountain” or “the Mere” by the people who spent the summer there, was not a town or village but rather a summer resort community:

Kingsmere, one of the prettiest spots in the vicinity of Ottawa, is a little lake situated 600 feet above the capital, in the Laurentian hills, four miles by stage from Chelsea station of the Gatineau railway. There is no village, the lake, which is about half a mile long, being surrounded by pretty villas. The hills rise back of these, particularly to the north, where King’s Cross towers 400 feet above the lake. From its summit, the finest view is had to be obtained anywhere near Ottawa. There is a post office, and a daily stage to Chelsea. (Ottawa Journal, 13 June 1903, p. 9)

Figure 1 1950s view from north shore of Kingsmere Lake, with boathouse of J.R. Booth visible bottom right. Gatineau Valley Historical Society photo CD-023/02246.

Kingsmere was the only Gatineau Valley summer resort with no train service, and so the four-mile drive by stagecoach from the Chelsea train station was a frequently-noted drawback:

The same old place, with the same old long uphill drive, with the same compensating beauties of view and freshness of ozone. The great drawback of Kingsmere, distance from the station, evidently does now outweigh its many advantages, for this year again many take the trip daily. Kingsmere is a beautiful and healthy place, and despite its distance from the station it is not likely to lose its attraction. (Ottawa Journal, 16 July 1901, p. 6)

So it would seem that the long drive from the train station was the only drawback.

Figure 2 1920s aerial photograph of Kingsmere Lake. Library and Archives Canada E002505835.

About two dozen or so wealthy Ottawa families spent summers at Kingsmere each year, the wealthiest residing in cottages of their own, the rest renting a cottage for the season or taking rooms in hotels, boarding houses, or farmhouses.

First Golf at Kingsmere

Where once there were no golf courses in the Gatineau Valley, within a couple of weeks during the summer of 1903 there were two – and they were both at Kingsmere.

We find a tongue-in-cheek warning in the middle of July of 1903 that “The golf craze has reached Kingsmere, and the young enthusiasts have laid out a three-hole link on Welch’s hill. If enthusiasm is one of the strong points of the game, the Ottawa Golf Club will have to look to their laurels” (Ottawa Journal 18 July 1903, p. 9).

This golf course was presumably laid out on the property of John Welsh – often spelled Welch – who had built a farm at Kingsmere around 1900. His wife Brigid Finnerty became widely known as “Mrs. Welch,” the one who ran a boarding house on their farm well into the 1920s, where she offered various sorts of accommodation. We find in the Ottawa newspapers the names of prominent people staying at “Mrs. Welch’s,” or renting “Mrs. Welch’s cottage,” so it would seem that the Welsh golf course was a private one built and maintained for the use of guests (Ottawa Journal, 23 July 1910, p. 20; 4 August 1906, p. 6).

Figure 3 Looking from east to west, we see a 1920s view of the "hill" on the farm of John Welsh at Kingsmere. Gatineau Valley Historical Society photo CD-019/02142-006.

The Welsh Farm was built on a hillside to the north-east of Kingsmere Lake. It was about 1,500 metres (about a mile) from the eastern end of the lake, but it offered good views of the countryside, for the land had been cleared for farming a generation earlier and so did not resemble at all the forested land in the area today.

The location of the farm in relation to the lake can be seen in the aerial photograph below taken in the 1920s, around the time that Welsh Farm became Mountain Lodge (which flourished as a ski resort well into the 1950s).

Figure 4 Annotated aerial photograph of Kingsmere Lake from the east, circa 1924. Gatineau Valley Historical Society photo, CD032/02397-004.

Mrs. Welsh became famous for her apple pies, a notoriety perhaps responsible for a strange item about pie theft at Kingsmere during the 1910 summer season:

The summer residents are very much annoyed at present over the too frequent visits of a person who is very fond of pies and cakes and consequently is known as the “Pieman.” The pie-man persists in making midnight visits and taking “French leave” of all pies, cakes and sweets that come within his reach. Evidently there is trouble brewing for the pie-man. (Ottawa Journal, 23 July 1910, p. 20)

Yet however famous for its pies, the Welsh boarding house did not become famous for its golf course: there are no further references to it in the Ottawa newspapers after 1903.

Apparently laid out by “young enthusiasts,” without the aid of a golf professional, the golf links of “Welch’s hill” may not have been much of a golf course at all.

The steep nature of the terrain around the Welsh boarding house may have made development of a proper golf course difficult. The photograph below, showing a view of the house looking from east to west, hints at the elevation changes around the farm. The photographer was obviously standing on ground well below the level of the farmhouse. The barns behind the house are on land even higher than the land on which the house sits.

Figure 5 The Welsh boarding house circa 1920. Gatineau Valley Historical Society photo CD-019/02142-007

Second Golf at Kingsmere

Within two weeks, the three-hole course on Welsh’s hill was probably completely displaced in the affections of young golf enthusiasts by another links.

Figure 6 Andrew W. Fleck, early 1900s.

At the beginning of August, we learn that “Mr. A.W. Fleck has had a 6-hole golf links laid out on his grounds, much to the delight of the young golfers” (Ottawa Journal, 1 August 1903, p. 9).

Rather than leaving the matter to “young enthusiasts,” Andrew Fleck seems to have hired a golf professional to come to his property and lay out this golf course. The candidate for this job would have been either the only golf professional in Ottawa, William A. Divine (1871-1953) of the Ottawa Golf Club (Divine came to Ottawa in 1899 from North Berwick, Scotland, and served at the Club until replaced by John Oke in 1904), or one of the Montreal golf professionals (the Almonte Golf Club, for instance, sought James Black of the Royal Montreal Golf Club to lay out its first golf course in 1902).

Fleck certainly had the money to spend on having things done properly.

Figure 7 Home of A.W. Fleck, 500 Wilbrod Street, Sandy Hill, Ottawa, circa October of 1902.

Born in Montreal in 1848, Andrew W. Fleck worked his way up in the lumber mills of J.R. Booth in the Madawaska Valley until he became perhaps the most important lumber man in Ottawa by the 1890s. He became even more important to Booth when he married the latter’s eldest daughter. By the turn of the century, Fleck had turned his attention to managing Booth’s Canada Atlantic Railway. In 1902, he built a mansion on the site of the Ottawa Golf Club’s recently vacated Sandy Hill golf course at 500 Wilbrod Street, which still stands today, and of course he also maintained a summer residence in Kingsmere.

His Kingsmere cottage seems to have adjoined the property of his father-in-law J.R. Booth. Between their cottages were the tennis courts of Booth’s “Opeongo” summer home. Also along Booth Road was the cottage of Fleck’s brother-in-law James Arthur Seybold, who had married another of Booth’s daughters, and who was an avid member of the Ottawa Golf Club. Their three cottages were on the west side of Booth Road. Opposite the Booth cottage, on the east side of Booth Road, was the cottage of Levi Crannell.

Figure 8 Annotated aerial photograph of Kingsmere Lake circa 1924. Gatineau Valley Historical Society photo CD-032/02397- 004.

In the photograph below, the Booth cottage is in the foreground; the Fleck cottage, in the background.

Figure 9 Photo of the Booth cottage and the Fleck cottage from the Crannell cottage yard. A stone fence runs along each side of Booth Road. Gatineau Valley Historical Society photo.

Open land next to Fleck’s cottage may well have been where his six-hole course was laid out.

Figure 10 Enlarged detail from photograph above in Figure 8.

How long Fleck maintained his six-hole golf course is unknown, but there is an interesting observation in the Ottawa Journal in 1906 that suggests they may still have been in operation then: “The summer cottages at Kingsmere are of more than ordinary beauty. Several have splendid tennis lawns, and there is at least one golf links” (Ottawa Journal, 11 August 1906, p. 6).

Third Golf at Kingsmere

The two golf courses laid out at Kingsmere in 1903 were supplemented or replaced by two more within ten years.

Figure 11 William Joseph Fleury, Kingsmere, circa 1900. Gatineau Valley Historical Society photo CD050/02764-007.

William Joseph Fleury, the son of original Kingsmere settlers Joseph and Annie Fleury, worked at the thriving mica mine of Fortin and Gravelle south of the lake but he also owned a few properties at Kingsmere. As early as 1899, he was offering a new cottage for rent overlooking the lake itself. Sadly, he died in in the mica mine at the beginning of 1907 when dynamite he had placed in the rock exploded before he could reach shelter. Thereafter his widow Henrietta (born Nash) managed their lake properties as seasonal vacation rentals.

Having married William in 1904 and had two boys with him by the time of his death, Henrietta managed these summer properties for just a few years. But even before this, we find that “Mrs. Fleury’s boarding house” is providing popular vacation accommodation in Kingsmere (Ottawa Citizen, 11 August 1906, p. 6). She became known as “Mrs. Fleury,” not just operating a boarding house, but also offering a “cottage or apartments to let at Kingsmere” (Ottawa Citizen, 23 April 1907, p. 5). She also described the cottage as a “summer residence to let at Kingsmere overlooking lake” (Ottawa Citizen, 16 May 1907, p. 5).

Married less than three years when her husband died, and already the mother of two young boys, Henrietta became only a seasonal resident of Kingsmere. She soon moved to Ottawa permanently with her two toddlers. Sometime late in 1912 or early in 1913, in fact, she seems to have sold her Kingsmere boarding house, which had become known as “Fleury House.”

The purchaser was a man named “A. Grimes,” who renamed it Kingsmere Lodge in 1913 and offered his “grounds free for camping and picnics” (Ottawa Citizen, 23 June 1913, p. 10).

One supposes that what had become known as Fleury House was the farmhouse of the Fleury Farm on the north side of the lake, which had become essential to the summer colony of cottagers in the early 1900s:

Cottages secured their milk, cream and eggs from the farmers and most supplies came from Chelsea. The Fleury farm supplied most. It is hard to visualize now that there were meadows and open fields in the areas now covered with trees, where the cows grazed. Some of the land deeds gave the farmers the right to water their cattle at the lake, passing over the cottagers' lands.

(https://www.gvhs.ca/publications/utg-articles/volume-11-03.html)

The farmhouse in question, belonging to Joseph and Annie (Childs) Fleury, seems to have been relatively modest compared to the grand buildings erected by the members of the summer cottage colony.

Figure 12 Circa 19100, left to right, brothers William, Charles, Henry, and Thomas (on step), then mother Annie below Thomas, and sister Beatrice below her, brother George, Alice Blair (cousin of Henry’s wife), sister Elizabeth, and father Joseph. Gatineau Valley Historical Society photo CD-050/02764-007.

But summer real estate is all about location!

According to a map produced in 1931 for the Ottawa Ski Club News, the Fleury farmhouse seems to have been located on the side of a hill to the northeast of Kingsmere Lake – a hill rising steadily from the valley bottom in which the lake was located to a peak on which a lookout was built. (The farm of John Welsh was built on the same hill, but it was located about 1,500 metres (about a mile) to the east.

Figure 13 "Sketch Plan, Showing Trails & Travelled Rotes, Ottawa Ski Club,” in Ottawa Ski Club News, 28 January 1931.

Booth and his sons-in-law Seybold and Fleck built their summer residences on land from the Fleury farm.

Figure 14 Cottage of J.R. Booth in the foreground. Gatineau Valley Historical Society photo CD-019/02143-003.

“A. Grimes,” the man who purchased “Fleury House,” was presumably Allan Grimes (1891-1955), a son of John Grimes, manager of a number of Ottawa and Toronto hotels before he purchased Ottawa’s Windsor Hotel in 1903. He and his wife “were among the Ottawa people who built a summer home at Kingsmere, just after the turn of the century, acquiring 155 acres of property on Kingsmere Lake, across from the country residence of the Late Rt. Hon. W.L. Mackenzie King” (Ottawa Journal, 10 August 1950, p. 1). The Grimes land was several hundred meters west of the Fleury Farm.

Figure 15 Allan Grimes (1891-1955).

Allan Grimes would eventually become a prominent lumberman, but it may be that his acquisition of “Fleury House” at the end of 1912 or beginning of 1913 was the 21-year-old’s attempt to follow his father into the hostelry business.

He seems to have started with a bang: “It is understood that applications for accommodation at ‘Kingsmere Lodge’ are being received daily. This place is an ideal resort for week-end visitors, having all conveniences for a few days’ sport, including golf links” (Ottawa Journal, 19 July 1913, p. 14).

This is the only newspaper reference to a golf course laid out at Grimes’ lodge.

The next year (1914), Kingsmere Lodge was managed by H.E. Christoffersen. Had it been sold to a new owner, or was Christofferson managing it on behalf of Grimes?

After 1914 nothing more was heard of Kingsmere Lodge – or its golf course – until a new hotel with this name was launched in Kingsmere in 1921.

It is not clear whether Allan Grimes built the golf links associated with Kingsmere Lodge, or whether he inherited them from Henrietta Fleury when he acquired Fleury House.

Allan Grimes and virtually all of his 7 brothers were outstanding baseball players, and they were interested in a wide variety of sports. Allan was “for years Ottawa’s Mr. Baseball” (Ottawa Journal, 29 January 1960, p. 2). Louis Grimes was manager of the Ottawa Hunt and Golf Club in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Perhaps Allan had preceded his brother Louis in golf course management by almost 40 years!

Fourth Golf at Kingsmere: The Links of Kingsmere Lodge

William Murphy, operator of the stagecoach between Kingsmere and Chelsea, and the first postmaster appointed at Kingsmere in 1894, owned a 100-acre farm at Kingsmere. He acquired this property and its 13-bedroom house from his father James. James Murphy had bought the house in question from Timothy Sheehan, who had acquired it from the man for whom he had originally built it, Raiff Kenny, apparently the “first resident at Kingsmere” (https://www.gvhs.ca/publications/utg-articles/volume-11-03.html).

We read in 1914 that over the years, William’s mother Mary had entertained “a large number of summer resorters at her spacious house in Kingsmere, and we learn that “the house is kept up as formerly, and as efficiently, by Mr. and Mrs. W. Murphy” (Ottawa Citizen, 4 July 1914, p. 2).

Figure 16 The home on Kingsmere Road that was operated as a boarding house by the Murphy family in the early years of the twentieth century. Gatineau Valley Historical Society photo, circa 1940, CD=015/02012.

The Murphy boarding house must not be confused with the boarding house on the Welsh farm, or with the boarding house on the Fleury farm. They are not the same building passed from owner to owner, as we can see from newspaper items in 1910 that indicate that guests from Ottawa are staying at each of “Mrs. Fleury’s,” “Mrs. Welch’s,” and “Mrs. Murphy’s” (Ottawa Journal, 23 July 1910, p. 20).

Yet William Murphy’s house had its own peculiar notoriety because of the skiers who frequented the area even before the organization of the Ottawa Ski Club in 1910. There are accounts of Ottawa skiers making the trip to Murphy’s hotel in Kingsmere as early as 1907. And when the Ottawa Ski Club reorganized after World War I, ski trips that involved an overnight stay at Murphy’s hotel were arranged.

In the days before Camp Fortune was built, skiers who detrained at Tenaga, Kirk’s Ferry, Cascades, or Wakefield used to “push right on to Kingsmere” by mid-day “to enjoy Murphy’s far-famed hospitality”:

Truly the sight from the top of Murphy’s Hill [today’s Wattsford’s Lookout] is grand, and the panorama that suddenly unfolds before the eye is well worth a prolonged stop; but, as it was usually well past the noon hour – and sometimes much later – when your skier arrived there, the only wonderful thing he could see in that thousand square miles of territory a thousand feet below him was Murphy’s smoke-stack, with that graceful wisp of smoke slowly curling upwards, laden with the pleasant smell of Mrs. Murphy’s cooking. (C.E. Mortureux, “The History of George’s Trail,” http://skimuseum.ca/documents/annuals/1923-24_pt29_pg75-79.pdf, p. 76)

To get to the hotel and the home-cooked meal, however, a skier had to descend Murphy’s Hill, on which Murphy’s successor would lay out a golf course. The hill was known as “the graveyard of skiers.”

Figure 17 Mary Falkner’s illustration of the dangers of Murphy's Hill, “The History of George’s Trail,” p. 75.

With a view to understanding the nature of the land on which this golf course would soon be laid out, it is interesting read an account of the Ottawa Ski Club’s lament about Murphy’s Hill:

Now Murphy’s Hill was not so very bad, as hills go. It was steep to be sure, very steep, and there was a good deal of it; it was full of twists and curves and generally tracked with sleigh ruts. All this could be negotiated with a fair amount of luck and skill, save for that confounded right-angled turn at the bottom caused by a fence, and that icy spot, caused by a spring trickling down the mountainside; but the worst thing about it, perhaps, was its bad reputation, quite enough in itself to upset a man with an empty stomach and wobbly knees….

After the Ottawa Ski Club had been formed, and … after the members of the Executive all had their little spill on Murphy’s Hill, … they went to Willie Murphy and spoke to him after this fashion: “Look here, Willie, that hill is bad. Could you do something to improve it? It would not be very hard to take some of the curves out, and that fence could easily be removed too. That would make it a whole lot safer. Some day, you know, some serious accident will happen and you will be blamed for it, because that hill is named after you, and there will be a blemish on the name of Murphy.”

That last sentence, which was intended as a telling argument, spoiled it all. “But why tack my name on that hill?” asked Willie. “No one called it that way before you fellows came in these parts. I suppose I will be blamed for the mountain here next. I am not going to do any tearing down of fences; there are enough ski-ing pests doing that in the country without my taking a hand in it. And if you think I am going to spend the summer carting that hill away just because you fellows can’t ski, well you have got another guess coming. Why don’t you take to snowshoes? It’s a whole lot safer.” (Mortureux, “The History of George’s Trail,” pp. 76-77)

In the face of Murphy’s obstinacy, the Ottawa Ski Club tasked club member George Audette with the responsibility of blazing an alternative trail that would allow skiers to descend from the ridgetop without having to go down Murphy’s Hill, and this new trail (called “George’s Trail”) became quite popular – so popular that almost no one made the run down Murphy’s Hill anymore and Murphy therefore decided in 1922 that “to stay with the crowd” he would open a new hotel at the bottom of the new trail (p. 79).

Figure 18 Illustration by Mary Falkner, "The History of George's Trail," p. 79.

So Willie (also “Billy”) Murphy (famous locally as an amateur thespian and as rabid baseball fan who travelled to watch all the Kingsmere team’s games in the Gatineau Valley Baseball League) continued to operate a boarding house at Kingsmere and to rent out an 8-roomed summer cottage overlooking the lake, but he sold his 13-room house in March of 1921 to Gerald H. Wattsford. At the base of Murphy’s Hill, the new owner laid out tennis courts, and on the hill itself he laid out a nine-hole golf course running up the slope towards the ridge at the top of which one now finds “Wattsford’s Lookout.”

Ottawa newspapers referred to Wattsford’s establishment variously as Kingsmere Lodge, the Kingsmere Inn, Wattsford’s Inn, Wattsford’s Hotel, Wattsford’s summer home, or simply Wattsford’s.

Figure 19 Wattsford's Kingsmere lodge/inn/hotel, circa 1956. Gatineau Valley Historical Society photo CD-016/02040-001.

Gerald Harrison Wattsford, born in Levenheath, Suffolk, England, in 1873, the son of a clergyman, was an estate agent in Bishopton, County Durham, who had recently married Bishopton resident Mary Callender, when he volunteered to serve in the Imperial Yeomanry of the British Army and fight in the South African War at the turn of the century.

The war was brutal, and Wattsford was deeply affected by it, attending ever afterwards meetings of Boer War veterans, but one of his most enduring memories was of a moment of shared humanity, as he revealed in a letter to the editor of the Ottawa Citizen in 1952 commenting on the strife between black and white populations in South Africa:

I don’t presume to suggest any solution to deal with the non-whites, but …. If they are further subjugated I see no end to the trouble.

I would like to cite an apparently simple episode which happened to me during the Boer War. I was in the Karoo desert on a certain day, and took the opportunity of entering an [African family’s] hut, with an eye, I must confess, to getting some of the brown (distinctly so) bread. But when I saw the meager contents of the so-called home, I couldn’t do it. The mother was there with two or three children including a little girl about 7, and two or three hens. The father, a goatherd, was on the veldt tending his goats.

The family was a little frightened at first, as of course I had a uniform on. I soon reassured them and on leaving gave the little girl a “ticky” – [a small coin worth] about 6 cents]. I had not gone very far from the hut when I heard footsteps behind me, and on catching me up the little girl timidly put two hen’s eggs in my hands. She would have made right off again but I held her attention for a moment or two by pretending to eat and enjoy the eggs. I just had time to pat her head, for which I think I got a little smile, and she was off home again.

It all seemed very simple, but she was unknowingly helping to fulfill one of the greatest spiritual precepts. (Ottawa Citizen, 28 June 1952, p. 32)

Shortly after his return to Britain, Gerald and Mary immigrated to Canada, arriving in New Brunswick in 1905 and spending a year there before moving to Ottawa, where Gerald found employment in the Public Works Department of the federal civil service as an Engine Ring Draftsman and Mary found herself pregnant with twins.

Alas, Mary died giving birth to the couple’s twin daughters Mary and Lillian on the last day of 1907.

Figure 20 Gerald Wattsford circa 1950, with daughter Lillian and granddaughter Patricia, Ottawa Citizen, 18 August 2010.

In 1910, Mary’s husband Gerald became one of the city’s first champion tennis players when he won the doubles title (winning it again the next year). He was “one of the best players of his time in the Capital” (Ottawa Citizen, 21 July 1930, p. 11). In 1930, her daughter Lillian won the singles championship. In the 1950s, her granddaughters Diana, Patricia, and Penny all held Ontario tennis titles. In 2010, Penny won the over-75 singles title in British Columbia.

Wattsford loved sports and athletics, helping to organize the Civil Service Amateur Athletic association in 1908 and served on its Sports Committee in 1909. He also played cricket in Ottawa at the highest level, and he adopted curling as his winter sport.

Wattsford played competitive chess with the Ottawa Chess Club, also securing one of the boards to play against a touring chess master who took on all comers in Ottawa. Wattsford even collected antique chess sets from around the world and occasionally loaned them to various organizations for public shows.

In 1910, Wattsford married Grace Louisa Low, also a civil servant and also the daughter of a clergyman, with whom he had further children (George and Hope).

He continued in his job at the Public Works Department until his retirement in 1930, but at the beginning of World War I, he was appointed the Canadian Army Service Corps supply officer for the city of Ottawa.

In February of 1916, he volunteered to join the Canadian Expeditionary Force and was immediately sent to Toronto for “a special military course before leaving for overseas” (Ottawa Citizen, 10 February 1916, p. 14). Sent abroad with the Canadian Army Service Corps, which provided all transportation and supplies to the Canadian Army, Wattsford served at the rank of Lieutenant. In Europe, he spent time both at training camps in England and at the war front in France. He was sent back to Canada on leave at the end of 1917: “Lt. G.H. Wattsford has arrived home after two years’ service in France. He is a veteran of the South African War. He was through the battle of Vimy Ridge and was serving with a cavalry regiment [the 15th Light Horse Brigade]” (Ottawa Citizen, 31 October 1917, p. 5). He was sent back to France at the beginning of 1918, returning to Canada for good in May.

Before and after the war, the Wattsfords had rented a summer home in Wychwood, a community along the shore of the Ottawa River just south of Aylmer. Then they bought Murphy’s house and land in Kingsmere and became respected members of the Kingsmere summer cottage colony.

Although they spent the winter months at a house they owned in Ottawa, they spent most of their time – the spring, summer, and fall – at their “summer” home: Kingsmere Lodge.

Figure 21 Gatineau Park Previous Landowners circa 1950., LAC - NMC 123445.

The land that Wattsford owned can be seen on the map to the left where the name “Capt. G. Wattsford” is found inside a plot of land bordered in red.

The southern boundary of his land was marked by Kingsmere Road.

The eastern boundary ran north from the junction of Kingsmere Road and Swamp Road to the top of the ridge where Wattsford’s Lookout is located today.

The western boundary ran north to this ridge along Booth Road, except for the lot at the junction of Kingsmere Road and Booth Road where the Levi Crannell cottage was built in 1901-1902.

Wattsford’s land, his house, and his golf course can be seen in the photograph below.

Figure 22 Annotated aerial photograph of Kingsmere circa 1924. Gatineau Valley Historical Society photo CD-032/02397-004.

In the photograph above, it is possible to make out many of the fairways of the nine golf holes composing Wattsford’s golf course.

Further enlarged below, the photograph perhaps reveals a mixture of new and old fairways: the two light-coloured fairways nearest to Kingsmere Lodge, which form a right-angle, may be newly-seeded or under construction – the fact that they are devoid of grass or covered only with thin grass would account for their light colour relative to the other apparently well-grassed areas of the golf course.

Figure 23 Annotated 1924 aerial photograph of Kingsmere Lodge and its nine-hole golf course. Gatineau Valley Historical Society photo CD-032/02397-004.

On the photograph above, I have marked with orange lines the areas of what I take to be the nine fairways of Wattsford’s Kingsmere Lodge golf course.

We can see on the Google Maps photograph below the same area today (once totally cleared of trees, it is now almost totally overgrown with dense forest).

Figure 24 Annotated contemporary Google satellite image of Kingsmere Lake.

Like Murphy, Wattsford allowed the Ottawa Ski Club to maintain trails over his land in Kingsmere.

Ottawa skiers travelled “up the Penguin trail, over Kingsmere Golf Club slopes to the cabin at the top of the Canyon trail” (Ottawa Citizen, 17 December 1927, p. 13). As noted above, at the top of the ridge on Wattsford’s property was Wattsford’s Lookout. A sign at the lookout site today contains a brief biography of Wattsford in commemoration of his role in the development of the lookout, his role as supporter of the development of Gatineau Park in the Kingsmere area, and his role his role as supporter of the Ottawa Ski Club.

Of course the slopes of the Kingsmere golf-course hill were as steep and as difficult as ever, and so they continued to occasion crashes, at least one of which sent a skier to the Ottawa General Hospital.

Even the Wattsford’s own son “came a cropper” here: “The first fall of the year may be credited to George Wattsford, who in running the Kingsmere Golf Club slopes came a cropper head first into the velvety snow but emerged from his dazzling grave unharmed but a minute later, to the relief of his companions who expected him to complain that he had at least connected with a rock or two in his journey” (Ottawa Citizen, 26 November 1928, p. 7).

During the first two seasons of their hotel ownership, the Wattfords kept Kingsmere Lodge open during the winter to serve the skiers. Many events held by Ottawa’s various ski clubs aimed for a stop at the lodge for lunch. As the photograph below shows, the number of skiers on the trails each weekend would bring considerable custom to inns, lodges, and hotels that were prepared to serve them.

Figure 25 Skiers of the Ottawa Ski Club set out from the Chelsea area during the winter of 1929. Gatineau Valley Historical Society photo.

But the Wattsford’s policy changed for the 1924 ski season: “What will prove a disappointment to hundreds of skiers is the knowledge that Kingsmere Inn is closed for the season. Captain and Mrs. Gerald Wattsford will not return till some time in the spring and this will be a blow to many who had accustomed themselves to visiting this most popular skiers’ rendezvous” (Ottawa Citizen, 31 December 1923, p. 11). Thereafter, with only occasional exceptions (at the special entreaty of the various ski clubs in Ottawa), the Wattsfords tended to close the hotel in mid-December so they could return to Ottawa for the winter.

In addition to its focus for Ottawa’s skiers in the early 1920s, the Wattsford’s hotel was from the 1920s to the 1940s the centre of various cultural and sporting events each summer for the colony of cottagers in Kingsmere.

For instance, Kingsmere Lodge hosted local theatrical performances:

“Love’s Labor Lost, a Romance of Kingsmere, Que.,” a one-act comedy written by Mr. Alfred Buckley and presented on the verandah at Kingsmere Lodge, under the patronage of Captain and Mrs. Gerald Wattsford on Saturday evening, won the appreciation of the large audience, which included the people of Kingsmere and the visitors at the Lodge…. The performance met with such success that a request has been made to repeat it, and the cast has kindly consented to do so in the near future. (Ottawa Citizen, 13 August 1923, p. 15)

In regard to sports, Grace Wattsford would preside over both tennis tournaments and golf tournaments at the Wattsfords’ hotel. Gerald and his daughters dominated the tennis tournaments held on the Kingsmere Lodge courts, and Gerald often teamed up with one of the Grimes brothers to defeat other Grimes brothers.

And Wattsford played golf on his own course as well.

A formal golf club was eventually formed at Kingsmere, probably not long after “a friendly golf match on the links at Kingsmere Lodge … between some of the Kirk’s Ferry and Kingsmere summer residents” (Ottawa Citizen, 26 July 1926, p. 13). These Kirk’s Ferry summer residents would have been from the Larrimac Golf Club (the only other golf club in the Gatineau Valley in 1926).

The Wattsford’s golf course became home to the Kingsmere Golf Club, consisting entirely of Kingsmere summer residents. In addition to its match against the Kirk’s Ferry men, the club played matches against the other golf club in the Gatineau Valley as of 1933: the Gleneagle Golf Club located at Summerlea-onthe-Gatineau. Kingsmere hosted the Gleneagle Golf Club on Wattsford’s course in the summer of 1937 (Ottawa Journal, 27 July 1937, p. 8).

In the return match at Gleneagle, Gerald Wattsford and his son George were two of the Kingsmere team members who took on NHL pro Hec Kilrea and his fellow cottagers at Summerlea.

Kingsmere Golf Club members also staged their own competitions.

They played annually, for instance, for the “Booth Cup”: “a Cup donated by Mr. C. Jackson Booth for mixed foursome play was won by Mr. George Wattsford and Miss Lillian Wattsford,” two of Gerald Wattsford’s children (Ottawa Citizen, 9 September 1927, p. 20; see also 10 August 1929, p. 7; 26 August 1929, p. 17; and 3 September 1930, p. 19).

There was also an annual championship for men and an annual championship for women.

For more than 11 years, Mrs. Wattsford served tea when the Kingsmere Golf Club hosted matches against other clubs or put on its own club tournaments.

I cannot find many descriptions of the links of Kingsmere Lodge, but a resident of the area in the mid1930s recalled that it was “a small golf course” (https://www.gvhs.ca/publications/utg-articles/volume-11-03.html).

There are also suggestions that the hill that was such a prominent part of Wattsford’s golf course seems to have been notable for its protruding rocks. We recall that young George Wattsford’s friends were surprised when he did not hit any rocks when he fell while descending the slopes across the golf course in 1928. A similar report concerning these rocks was provided by the second soprano of Ottawa’s Women’s Choir (K.E.H.) when she wrote of how, during a walk through the countryside of Wales, “Under one tree as we passed were heaped grey masses [sheep] that looked for all the world like the rocks that form one of the hazards of Captain Wattsford’s golf course at Kingsmere” (Ottawa Citizen, 27 August 1937, p. 22).

The par for the course was 34; the course record was 31:

Costin Fait Un Beau Record

Harold Costin a établi au club de golf Kingsmere un noveau record de 31 pour la série de 9 trous. Il jouait en compagnie de Mlle Blanche Legault at d’Harold McKeown.

Le pointage normal pour le terrain est de 34 coups. (Le droit, 4 August 1936, p. 6)

Wattsford’s golf course was certainly still in play in the late 1940s, when the owner wrote to the editor of the Ottawa Citizen to describe some of the birds he found frequenting his golf course after its having been made part of a bird sanctuary prior to the area’s becoming part of today’s Gatineau Park (4 April 1946, p. 26).

And in 1947, the course received a visit from probably one of the most famous American golfers of the day: the golf-obsessed crooner Bing Crosby. The photograph below shows Crosby getting off the train at Montreal’s Central Station “après de brèves vacances passes à pêchers et à golfer à Kingsmere” (La patrie, 28 May 1947, p. 6)

Figure 26 Bing Crosby (left), J.-P. Collette, Crosby's host on his fishing and golfing trip to Kingsmere (centre), and A.-A. Gardiner, General Manager of the Central Station's passenger services. La patrie, 28 May 1947, p. 6.

Kirk's Ferry Guest Golf

In 1911, the same phenomenon that occurred at Mrs. Welsh’s boarding house at Kingsmere in 1903 happened at Kirk’s Ferry:

Things are humming at the Scannell House this summer; the boarders have made themselves golf links and are generally very merry. (Ottawa Citizen, 22 July 1911, p. 13).

Although the golf links were new, “The Scannell House” itself was not new to the Kirk’s Ferry resort scene in 1911: it had been receiving guests at least as early as 1907. Its proprietors were James W. Scannell and Martha Scannell (née Cooper). James was a carpenter (he had built many of the houses and barns in the area), but in 1897 the couple decided to run the grocery store built in Kirk’s Ferry that year by Colonel George V. Ince, who was intent on developing the area as a summer resort.

When the Scannells added summer hostelry to the services they provided in Kirk’s Ferry, their boarding house quickly became a popular holiday destination: members of the Privy Council stayed there; guests came from as far away as Regina, Bermuda, and England. Some stayed for a weekend; some stayed for three months. Some stayed in the boarding house; some stayed in tents. In the Ottawa newspapers’ accounts of the guests staying at Scannell House, it came to be affectionately nicknamed the “Hotel de Scannell” and the “Chateau Scannell.”

Scannell House became famous throughout the Gatineau Valley for its distinctive hospitality. The longterm summer residents of the boarding house formed a tight little community: they supported the Kirk’s Ferry entry in the Gatineau Valley Baseball League, “a merry party” would often drive to Meach Lake for a day out, there were walks together through the autumn leaves, guests ate together and gathered around the piano afterwards for sing-songs, and so on. They enjoyed boating and playing lawn tennis together.

When James W. Scannell purchased a new horse (“Laura”) and she tried to escape by swimming across the Gatineau River, the spectacle was widely enjoyed – the summer resorters assuming that she was trying to return to her original home in Ottawa (Ottawa Citizen, 10 June 1911, p. 16). All’s well that ends well: “now she seems quite satisfied with her surroundings, making no further attempt to leave her new home” (Ottawa Citizen, 10 June 1911, p. 16).

Golf, then, was not the only cause of merriment at the Scannell House in the spring and summer of 1911:

The inhabitants of the village [of Kirk’s Ferry] were treated to a very pretty sight on Saturday night when the summer boarders of the Scannell House held their postponed Dominion Day celebration. A huge bonfire burned merrily on the top of the high hill beside the house. There was also a grand display of fireworks which together with a torchlight procession was made still prettier by the many Chinese lanterns which were hung on the trees in the grounds. Those leaving on the late train admired the whole thing very much…. A very funny sight was witnessed on Sunday night at the Scannell House when owing to the rush the boarders of both sexes had to turn in and wash dishes. (Ottawa Citizen, 22 July 1911, p. 13).

The grounds at Scannell House, where the Chinese lanterns were hung on trees, comprised both a high hill beside the house and flat areas for camping. These grounds were presumably the location of the golf links that guests laid out in the summer of 1911.

The location of Scannell House is not known.

It may have been covered by the 18-meter rise of the river when the Gatineau Power Company brought its Chelsea Dam into operation in 1927, as were the Fairy Inn and McAllister House located at the fairy landing on the west bank of the Gatineau River, or it may have been demolished during the construction of the new railway tracks at that time, as were cottages on the hill from which Old Station Road descended into the village.

Scannell House may be one of the buildings visible in the photograph below, which shows a panoramic view of Kirk’s Ferry looking from west to east from a perspective on the hill above the village, revealing the baseball diamond called “Hogan Field” in the foreground and Old Station Road running from the cottages on the hill around Hogan Field down to the west bank of the Gatineau River where the Fairy Inn and McAllister House were located (Ottawa Journal, 12 August 1911, p. 5).

Figure 27 Gatineau Valley Historical Society photograph CD-052/02887-029. The screen of the baseball ground called “Hogan Field” can be seen in the middle foreground.

The view from the village up old Station Road to the hill where Hogan Field and a constellation of half a dozen buildings was located can be seen in the photograph below.

Figure 28 Gatineau Valley Historical Society photo of Old Station Road (today’s Hellard Road) circa early 1920s. CD-052/02887- 030.

Since bonfires were arranged “on the top of the hill beside the house,” it may be that Scannell House was located in this area and that the pasturelands visible in the photograph above were where the golf links were laid out.

It is not clear how long the Scannell House links were maintained.

Did the summer resorters keep them up from year to year, or perhaps lay them out anew each year? Was 1911 the only year a golf course was laid out?

It seems unlikely that the grounds where the links were laid out were available for such a purpose after the 1912 season, for in the spring of 1913, the Scannells sold their Kirk’s Ferry boarding house: “Messrs. [Arthur Frederick] Bishop and [Francis Chevers] McElroy … have purchased the Chateau Scannell … [They] are building an extension to the verandah which will much improve the house and be more convenient” (Ottawa Journal, 12 July 1913, p. 17).

The writer in the Ottawa Citizen expressed the mood of the Scannell House patrons at this change of ownership:

It is with much regret that the old-time boarders of Scannell House say good-bye to all their favorite haunts and the ever kind hospitality of their entertainers, Mr. and Mrs. Scannell; … it is the sincere wish that prosperity and long life follow them to their new home. It is hoped that some arrangement may be made whereby the “Hotel de Scannell” may prove as attractive in the future as times gone by. (30 August 1913, p. 12).

Figure 29 Lieutenant F.C. McElroy, 207th Battalion, CEF 1916.

The ‘favorite haunts” of the old-time guests were gone because Bishop and McElroy subdivided land around Scannell House for sale as cottage lots: “Mr. A.F. Bishop and F.C. McElroy are offering for sale several choice spots suitable for cottages, adjacent to the Scanel [sic] House, Kirk’s Ferry” (Ottawa Citizen, 28 April 1913).

Bishop owned a cottage across from Scannell House on the Cantley side of the Gatineau River, but he and his wife also spent weekends at the hotel, and McElroy had been a frequent guest at Scannell House (and one of its best bonfire builders), so both of them knew the Scannell’s property well.

As a contemporary and friend of the Bishops’ three daughters, McElroy knew Fred Bishop well. He seems to have managed Scannell House from 1913 to 1915. But the business venture on which the two men set out as partners did not last long.

McElroy, a bank clerk born in 1888 in Richmond, Ontario, enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force in the spring of 1916 and was soon sent overseas to England and France until mid1919 (he suffered a gunshot shot wound in the left hand in France in 1918, the same day his brother Harry, flying a Sopwith Camel, was shot down nearby and killed). Thereafter he lived with his wife in Montreal until 1932, when he was found dead in the St. Lawrence River – apparently a suicide. Bishop, born in Ottawa in 1864, was a successful merchant who became “one of the best-known China experts in Canada,” (Gazette [Montreal], 9 February 1917, p. 4). He left Ottawa for Montreal in 1916, but he died the next year when travelling to Guelph seeking specialist advice on dealing with the cerebral hemorrhage he had suffered the year before.

After selling their boarding house in Kirk’s Ferry, the Scannells moved to Chelsea. We read in the summer of 1913 that “Mr. J. Scannell and [his in-law] Mr. J.H. Cooper, of Cantley, spent Tuesday in Chelsea working on Mr. Scannell’s cottage” (Ottawa Citizen, 9 August 1913, p. 15). The Scannells seem to have opened a boarding house in Chelsea and operated it for the next six years.

At the beginning of 1919, however, James and Martha Scannell – then 74 and 58 years old, respectively – put their Chelsea boarding house up for sale. But no sale was concluded before the summer resort season began, so the Scannells received guests at their boarding house for one more season.

Martha died in 1927 after a long illness, and James died in Saskatchewan in 1936, several years after moving there to live with his son.

Farm Point Golf

In 1912, golf came to Farm Point when Lnwarn Lodge – “Formerly Summer Cecil” – opened, being advertised as located “Up the Gatineau Mountains (The Switzerland of Canada).”

Figure 30 The first advertisement for Lnwarn Lodge appeared in the Ottawa Citizen on 19 April 1912 (p. 13).

The advertisement indicates that “Golf Links” will be available when the hotel opens “About May 15th.” Could golf links have been laid out in April of 1912 and made ready for play by the opening day for Lnwartn Lodge in mid-May?

Such a schedule of golf course construction and completion was not only possible in those days; it was quite usual.

Laying Out a Golf course 1903-1912

When a golf professional laid out a golf course in Canada in the early 1900s, he was often on the proposed golf grounds of the hotel or golf club for just one day.

In A Century of Greenkeeping (Michigan: Ann Arbor Press, 2001), Gordon Witteveen presents an account by early Canadian greenkeeper Fred Hawkins of the laying out of a golf course in 1906 by the Toronto Golf Club professional George Cumming, the foremost golf course designer of the day:

I would like to tell you of my first experience in seeing a golf course laid out. The club I am speaking of was a 9-hole course under the supervision of the professional [George Cumming], who had under him a head groundsman, as he was called in those days. This professional, who in later years was recognized as one of the leading golf architects, was about to lay out nine more holes and as he was trying to get me interested in golf, he invited me along.

We started out with the groundsman carrying a bundle of stakes and a hammer until we came to a spot where they drove in four stakes 12 ft apart, which they called the 10th tee. After travelling further on, they drove in a stake, walked around it, then decided to take it a few yards further down into a hollow where they drove in four stakes 24 yards apart. This was the 10th green. I asked why they moved it from the first position and was told that the green would get more moisture down there. This was the procedure all around the course. The only difference being that they made one or two greens round instead of square.

What bunkers were put in were across the fairway, pits of about one foot deep, eight feet wide and twenty-five feet long, with the soil thrown to the back about two feet high. Their method of making greens was simply to cut and roll and top-dress with some compost and a little bonemeal and work them up out of the old sod that was there. In six weeks we were playing on them. (pp. 3-4)

According to the timeline described above, if work on the Lnwarn Lodge golf course had started in the first week of April, the course would have been ready for play by May 15th .

And there are plenty of examples of courses being ready for play in even less time than this.

At Almonte, Ontario, the Royal Montreal Golf Club professional James Black laid out a 9-hole golf course at the beginning of May, and play commenced on it at the beginning of June, less than four weeks later. When the Almonte Golf Club moved to new grounds in 1907, the Ottawa Golf Club professional George Sargent laid out a new 9-hole golf course on May 1st, and play was underway on it by May 14th .

The Nature of the Early 1900s Golf Course

How was it possible to build a golf course and open it for play within a few weeks?

Note that in the early 1900s not much earth was moved during the building of a golf course in Canada or the United States. Generally, it was not necessary to shape a fairway or to build up a tee or green. People intending to start a golf club and build a golf course were generally told that they should secure as their golf property a field or meadow where few modifications of the landscape would be required.

A field or meadow was often chosen for a golf course because the land had been cleared and had well-established pasture grass growing on it – grass that only needed to be cut regularly in order to produce a decent fairway surface from which to play a golf shot.

The teeing ground might simply be an area of level grass, perhaps elevated slightly with sod dug up from turf nearby. It might be graded to have a very slight incline upward from back to front to give the golfer’s forward foot a chance to brace a bit against this incline during the swing.

Figure 31 Mold for sand tee.

More usually, the teeing ground was a slightly built-up area of sand arranged in a rectangular shape. The surface was levelled, and beside it was placed a box or barrel containing more sand.

This sand would be wetted at the beginning of the day or a container of water would be kept by the tee for wetting the sand. A hollow conical implement was used to scoop out the wet sand and compact it, such that a cone of sand could then be dumped onto the ground, retaining its conical shape.

The golf ball was placed on this tee of sand.

Such was the standard way of teeing up the golf ball for a drive until the end of the 1920s, when the wooden tee peg gained popularity.

An example of such a teeing ground with the sand box on a stand located beside the tee can be seen in the photograph below of a woman driving off from a tee box at the Poonahmalee Golf Course in Smith Falls in the early 1900s.

Figure 32 Photograph from the Foster Family Albums, Smith Falls, Ontario.

Like the golf links of Lnwarn Lodge, the Poonahmalee Golf Club was a small-town operation with a relatively small number of members, but even the largest, most affluent clubs had the same sort of sand teeing grounds.

Putting greens were also located on a level area of the golf course turf. They were not built up above the level of the fairway.

Instead, rakes and shovels might be used to fill in minor depressions or to scrape the top off little rises in order to produce a flat, level surface that would minimize the break of putts made on its surface. The green comprised grass cut shorter than the fairway grass, and it was usually cut in the shape of a square, with sides perhaps 30 feet in length.

The putting green would be compacted in one of three ways: by rolling the entire putting surface with a heavy barrel-shaped cylinder on a horizontal axis; by thoroughly soaking the putting surface with water, then placing planks over it, and finally pounding the planks with a heavy object; or simply by pounding every square foot of the putting surface with a heavy-handled instrument with a flat square bottom, as in the photograph below.

Figure 33 A late nineteenth-century greenkeeper flattens the surface of a green by pounding it. Michael J. Hurdzan, Golf Greens: History, Design, and Construction (Wiley, 2004], chapter 1.

On a green built in the early 1900s, the marker of the hole into which the ball was putted was not necessarily a formal flagstick such as we use today. Sometimes it was a pole with a piece of bunting attached to it, but more often it was a pole with a plate fixed to the top of it.

The plate on the pole might indicate the number of the golf hole being played, as is the case in the photograph above, or it might have no number on it at all.

In the photograph below of the 9th green at the Links O’ Tay Golf Club in Perth, Ontario, in the early 1900s, we see a typical example of the turn-of-the-century style of green construction that would have been used on the greens laid out at Kingsmere and Farm Point. One can see that that the camera lens has difficulty distinguishing between the putting green and the fair green (the old name for fairway).

Figure 34 A woman putts on the ninth green of the Links O' Tay Golf Club in the early 1900s

Were there not a pole marking a golf hole toward which the woman in the photograph is putting the ball, one might not be able to detect a putting green here at all.

In Farm Point in 1912, then, for a golf course to have been laid out and brought into play within a matter of six weeks is not surprising.

Farm Point and Kingsmere Links

Although Kingsmere’s experiment with summer resort golf in 1903 seems to have involved private golf courses on the property of Welsh and Fleck, there may have been links between early golf-course development at Kingsmere and development of a golf course at Farm Point nine years later.

The man who brought golf to Farm Point was John Edward Cox (1870 – 1922), and although there is no record of his ever having played golf, there is clear evidence of his determination to establish golf on his land at Farm Point: he had three nine-hole golf courses laid out on his own property there between 1912 and 1921.

It may have been his knowledge of the importance of golf to the summer cottage colony at Kingsmere that led to his interest in establishing golf at Farm Point.

When the two short golf courses were laid out at Kingsmere in July and August of 1903, Cox was spending the summer in Chelsea: we read in the Ottawa Journal that “Mr. John E. Cox and family” are among those “who have so far arrived at Chelsea for the summer” (13 June 1903, p. 9). Since establishing himself at the summer resort in the late spring of 1903, Cox had been commuting on weekdays between Ottawa and Chelsea on the Gatineau Railway. And so he will almost certainly have seen sets of golf clubs being carried by young golf enthusiasts on their way to Kingsmere, for the journey to Kingsmere involved taking the train from Ottawa to Chelsea, and then taking the stagecoach from Chelsea to Kingsmere: golf clubs would have been carried onto the train and carried off of the train before Cox’s eyes.

Such evidence of enthusiasm for golf in the Gatineau Hills may have been a factor in Cox’s decision to build a golf course for the use of his own guests at the hotel named Lnwarn Lodge that he would open at Farm Point in the spring of 1912.

Furthermore, between 1909 and 1912 Cox seems likely to have associated on friendly terms with two men from Kingsmere who were familiar with the resort hotels of that area and the role that golf played in the recreations of Kingsmere’s summer resorters: Allan Grimes and William Murphy.

Grimes and Cox played baseball against each other in the Gatineau Valley Baseball League, Grimes playing various positions in the infield and outfield as well as and pitching for Kingsmere, Cox playing left field for Farm Point and also managing the team (Ottawa Citizen, 27 August 1910, p. 17). Cox was well-known to everyone in the league, regarded either as a brilliant manager or as an unscrupulous Machiavelli.

Cox had also served as umpire in the Ottawa district’s “big league,” for instance handling a match between Hull and Ottawa College (today’s University of Ottawa) in 1903 when one of his controversial rulings prompted the Hull pitcher to refuse to play any further after the sixth inning (Ottawa Citizen, 8 June 1903, p. 6). Cox had started his Gatineau Valley baseball career as a player for the Chelsea team in the Gatineau Valley Summer Residential Baseball League in the early 1900s when he and his family spent summers in Chelsea. By 1907, however, they were spending summers at Kirk’s Ferry, and from 1909 onward, Cox and his family spent summers at Farm Point, where they acquired both a cottage and a hotel.

The hotel he acquired was then known as Island View House, and Farm Point’s baseball team was known as the Island View team. Their colours were purple and white. As the hotel changed names, the Farm Point team was often simply called “Jack Cox’s nine” (Ottawa Journal, 14 July 1911).

The account by a writer from Kirk’s Ferry of the team’s loss to “Jack Cox” and his team of nine Farm Pointers speaks to Cox’s reputation as a resourceful – not to say scheming – baseball manger:

It all happened this way – Jack Cox imported a team of ringers, including a pitcher, from Montreal to down the Ferryites in the first game for the “Walby cup.” When the series was arranged the agreement was made that all the players had to be residents of the two resorts. It was extremely funny to hear the Farm Point “ringers” utter such exclamations as – slipped off the train – this is a swell place – where is the hotel? Etc. – all going to show they had never been there before. All we can say to Mr. Cox and the rest of his nine up the river is that if they want a return game the Ferry will play Farm Point and Farm Point alone. The score was 25 to 11 for Farm Point. (Ottawa Journal, 7 August 1909, p. 17).

For the return game at Kirk’s Ferry two weeks later, Cox seems not to have obliged the Ferryites with the team of players from “Farm Point and Farm Point alone” that they had requested. He was accused of the same recourse to ringers. The Ferry writer who reported on the game was so upset by Cox’s tactics that he refused to acknowledge that the baseball team that defeated Kirk’s Ferry was from Farm Point at all, since there were only two Farm Pointers on it:

an up the river team … representing the place was composed of C. Ogilvy of the Ottawa Capitals, Howson of Brittania, several commercial travellers who enjoy an occasional ball game, and Messrs. McKenzie and Cox of Farm Point. Unfortunately for Captain Cox, the Capital ball team whose services he tried to secure had an engagement at Carleton Place, otherwise the score against Kirk’s Ferry might have been 100 to 0 instead of 20 to 10 …. It is to be hoped when the new summer resort up the river becomes better known, it will be in a position to place a really representative team on the field. A true and friendly spirit of rivalry would thereby be built up and the sport greatly improved. (Ottawa Citizen, 21 August 1909, p. 10)

Cox’s propensity to use ringers occasionally produced formal protests, as in a 1911 match against North Wakefield: “Manager Jack Cox of the Farm Point team imported Pitcher Moran of City League fame for the occasion …. [B]efore the game North Wakefield entered a protest against Moran. As they won, however, it will of course be dropped (Ottawa Citizen, 31 July 1911, p. 9).

Figure 35 Johannes Peter ("Honus" or "Hans") Wagner, circa 1903.

Yet it is also clear that some teams, rather than officially or unofficially protesting Cox’s tactics, preferred poking fun at them.

As Chelsea anticipated its match against Farm Point in the summer of 1910, for instance, it boasted that it would defeat Farm Point, “Notwithstanding the rumours in circulation this week that Manager Jack Cox of the Farmers has imported Hans Wagner, L. Lajoe, Chris Matthewson and ‘Babe’ Adams for today’s game” (Ottawa Citizen, 23 July 1910, p. 11). The players mentioned were all American professional baseball stars: Honus (“Hans”) Wagner, for instance, had already won seven National League batting titles (and would win another in 1911 to establish a record that still stands today), so rather than carp at Cox and cower at the prospect of what he might be up to, why not boast that you could beat a Farm Point team that included even the great Hans Wagner?

Or perhaps one might find one’s own ringers to counter Cox’s ringers, as Chelsea seems to have done on this occasion:

Ringers in This Game

Farm Point Defends the Walby Baseball Cup

Farm Point retained the Walby Cup by defeating the Chelseas nine at Farm Point, the winners trimming the Chelseaites 13 to 9 in a close game. The losers claim that several ringers appeared on the Farm Point team, while the present holders of the cup reply with the charge that a number of well-known City Leaguers figured on the Chelsea team. (Ottawa Journal, 25 July 1910, p. 9)

To beat Cox became a real pleasure for the fans of the other resort teams. Many supporters followed a resort’s team for its away matches against the other resorts; for instance, as many as 850 Chelsea fans travelling to Farm Point in the summer of 1910 for the match against Jack’s nine. That same summer, when Kingsmere’s baseball team demolished the Farm Point team by a score of 20 to 2, an anonymous woman who supported Kingsmere composed a poem to mock Jack and his nine “boys”:

The boys at Farm Point play baseball,

At least they so aver.

However, pride had quite a fall

When they had met Kingsmere.

Jack’s bunch might do at hoeing spuds,

At fifty bucks a year,

But when they don their baseball duds,

Why then, “Oh, you Kingsmere.”

(Ottawa Citizen, 27 August 1910, p. 17)

The celebration of the victory was notable: “the visitors returned home and were paraded around Kingsmere by their friends, who made the welcome ring with unusual instruments, ranging from cowbells to shot guns” (Ottawa Citizen, 27 August 1910, p. 17).

More cowbell!

Cox was ahead of the curve in his high valuation of the Walby Cup, but after two seasons, the rest of the league had caught up: “The Walby Cup … is the Stanley Cup of the Gatineau, this trophy holding the same position to the baseball stars of the mountain organization [the Gatineau Valley Baseball League] that the famous Vice-Regal silverware does to the high-priced hockey artists of the East” (Ottawa Journal, 19 August 1911, p. 4).

However much his tactics infuriated opposing teams, Jack Cox was liked by the players and fans on all sides – for a variety of reasons.

When opposing teams visited Farm Point to take on its ringers, they played on the baseball diamond of the Farm Point hotel, and they spent the night at the hotel afterwards. Cox not only owned the hotel; he often provided the entertainment: “The evening was spent in dancing at the Hotel Cecil and every person had an enjoyable time. The feature of the evening was the recitation by Jack Cox on the verandah. He was obliged to respond until his repertoire was exhausted” (Ottawa Citizen, 6 August 1910, p. 10).

And he offered prizes for baseball achievements.

Figure 36 Joseph E. Laflamme, 1890-1977.

When Chelsea played Farm Point in 1911, we find that once again “Manager Cox had strengthened his team for this game,” as had Chelsea by bringing in ringer Joseph E. Laflamme, the second-base player-manager of the Maple Leaf baseball club that had recently won the Ottawa District championship: “Joe Laflam[m]e, the Chelsea second sacker, who played under protest, drove out a clean home run to right field, pulling down the $1,000 accident insurance policy which Manager Cox of the Farm Point Club had hung up for a four-base wallop. He drove in two runs on this hit, getting three others during the afternoon’s engagement” (Ottawa Journal, 14 August 1911, p. 4).

Laflamme was a big factor in the Farm Point defeat, it seems, and Cox had lodged a protest against his participation in the game, but as baseball promoter and insurance agent, Cox made good on the policy he had offered for anyone who hit a home run during the game.

After Kingsmere’s match at Farm Point in 1910, Allan Grimes stayed with his teammates at the Summer Cecil hotel. Here was one of what must have been many opportunities for resort hotel owner Cox to have discussed Gatineau Valley hostelry with Allan Grimes, the son of Ottawa hotel owner and Kingsmere cottager John Grimes. One wonders if they talked about the importance of a golf course to the kind of summer residents that Gatineau Valley resort hotels were attracting. At the beginning of 1912 Cox developed a golf course for his hotel guests to use, and at the end of the year Grimes negotiated the purchase of Fleury House in Kingsmere, which would offer guests the use of a golf course as of the spring of 1913.

Through baseball again, Cox almost certainly knew William Murphy well, for Cox regularly travelled to Kingsmere to watch that team’s matches so as to prepare for his own team’s encounters with them.

Of course the other teams knew that Cox was on hand scouting them. Chelsea again chose to poke fun at him: “‘Jack’ Cox … was on the tow path getting a line on the players. He turned pale when told that Chelsea was after the ten-thousand-dollar mug [the Walby Cup] now reposing in the vault of the Farm Point hotel” (Ottawa Citizen, 28 August 1909, p. 13). Cox’s wife Bertha also enjoyed travelling to watch other teams in the Gatineau Valley Baseball League.

The “Kingsmere” news column in the Ottawa Journal notes that “Mr. and Mrs. Jack Cox are very enthusiastic about the baseball games this season and came over from Farm Point for the match last Saturday” (10 July 1912).

William Murphy and his wife were cut from the same cloth: “There are no more enthusiastic fans than Mr. and Mrs. Murphy, who believe that their boys can only be defeated by a fluke or accident” (Ottawa Citizen, 25 July 1914, p. 15). The Murphys travelled to watch all the games that the Kingsmere team played. As hotel-owning couples fanatical about baseball, the Coxes and Murphys must have come to know each other fairly well during the years when the Coxes were establishing their hotel business in Farm Point.

Although Murphy may not have developed a golf course on his own land (the man to whom he would sell it in 1921, mind you, maintained a golf course on it for more than twenty years), Farm Point hotel owner Cox may well have asked Murphy whether he thought a golf course such as the ones developed in Kingsmere would enhance a resort’s attractiveness to potential guests.

Farm Point Resorts

Farm Point is about 18 miles from Ottawa, and at the turn of the century the trip up from the city by train along the tracks of the Gatineau Railway took about 40 minutes (as opposed to the day-long trip by toll roads that had to be endured until the 1890s).

Figure 37 Farm Point train station circa 1910. Gatineau Valley Historical Society photo CD-030/02388-004.

There were year-round residents in the village of Farm Point, as well as on the surrounding farms, but in the summers the population was swelled considerably by resort visitors.

Figure 38 Glenifer House, Farm Point, as seen on a postcard circa 1920. Gatineau Valley Historical Society photo CD013/01672.

The seasonal residents comprised several sorts: there were a couple of dozen cottage owners, and there were many more dozens of guests in the several types of accommodation in and around Farm Point. Resort accommodation ranged from Island View House, a hotel on the eastern end of the village at the edge of the Gatineau River, to Carman House and Glenifer House, farms converted to boarding houses – the latter promising “the lowest rates charged for rooms and board” (Ottawa Citizen, 21 May 1913, p. 11).

Across the river there was a similar establishment belonging to Robert Reid called “Mountain View Cottage, opposite Farm Point” (Ottawa Journal, 1 August 1904, p. 6). The Reid family also maintained a boarding house in Farm Point.

Figure 39 "The Elms" at Farm Point, as seen on a postcard circa 1913. Gatineau Valley Historical Society photo CD-013/01672.

And there was also a guest house frequented by short-term visitors to Farm Point: “The Elms.” This was a General Store opened by John Y. Morrison in 1909 which served as the post office.

Above the store and post office, there were “also several nice rooms to rent either furnished or unfurnished in the same building” (Ottawa Journal, 3 July 1909, p. 1).

During the summer, Ottawa’s two newspapers printed a page of information about the resorts near Ottawa, ranging from Arnprior in the north to Caledonia Springs in the south, and from Aylmer on the Ottawa River to the many resorts established at the stations of the Gatineau Railway that ran up the Gatineau Valley. Among the information the newspapers published, in addition to accounts of baseball games, tennis matches, strawberry festivals, and parties held on special occasions, there were lists of the guests staying at the hotels, boarding houses, guest houses, and so on, at each resort.

The Farm Point Hotel

Cox’s Lnwarn Lodge was the name in 1912 of a hotel that had opened for business ten years before as Island View House.

It is not clear whether this “House” with the “Island View” was built to be a hotel, or whether it was a house converted into a hotel. An undated photograph of the hotel that is one of four photographs on a postcard dating from around 1920 shows a building that might well have originally been a family home.

Figure 40 Farm Point Hotel on postcard circa 1920. Gatineau Valley Historical Society photo CD-004/00444.

The photograph above may date from the early 1900s’, for the building is quite unimproved relative to the hotel that opened as Lnwarn Lodge in 1912.

A grainy image of the front of the same building can be seen in the photograph below, which shows Lnwarn Lodge with its guests gathered at the front of the hotel for the taking of what turned out to be a publicity photo: about three dozen guests stand on the verandah and on the front lawn, where two large swings can be seen, as well as a railing along the front sidewalk that descends to the road

Figure 41 Lnwarn Lodge Farm Point brochure, p. 2. Gatineau Valley Historical Society document.

That the earlier photograph shows no swings, no railing, and no sign with a hotel name on it may suggest that it shows the building before it became a hotel.

The island in the middle of the Gatineau River that could be viewed from the hotel comprised an outcropping of rock of just sufficient size – covered with soil of just sufficient depth – to accommodate several pine trees and a small building called Star Cottage.

Figure 43 Freeman Thomas Cross circa 1910. Gatineau Valley Historical Society photo.

Star Cottage was owned by Freeman Thomas Cross, owner of the Farm Point Saw Mill, builder of the Farm Point toy factory and electric power plant, owner of Comet cottage, owner of other local properties (houses used by his workers and cottages rented to vacationers), and so on.

Freeman Cross’s niece Emma thought that he also had something to do with the Farm Point hotel (according to the note attached to the Gatineau Valley History Society’s copy of the Lnwarn Lodge Farm Point brochure, https://gvhs.ca/research/text-bankdisplay.php?search=lnwarn&row=0&kind=like). Farm Point resident Bill Caves also indicated a connection between Freeman Cross and the hotel when he recalled in 1975 that there was “a bridge at Farm Point built by Freeman T. Cross to an island where he had a cottage.

The bridge was 300 or so feet long and was located at a spot where the old Farm Point hotel used to be” (The Low Down to Hull and Back News, 16 October 1975). He supplied the photograph below.

Figure 44 Gatineau Valley Historical Society photo CD-040/00144.

According to Caves, “The hotel, which used to sit on a site now occupied by a school, was operated by F.T. [Cross] and his cottage later burned to the ground” (The Low Down to Hull and Back News, 16 October 1975).

It seems that Cross was the last owner of the hotel, for a newspaper item in 1927 indicates that he owned it then, and the hotel is never referred to after 1928 (Montreal Gazette, 26 April 1927, p. 4).

The island where Star Cottage was built disappeared under water when the Gatineau Power Corporation (a subsidiary of the International Paper Company) built a hydroelectric dam downriver at Chelsea in the late 1920s, leading to intentional flooding upstream as the dam raised the water level 18 meters.

Below can be seen the Community Centre located today where the Farm Point hotel used to stand.

Figure 45 Google view of the Farm Point Community Centre today. The old Farm Point hotel used to stand at this spot.

There is no reference to Island View House before 1902, and among the 20 hotels and five boarding houses between Chelsea and Blue Sea Lake listed in the 1898 brochure of the Ottawa and Gatineau Valley Railroad, there is no reference to a hotel at Farm Point.

Ottawa’s newspapers reported socially notable guests on vacation at Island View House throughout the summer of 1902, and the hotel received a very good review in 1903:

Among the many attractive resorts on the now famous Gatineau few can surpass Farm Point … for attractiveness, from a summer resorter’s point of view. The Island View House is beautifully situated a stone’s throw from the Gatineau River, and an easy five minutes’ walk from the station. The accommodation is of the best; cooking, good; and clean beyond a fault.

But apart from all these things, which are quite essential to the average mortal’s happiness, there is a splendid air of good fellowship among the guests…. But that is characteristic of the real Gatineauite.

There is good boating, and it is said that plenty of fish may be had for the catching. If one is fond of mountain climbing there is a “beauty” just across the river. You can row a boat almost to the foot of it and begin the climb without a long tiresome walk…. [T]he view from the top more than amply repays those who persevere to the summit.

Figure 46 Farm Point Lookout Cabin, built by Freeman Cross. Gatineau Valley Historical Society photo CD-021/02191-002.

The river is in full view from Wakefield to Cascade, and the country for miles around.

Some say that with clear weather the city may be seen from this point of view. (Ottawa Journal, 20 June 1903, p. 9).

Island View House was a successful hotel, yet it was up for sale by the end of the 1903 season:

FOR SALE – Island View House, Farm Point. Ottawa Northern & Western Railway, seventeen miles from Ottawa. Good train service. Situated on Gatineau River two minutes’ walk from station. Everything in first-rate order. Sleeping accommodation for over thirty guests. Large cool dining room, kitchen, cold storage ice house and servants’ quarters. Boating and bathing good. Splendid mountain air and scenery.

Conducted for two seasons with financial success. Good investment for anyone desiring to keep first-class summer hotel. Fifteen acres farm land attached. Reputation established. Apply Geo. Patterson, Wakefield, P.Q. (Ottawa Journal, 2 September 1903, p. 10)

Apparently owned by George Patterson, it was also managed by him – and well beyond the time of the above advertisement in 1903. Patterson owned a General Store in Wakefield and had also managed the stagecoach there. He and his wife moved to Island View each year for the duration of the resort season (we read in 1906, for instance, that “Mr. and Mrs. George Patterson have moved down to Farm Point, where they have opened up Island View House for summer traffic” [Ottawa Citizen, 9 June 1906, p. 3]).

Figure 47 1909 postcard of the Hotel Cecil in Ottawa, which Walter B. Walby advertised as the "best equipped hotel in Canada."

By 1909, however, the hotel came under new management. It was now associated with Ottawa’s Hotel Cecil (its new manager was Walter B. Walby, the proprietor of Hotel Cecil, who marked the occasion of his arrival in Farm Point by donating a trophy – the Walby Cup – to be awarded annually to the champions of the Gatineau Valley Baseball League).

I believe, however, that as of 1909 the Farm Point hotel and its associated farmland was actually owned by John E. Cox. Apparently because Cox had become a significant property owner in Farm Point, he was referred to in reports about the Island View House baseball team as “Jack Cox, the Farm Point magnate” – implicitly the owner of Island View House (Ottawa Citizen, 23 August 1909, p. 8). Similarly, a newspaper joke about the likelihood of the Island View House baseball team’s losing its championship cup at the end of the 1909 season seems to depend on its being understood by readers that the hotel was owned by Jack Cox, and that the valuables in its safe belonged to him, too:

scouting the Chelsea team, “Jack Cox, the [Farm] Point booster, was on the tow path getting a line on the players. He turned pale when told that Chelsea was after the ten-thousand-dollar mug [the Walby cup] now reposing in the vault of the Farm Point hotel” (Ottawa Citizen, 28 August 1909, p. 13).

Figure 48 Gatineau Valley Historical Society document.

Jack Cox had presumably leased his little Farm Point hotel to the big Ottawa hotel, which Walby claimed was Canada’s “best equipped hotel.”

Initially, Walby operated the hotel under the name by which it had become known during its first seven years of existence: Island View House.

Even so, however, he made sure to display the logo of the Hotel Cecil on items associated with Island View House, as in the case of the dinner menu from 1909 seen in the photograph to the left, where the Hotel Cecil logo can be made out at the bottom left corner.

Walby hosted his city employees of the Hotel Cecil at Island View House on 31 December 1909 for a New Year’s Eve party. This spectacular event – from which an example of the ladies’ dance cards still survives -- was probably the last held at the Farm Point hotel before Walby renamed it. When the hotel opened for the resort season of 1910, it was Island View House no more: it was now called the Summer Cecil.

Figure 49 Gatineau Valley Historical Society document.

And as befitted a hotel associated with “the best equipped hotel in Canada,” the Farm Point hotel was now bigger and better than ever before: “Great improvements have been made on the tennis grounds this season and croquet has been added to the other amusements” (Ottawa Citizen, 9 July 1910, p. 13). There was also an improved baseball diamond – as was only fitting since this baseball ground would be the one on which Gatineau Valley Baseball League teams would compete for the coveted Walby Cup. In advance of Chelsea’s visit to challenge “the Summer Cecil baseball team …. for the Walby Cup,” we read that “A number of men have been for the past week engaged in improving the baseball grounds and everything is now in excellent shape” (Ottawa Citizen, 23 July 1910, p. 11).

Furthermore, a spacious, modern annex (built of wood) had been constructed close to the main hotel, located on the other side of River Road on the bank of the river. It had 35 or 36 rooms, tripling the Farm Point hotel’s capacity. It also had a common area – “a large living room with fireplace” – that could accommodate various social events, including dances (Ottawa Citizen, 14 September 1921, p. 5). And although the new building was right beside the river, there was still room between the annex and the river for a large boardwalk or deck: “the entire space between the annex and the river has been converted into a large boardwalk and outloop, which may also be used for dancing” (Ottawa Journal, 23 July 1910, p. 20).

The photograph below shows this annex a few years after its completion, as seen from River Road looking in a south-easterly direction.

Figure 50 Lnwarn Lodge Farm Point brochure (Allan P. Thompson 1915). Gatineau Valley Historical Society document.

The relative locations of hotel, annex, and the island cottage can be seen in the images below.

Figure 51 Aerial photographs 1920s (top) and 2021 (bottom). Farm Point Village is marked on each. The hotel and community centre are indicated. The island was submerged in 1928. Mont Cascades golf course is across the river now.

Star Cottage on the island, the annex along the bank of the river, and the main hotel building can be made out in the photograph below, taken some time before 1922 from the eastern side of the river.

Figure 52 Gatineau Valley Historical Society photo CD-004/00441.

The Father of Farm Point Golf, Jack Cox

Born in Ottawa in 1870, John Edward Cox – known to his friends as “Jack” – was the much younger sibling of Sarah (born 1863) and William (born 1861), children of William Cox and Alicia Warren. He was close to his older brother and sister, serving as an official witness at each of their marriages. He was an intelligent child, gifted at verbal expression, and eager to perform for an audience, whether a small audience of family and friends or larger audiences at church and school concerts. An athletic boy – slim, but strong – he loved being outdoors, on the water in a canoe, and on the snow in skis. Although he enjoyed reading, especially poetry, and was good at mathematics, he was not much interested in formal education. And so young Jack Cox left school at age 12 to become an errand boy.

In 1884, not yet a teenager, he began work for the wholesale stationary firm of the L.G. Whyte Company on Rideau Street. He “worked his way up from the bottom of the ladder” over the course of the next twenty years and became “head city traveller [‘travelling salesman’] for the firm” (Ottawa Journal, 2 January 1923, p. 5). In 1905, however, he decided to set up his own business as an insurance agent, becoming the district agent for the Canadian Railway Accident Insurance Company. Thereafter “he worked up a large insurance business which took in the agency of half a dozen prominent insurance companies and later real estate” (Ottawa Journal, 2 January 1923, p. 5). By “steady work and acumen,” and through “keen business ability,” Cox was “successful in working himself to a prominent place in the Ottawa business world” and became “one of the best-known men in Ottawa” (Ottawa Journal, 2 January 1923, p. 5).

It was said that he “did not belong to any clubs” (Ottawa Journal, 2 January 1923, p. 5). Perhaps he did not belong to a fashionable country club or social club, but from his youth he was a member of various athletic and sports clubs.

Cox was a member of the Primrose Canoe Club. At its regatta in 1893, he placed second in the two-man double-paddle race over one mile, and first in the four-man single-paddle race over one mile. In a forerunner of contemporary Iron-Man competitions, Cox finished first in the “Combination Race – swim, paddle, and run” (Ottawa Daily Citizen, 28 August 1893, p. 3). He was also a member of the Ottawa Riding Club, riding his own pony in the 3/8th mile race at the club’s steeplechases of 1894. He was a member of the Ottawa Athletic Club, being elected a member of the executive committee of its bicycle club in 1895 and 1896, and being elected one of its captains in 1897. He was appointed the Bicycle Club’s bugler in 1895. He was elected captain of the Ottawa Snowshoe Club during these years, and he was named to the executive committee of the Osh-Kosh toboggan club in 1898. In the mid-1890s, he was one of a group of men responsible for the beginning of organized skiing in Ottawa: “a little group of men, prominent, or approaching prominence in various walks of life, banded together and started the ball rolling”; one was “John E. Cox – traveller for the firm of J.G. Whyte and Son” (Ottawa Citizen, 24 April 1937, p. 2).

Figure 53 A photograph from 1895 of Ottawa’s trail-blazing one-pole skiers. Ottawa Citizen, 28 April 1953, p. 139.

John Cox was also an extraordinary entertainer. He loved applause and he loved laughter.

He participated at the rank of mock “private” in the costume spoof of the military, the “Mulligan’s Guards,” at the fancy-dress carnival on the rideau rink in February of 1894: “Their appearance caused roars of laughter” (Ottawa Daily Citizen, 14 February 18). He lived for this laughter, whether at concerts and entertainments for the benefit of church organizations and service clubs or meetings of the Sons of England or the annual banquet of the Canadian Railway Accident Insurance Company. He could get laughs with song, as at the entertainment put on by the Gatineau Valley Ladies’ Minstrels in Chelsea in 1900: “J.E. Cox’s song, ‘O’Dooley’s 50c Tea,’ was almost too funny; he took the house by storm” (Ottawa Journal, 27 August 1900, p. 6). He could get laughs with a story: he became particularly well-known for his “humorous recitations” and other “humorous features” (Ottawa Citizen, 25 February 1898, p. 4; 25 January 1907, p. 1).

He was first publicly celebrated for this ability in the early 1890s: at the New Edinburgh Orange Hall in 1891, the newspaper reports a “recitation, ‘A la France,’ [by] Mr. Cox (encored, and responded to by one of a similar nature, and received with equal approbation”; at the concert put on by Ottawa’s Star Lacrosse Club in 1892, “A most amusing recitation was given by Mr. J. Cox, who displayed no little histrionic ability” (Ottawa Daily Citizen, 21 November 1891, p. 4; 21 December 1892, p. 4).

It seems that he may have been precursor of Ottawa’s own Rich Little, for Cox’s performances, whether as song or monologue, were based on “humorous impersonations” (Ottawa Citizen, 2 December 1919, p. 13). We read that at a Civil Service event in 1916, “Mr. Jack Cox … made a big hit with his impersonations” (Ottawa Citizen, 30 March 1916, p. 8). And no one could do it better: the famous imitator was himself referred to as “the inimitable Jack Cox” (Ottawa Citizen, 28 April 1916, p. 8).

Figure 54 John Edward Cox, 1895.

It seems that the staple of his performances was imitation of non-English people speaking English: at a military unit’s banquet in 1906, “Mr. John Cox gave several recitations in the French-Canadian and Italian dialects, which were heartily enjoyed” (Ottawa Citizen, 3 May 1906, p. 9). At the Eastern Methodist Sunday School concert of 1906, “the elocutionary selections were contributed by Mr. J. Cox, who proved a decidedly entertaining reciter of habitant verse” (Ottawa Citizen, 9 February 1906, p. 2).

Cox did not write his own material, mind you, but rather performed famous works by others, especially “habitant verse” – poems written by English writers about “habitants,” early French settlers along the banks of the St. Lawrence River and Gulf.

At the 1908 banquet of the Canadian Railway Accident Insurance Company, “Mr. J.E. Cox gave one of his inimitable sketches from the ‘habitant,’ responding to an encore” (Ottawa Journal, 10 January 1908, p. 3). We read that at a fundraiser for the Pastimes Baseball Club in 1915, “Mr. Jack Cox will give his ‘habitant’ monologue and he is sure of a big ovation” (Ottawa Citizen, 16 December 1915, p. 9). The Baseball Club booked him for a return engagement a year later: “Mr. Jack Cox will give a few gems from The Habitant” (Ottawa Citizen, 26 April 1916, p. 8). And he got some big gigs: when General Sir Arthur Currie spoke in Ottawa at an elaborate celebration of the fifth anniversary of the Princess Patricia battalion’s battles at Passchendaele, “Humorist J.E. Cox indulged in a ‘habitant’ selection that demanded an encore” (Ottawa Citizen, 1 March 1920, p. 7).

Cox was performing poems from William Henry Drummond’s book, The Habitant, and other French-Canadian Poems (1897).

Figure 55 William Henry Drummond, circa 1897.

When just 12 years old, Drummond (1854-1907) became head of his family after his father died in 1866, just two years after the family had come to Montreal from Ireland. Drummond put himself through high school in his twenties and become a physician in his thirties, but as a teenager he delivered newspapers and apprenticed as a telegraph operator in the lumber town called Lake of Two Mountains, where he became friends with an older resident named Gédéon Plouffe, who warned him one day to stay off the lake because of an approaching storm, repeating the phrase, “An’ de win’ she blow, blow, blow!” The pronunciation and syntax of the French-Canadian man’s English sentence so enchanted Drummond that he almost immediately began to write poems on this model

The following poem, called “The Little Red Canoe,” is an example:

De win' is sleepin' in de pine, but O! de night is black!

An' all day long de loon bird cry on Lac Wayagamack.

No light is shinin' by de shore for helpin' steer heem t'roo

W'en out upon de night, Ubalde he tak' de red canoe.

I hear de paddle dip, dip, dip! wance more I hear de loon,

I feel de breeze was show de way for storm dat 's comin' soon,

An' den de sky fly open wit' de lightning splittin' t'roo,

An' 'way beyon' de point I see de leetle red canoe.

It 's dark again, but lissen how across Wayagamack

De tonder 's roarin' loud, an' now de mountains answer back.

I wonder wit' de noise lak dat, he hear me, le bon Dieu,

W'en on ma knee I ax Heem save de leetle red canoe!

Is dat a voice, so far away, it die upon ma hear?

Or only win' was foolin' me, an' w'isperin' "Belzemire?"

Yaas, yaas, Ubalde, your Belzemire she 's prayin' hard for you,

An' den again de lightning come, but w'ere 's de red canoe?

Dey say I 'm mad, dem foolish folk, cos w'en de night is black,

An' w'en de wave lak snow-dreef come on Lac Wayagamack,

I tak' de place w'ere long ago we use to sit, us two,

An' wait until de lightning bring de leetle red canoe.

Today, such poetry would of course be condemned, at best, as cultural appropriation, and, at worst, as racism, but in 1897, The Habitant was published in New York with an introduction by internationally famous Québecois writer Louis Fréchette, who assured French Canadians that Drummond’s verse did not mock them. Drummond’s book was well-reviewed in North America and Britain and sold 38,000 copies by the time of his death in 1907.

Cox, mind you, layered his performances of Drummond’s poems with his own observations of French Canadian culture: “He is a clever interpreter of habitant traits and keeps the audience convulsed with laughter” (Ottawa Citizen, 9 February 1906, p. 2).

One worries that what the newspaper reporter saw as a “clever interpreter of habitant traits” might have been seen by others as an exploiter of cultural stereotypes.

Cox seems to have been bilingual. In 1916, he advertised in Le droit for a “servante générale dans une petite famille” (28 June 1916, p. 4).

Cox also used these talents to support the war effort during World War I. He was especially active in Patriotic Fund activities. He performed at concert for the entertainment of soldiers in June of 1916. He held an entertainment on his Farm Point lawn to raise funds to aid returned soldiers, and he of course also performed at this event (Ottawa Journal, 26 August 1916, p. 3). There was an even more elaborate event held under his auspices at Farm Point a couple weeks later (see Ottawa Journal, 6 September 1916, p. 8).

Cox was also a real estate agent, landlord, and land developer. He bought property in Ottawa and rented out accommodation and office space to others. He built a new cottage at Farm Point in 1911 and rented it out. He also knocked down properties and built expensive new modern structures to replace them (as with a row of houses on Nelson Street in Sandy Hill in 1910 [see Ottawa Journal, 4 May 1910, p. 7]).

Forty years after starting work as an errand boy at 12 years of age, Cox had become a considerable figure in the Ottawa business community of the early 1920s. Even so, he was better known as a performer – seen by thousands over the course of thirty years on various stages.

The Mother of Farm Point Golf, Bertha (Hamilton) Cox

Figure 56 Perhaps a photo of Bertha (Hamilton) Cox at the cottage of A.R. Tibbitts in Farm Point, circa 1 January 1922. Gatineau Valley Historical Society photo CD-049/02719- 001.

John Cox married Bertha Hamilton of Cantley, Quebec, on 12 October 1897.

We know that John loved the outdoors; it turns out that Bertha did, too.

John had first started camping at Hog’s Back, pitching a tent there in 1893 for the entire summer and inviting Canoe Club members out to the site for an evening of entertainment (in which he would be one of the performers, of course), and after Bertha married him, the couple enjoyed camping and fishing trips in the Gatineau Valley and the Ottawa Valley for the rest of their lives together.

As a couple, they first explored the Gatineau Valley not along the river at Farm Point, but rather at the popular recreation area known as Chelsea Island found a little further downriver. The Coxes spent the summer of 1899 camping on this island when Bertha was three-months pregnant with their first child.

John commuted to Ottawa on weekdays to attend to his work as salesman and real estate developer. Bertha remained on Chelsea Island with other families also camping there.

On Friday, July 14th , that summer, she nearly died in the swirling waters of the Gatineau River:

But for the coolness and pluck of a boy of 15, five people would today have been victims of the treacherous bed of the Gatineau River.

At 3 0’clock yesterday afternoon at Chelsea, Miss Hazel Christie, aged 15, daughter of Mr. W.J. Christie, of the Bank of Ottawa, who is summering at Chelsea; Georgina Kirby, aged 17, and Hilda Kirby, aged 15, daughter of Mr. Wm. Kirby, agent of the Gilmour Lumber Company at Chelsea; Mrs. D. Behan and Miss Agnes Behan, of 380 Rideau Street, also summer residents, went in to bathe on the sandy beach of an island in the river, just off the village. The beach had probably been considered safe and probably would have been had the bathers not waded out too far.

Mrs. Behan stayed near the shore, but the girls joining hands waded out, laughing and splashing each other. Suddenly there was a scream and one of the Kirby girls disappeared. Miss Behan shouted to her mother. When Mrs. Behan looked Hazel Christie and the two Kirby girls were being carried away by the current. Mrs. Behan and her daughter shouted for help.

Figure 57 Swimmers on Chelsea Island circa 1914. Gatineau Valley Historical Society photo CD-051/02794- 003.

On the island there are several camping parties, including Mr. and Mrs. James F. Garrow, Mr. and Mrs. John E. Cox and Master Gordon Heron, son of the late Major Heron who is camping with the Coxes.

To the Rescue

Mrs. Garrow and Mrs. Cox heard the screams and ran to the shore. Without any hesitation they bravely waded right into the stream. Suddenly they, too, sank. These two ladies could swim a little, but had not help arrived when it did, it is certain all five would have perished, as the two ladies were weighted down with their clothes.

The continued cries for help brought to the shore Mrs. Christie and her sister, who is staying with her, and a French woman, who lives near by.

Gordon Heron, who had been to the village store, returned just as Mrs. Christie arrived.

He quickly secured a rope from the camp, threw off his clothes, and with the aid of the French woman, whose name The Journal could not learn, pushed into the water a heavy plank that lay on the shore.

By this time, two of the girls had sunk twice. They had also been swept backwards and forwards by the eddies.

Coolness Saved Them

Young Heron, with great coolness, swam out with the plank. He first caught Hazel Christie and pulled her onto the plank. Then one by one he managed with the help of Mrs. Garrow and Mrs. Cox, who were just keeping themselves afloat, to get the other two girls to hold onto the plank.

As soon as he had all five holding the plank Heron tied the end of the rope around the plank, swam to shore and pulled the plank in. To get to shore was no easy matter as the current was very strong. In fact he was obliged to land on the opposite shore….

Mr. W.J. Christie, whose daughter was saved, says that while every credit must be given to Mrs. Garrow and Mrs. Cox for their splendid efforts …, all five must have drowned had it not been for the coolness of young Heron. (Ottawa Journal, 15 July 1899, p. 7)

A month later, Heron was awarded a medal for his bravery, and for her “promptitude and courage” in helping to save three young girls from a watery grave, Bertha was recognized by the presentation of a parchment by the Royal Canadian Humane Association (Ottawa Journal, 4 August 1899, p. 1).

Gordon Heron went to work for the Imperial bank in Toronto a year later, but the experience affected him deeply. Heron came to Farm Point to stay with the Coxes on the very day of the third anniversary of their heroic adventure.

Over the next decade, after the birth of son Leonard in 1900 and son Warren in 1908, Bertha continued to spend summers in the Farm Point area, but she came to prefer hotel accommodation to camping. She may have been the member of the Cox family who developed an interest in hostelry. She spent the summer of 1909 at what would soon become the Cox family’s own hotel when it was still called Island View House: “Mrs. J. Cox will spend part of the summer at the Island View Hotel on the Gatineau” (Ottawa Journal, 22 June 1909, p. 10). It was an interesting time in the life of that summer resort: “Island View has been taxed to its utmost capacity, and the several boarding houses are also well filled” (Ottawa Journal, 14 August 1909, p. 13). Perhaps she reported to John that they might want to get involved in this thriving Farm Point industry.

She was active socially in Ottawa and Farm Point, her comings and goings being noted in the social columns of Ottawa and Montreal newspapers. We read of the parties she hosted and the guests she entertained. When her son Leonard became a teenager, she hosted bonfires, corn roasts, and dances for young people at Farm Point.

She was active in support of various Ottawa institutions like the Y.W.C.A., the Maternity Hospital, and both the Laurentian and Colonel By chapters of the Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire (I.O.D.E.). And in support of wounded World War I veterans, she organized a charity carnival on her property at Farm Point:

In Aid of Returned Soldiers

A most successful and unique garden fête was given by the ladies of Farm Point (on the Gatineau) recently on the lawn of Mrs. John E. Cox. A delightful programme was rendered by the following artists: Mrs. A. Mayne Davis, Mrs. J. Angus Mackenzie, Mr. Harry Underwood, Sergt. Goad and Mr. John E. Cox. Accompanist, Miss Evelyn Lane. Refreshments were served in the different booths, while prettily costumed maidens circled through the grounds selling delicious home-made candy and ice cream. One of the attractive features was a miniature race track; this proved to be a great drawing card. The palmistry booth was exceedingly well patronized. The sum of $225 was realized. This amount will be donated to the fund for returned convalescent soldiers. (Ottawa Journal, 6 September 1916, p. 8)

In October of 1917, at the “big bazaar and tombola of the Laurentian chapter, I.O.D.E.,” in support of “returning blind soldiers,” Bertha Cox actually served as one of the “fortune tellers” herself (Ottawa Citizen, 26 October 1917, p. 10).

She did the same thing a year later:

Governor-General Opens vets’ Bazar

"The object of this bazaar appeals to us all,” said his excellency, the Duke of Devonshire, yesterday afternoon when he formally opened the Great War veterans’ Christmas Cheer Bazaar in the old King George Hotel building….

Fortune Telling

There is a fortune telling booth that seems to attract many seekers into the future. Mrs. J.E. Cox was the seer who presided …. (Ottawa Citizen, 19 December 1918, p. 11)

After her husband died, she put her Farm Point cottage up for sale in the late 1920s and the mid-1930s, but she actually held onto it until she passed away in 1949, continuing to make it her summer base and a haven for her wide circle of friends from across Canada, Great Britain, and the United States.

Managing Things at Lnwarn Lodge?

Cox assumed control of the Summer Cecil for the 1912 season. He was said to have been a family man, and his naming of the hotel for sons Leonard and Warren perhaps confirms this claim: he transformed the names Len and Warren by omissions of several letters into Lnwarn, which he intended to be pronounced as though the missing letters were present.

Cox was obviously fond of his sons, but he was perhaps foolish in his marketing strategy by giving the hotel such a hard-to-pronounce, hard-to-read, and hard-to-remember name. It seems to me that the actual names – “Lenwarren” – would have been preferable from a marketing standpoint, and an even more effective way of acknowledging his sons’ importance to him.

His acquisition of the Farm Point hotel shows that Cox recognized the potential of resort development in the Gatineau, yet he also recognized that he was not a hotelman, so he hired someone else to manage the lodge: R.D. Tuppins. The advertisement below began appearing regularly in the Ottawa newspapers as of 19 April 1912.

Figure 58 Ottawa Journal, 30 April 1912, p. 12

Born in 1887, Richard D. Tuppins was just 25 years old in 1912 when Cox tapped him to be the manager of the new Lnwarn Lodge.

Tuppins was an ambitious young entrepreneur: when just 22 years of age in 1909, he was one of the 10 Ottawa investors in a local mining venture (the Silver Rime Mining Company). Cox also invested in local mining rights and may have come to know Tuppins through this common interest.

Tuppins was active in the Ancient Order of Hibernians, and later in life became active in organizing municipal political debates. He became a bailiff for the William Cole Company from 1914 until his death in just his 46th year, after a lengthy illness, in 1932.

In 1912, ambition seems to have led to a fall, for Tuppins had no experience at all in hostelry when he became manager of Lnwarn Lodge, and he survived as manager of the hotel for no more than one season – if that.

He lived with his wife Laurentine in Ottawa at 416 Laurier Avenue West, and it was from this address that he announced in newspaper advertisements that Lnwarn Lodge would open under his management around May 15th. Yet it was not until May 15th that he began advertising the staff positions at the hotel that he needed to fill just to get the enterprise up and running.

Advertisements thereafter tumble into the newspapers throughout the spring and summer: “young man wanted for summer resort”; “good woman cook wanted at once”; “good kitchen girl for summer resort”; “chambermaid wanted for summer hotel, at once” (Ottawa Citizen, 15 May 1912, p. 4; 20 May 1912, p. 4; 20 May 1912, p. 4; 21 May 1912, p. 4). At the end of May, the need for chambermaids became urgently plural: “chambermaids for summer resort, at once” (Ottawa Citizen, 30 May 1912, p. 4).

Appearing one after another, these advertisements give the impression that Tuppins was making up his plan as he went along.

By mid-June, Tuppins was as at Lnwarn Lodge itself, available in Ottawa only on Wednesday afternoons, but the kitchen was no closer to being staffed: “woman cook wanted; also kitchen girl for summer resort” (Ottawa Citizen, 18 June 1912, p. 4). Perhaps a cook had been hired by the last week of June, but whether the food would be served to diners was not yet clear: Tuppins still needed a “kitchen girl and dining room girls” (Ottawa Citizen, 24 June 1912, p. 1). Did he give up on the girls: “strong kitchen boy wanted at once” (Ottawa Citizen, 28 June 1912, p. 4)? By the end of June, Tuppins was perhaps confident of getting the food to the diners’ tables, and so the next thing on his plate was to deal with the dishes: “girl, dishwasher wanted at once; wages $15, room and board” (Ottawa Citizen, 29 June 1912, p. 4).

Tuppins continued to appeal for dining-room help into the middle of July, well after the resort season was in full swing.

Tuppins’ advertising strategy gives one no more confidence in his management abilities than his attempts to hire hotel staff. First, he invited Ottawans to visit Lnwarn Lodge to escape the bugs in their water.

Figure 59 Ottawa Citizen, 24 July 1912, p. 11.

Introducing the new lodge with references to negative, unpleasant ideas and images (even though associating these unpleasant things with Ottawa) was a risky advertising and branding strategy.

The next advertisement in the Ottawa Citizen seems more positive: “A chance for your life about 18 miles north of Ottawa in the heart of the Laurentian Mountains where you can have pure spring water and pure mountain air, The Switzerland of Canada” (Ottawa Citizen, 1 August 1912, p. 12).

But what was this vague reference to a “chance for your life” all about? A similar advertisement the next day in the Ottawa Journal made things clear in bold letters.

Figure 60 Ottawa Journal, 2 August 1912, p. 12.

Ottawa’s typhoid epidemic in 1911 seems to have been under control by the beginning of April, so Tuppins’ advertising strategy may not have been as effective as he had hoped.

Tuppins of course advertised other features of Lnwarn Lodge – attractions such as boating, bathing, dancing, tennis and baseball – but he seems to have preferred the hard sell: come to Lnwarn Lodge to escape bugs in your water and typhoid! (Ottawa Citizen, 19 April 1912, p. 13).

“Golf” was advertised from the beginning, but there is no evidence that Tuppins had anything to do with the laying out of the golf course or the management of it. Among his appeals for cooks, chambermaids, and waitresses, there is never an advertisement for a greenkeeper or men to work on the grounds. This fact suggests to me that Cox himself had arranged for the laying out of the golf grounds, providing a “Golf Links” to his manager Tuppins as a fait accompli.

Tuppins’ reign as manager of the hotel at Farm Point seems to have ended with the close of the 1912 resort season, if not before. His “No Typhoid” advertisement at the beginning of August was his last, and this advertisement was the last time his name was ever associated with Lnwarn Lodge.

And this advertisement was the last time that the name Lnwarn Lodge was associated with the Farm Point hotel until 1915. Cox seems to have regarded the experiment of operating the hotel himself during the 1912 season as a total failure. The hotel would open the 1913 season under new management.

But the new management would not have access to a golf course.

The Golf Links of Lnwarn Lodge

I have found just one photograph of the golf course at Lnwarn Lodge. It appeared in a brochure published in the spring of 1915, but since the brochure was published early in 1915 and the golf course introduced to play that year was a “new” one, it seems likely that the photograph used in the brochure showed play on the original course of 1912.

Figure 61 Lnwarn Lodge Farm Point brochure, p. 1.

This photograph shows five men and a boy standing on a putting green. The man in the centre of the photograph putts the ball. The boy is a caddie. Perhaps all five men are golfers, or one of them may be a referee observing a match being played between two teams of two players each.

Recall that when Island View House was offered for sale in 1903, it had fifteen acres of “farmland” attached to it. The farmland in question may well have been the land shaped like a piece of pie extending north from the hotel between the railway tracks and the eastern bank of the Gatineau River to the point where the tracks arrived at River Road and continued north, running parallel to it.

Figure 62 Outlined in orange, 15 acres of farmland north of the Farm Point hotel. Gatineau Valley Historical Society photo, modified and annotated, CD-030/02394-019.

Perhaps the 1912 golf course was laid out on the 15 acres of farmland in question, but if so, it would have been no more than a pitch-and-putt course – not quite the “Golf Links” advertised in the newspapers.

Today, the same area of land is still shaped in the same way between River Road and the old railway tracks, and the same small creek flows through it and empties through a culvert under River Road into the Gatineau River.

Note that Cox at some point acquired an additional 35 acres of land such that the Lnwarn Lodge brochure published in 1915 when Cox next operated his own hotel would boast that it was “situated on fifty acres of land bordering on the Gatineau River, with tennis courts, nine-hole golf links, gardens and groves” (p. 5).

The brochure’s description of this land implies that the additional 35 acres were contiguous with the original 15 acres attached to Island View House. The additional land (comprising “golf links, gardens and groves”) seems likely to have consisted of the largely open farmland extending eastward from the hotel, the Gatineau River and the railway tracks.

The photograph below is the same as the one above, with the 35 acres in question outlined in green.

Figure 63 Outlined in green, perhaps the 35 acres of land that Cox added to the 15 acres attached to Island View House. Gatineau Valley Historical Society photo, annotated and modified, CD-030/02394-019.

Land between the train station and the hotel was relatively flat, as can be seen in the photograph below.

Figure 64 View from the northeast side of the Farm Point train station southwestward across farmland to the Farm Point hotel. Annotated detail from Gatineau Valley Historical Society photo, CD-030/02388-004.

The land to the east of the train tracks sloped gently up the side of a hill.

It may well be that Cox’s 50-acre holding of land contiguous with the hotel site had been assembled by 1912, when he first offered a nine-hole golf course to the guests of Lnwarn Lodge.

Summer Cecil Again and Cox Cottage

In 1913, the Hotel Cecil resumed management of the Farm Point hotel and changed its name from Lnwarn Lodge back to the Summer Cecil, now under the proprietorship of A.M. Briggs, the person who had replaced Walby as manager of the Hotel Cecil. In the event, it was actually Mrs. Biggs who was on site as the hotel manager in Farm Point. Sometimes also referred to as the “Hotel Cecil, Farm Point,” the Summer Cecil operated for the next two summers under Mrs. Biggs’ management (Ottawa Citizen, 14 August 1913, p. 2). But that Cox continued to own the hotel is suggested by the Ottawa Journal’s apparent reference to the tennis courts of the Summer Cecil as belonging to him: “Some very keen tennis contests have been witnessed lately on Mr. Cox’s courts, there being no end of enthusiasts of this invigorating game” (9 August 1913, p. 16).

The Summer Cecil advertised aggressively in the Ottawa newspapers throughout the summer resort season of 1913, perhaps commenting implicitly on the operation at Lnwarn Lodge under the management of Tuppins: “Entirely new management. Everything first class” (Ottawa Citizen, 5 July 1913, p. 12). Tuppins may have damaged the hotel’s reputation, leaving the impression that it had become second class.

The reviews of the new Summer Cecil were entirely positive: “Farm Point has been the scene of much gaiety and fun during the past week, all the summer sports being indulged in to the utmost. The days are filled in by swimming, picnics, boating and tennis, followed by jolly little dances at night. The center of all the fun is the Cecil, where the management has been untiring in looking after the amusement and comfort of its guests” (Ottawa Journal, 9 August, 1913, p. 16).

The description of “all the summer sports” includes no mention of golf.

The Coxes seem to have intended not to spend the summer of 1913 at Farm Point, for in the spring we find them offering their cottage for rent: “Summer cottage at Farm Point: completely furnished, 7 rooms, with fireplace” (Ottawa Citizen, 5 April 1913, p. 3).

Whether they could find no one to rent the cottage or simply changed their plans, the Coxes definitely spent summer at Farm Point in their summer home, which had also long received good reviews. It had been described in 1911 by the Ottawa Journal, for instance, as “beautiful,” with “spacious verandahs and grounds” (30 June 1911, p. 10). It received good reviews in 1913, too. The Journal observed that “Mrs. Cox was the hostess at a delightful dance at her cottage last Thursday evening …. Her handsome summer home was tastefully adorned with Chinese lanterns. Many guests came up on the evening train and in motors from the other summering places for the occasion” (Ottawa Journal, 9 August 1913, p. 16). The Ottawa Citizen reported on the event in similar terms: “The verandah of her pretty cottage was gaily illuminated with colored lights and the summery costumes of the girls added to the beauty of the scene” (Ottawa Citizen, 9 August 1913, p. 15).

Their cottage was located “on the river bank” (Ottawa Journal, 9 June 1917, p. 2). It is clearly marked on a 1926 map of Farm Point.

Figure 65 International Paper Company map, 1926. Gatineau Valley Historical Society document. https://gvhs.ca/research/maps/map-images/CIP_Map_[1926].jpg

The Cox cottage was located about half a mile north of the Farm Point hotel via River Road, and it was just 400 yards north of the train station, making John Cox’s commute to the city during the summer months that much easier.

These buildings can be made out in the 1910 photograph of the area reproduced below.

Figure 66 Location of Cox cottage marked on 1910 photograph of Farm Point looking from north to south. Annotated Gatineau Valley Historical Society photo, CD-014/01843-001.

In terms of today’s landscape, the Cox cottage, and the other pairs of cottages north and south of it along the riverbank, would be found at the junction of River Road and Carman Road.

Lnwarn Lodge II, Its Links, and Bermuda's Allan P. Thompson

A strange advertisement about the imminent opening of the Farm Point hotel appeared in April of 1915. It had been arranged for publication in the Ottawa Journal by a man living in Bermuda:

Figure 67 Ottawa Journal, 17 April 1915, p. 7

Who was Allan P. Thompson of Bermuda, and what did he have to do with Farm Point?

Bertha Cox seem to have been the one who arranged for the mysterious Bermuda hotel manager to run the Coxes’ hotel in 1915, for she was the one who spent time in Brmuda. She had acquired a taste for a break from the Ottawa winter when she, her husband, and her two children were among the thousands of Ottawa and Montreal “pilgrims” who traveled to New York City on the first day of spring in 1913 to enjoy “three days’ carnival below the snow line” (Gazette [Montreal], 22 March 1913, p. 1). As of 1914, she began to spend part of the winter months in Bermuda with her friend Mrs. J. Angus Mackenzie (née Jean Andrews), who had also been with her on the pilgrimage to New York City the year before. The newspapers occasionally reported on her travel – for example, we read in the early spring of 1914 that “Mrs. J.E. Cox has returned from Bermuda” – but accounts of her itineraries are by no means complete: in this case, the newspapers do not indicate when she left for the south (Ottawa Journal, 28 March 1914, p. 9). Still, one presumes that the hotel in Bermuda where she stayed was the one that was managed by Thompson as of the fall of 1913: Eagles Nest.

Thompson had been born in Hamilton, Bermuda, in 1878. He entered the hotel business as a young man when the island’s tourism economy began to expand. He was hired by the Hamilton Hotel in 1906 and was promoted to the position of Summer Manager in 1909. But even before this Thompson had been active more generally in promoting the island’s tourism industry as a publisher of postcards, brochures, and booklets distributed widely throughout North America.

Figure 68 Allan P. Thompson, Bermuda: An Island Paradise (Bermuda: Allan P. Thompson, circa 1907)

Thompson got his big break in 1912, when the Hamilton and Princess Hotel group purchased Bermuda’s Hotel St. George, and appointed Thompson to overhaul it and then manage it. Two years later he became manager of the Eagle’s Nest Hotel, which included a golf course.

Figure 69 Bermuda: An Island Paradise, n.p.

Thereafter his booklet Bermuda: An Ocean Paradise included photographs of golfers at Bermuda hotels, for Thompson had learned the value to the island’s winter resorts of a proper golf course.

It could be that Thompson told the Coxes that if they wanted him to manage their hotel they would have to lay out a “New 9 Hole Golf Course … on the Hotel Grounds.”

Like other southern resort managers, Thompson was eager to find a situation as manager of a summer resort in the American Northeast or in Ontario or Quebec. In the early 1900s, for example, C.G. Trussel, the manager of the prestigious Hotel Bon Air in Augusta, Georgia (where John D. Rockefeller spent the winter months when golf on his Pocantico estate in New York was impossible), managed the Frontenac Hotel in the Thousand Islands in the summer. Similarly, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Ernest G. Grob, manager of the famous Jekyll Island Club in Georgia during the winter months (where owners of 1/6 of the world’s wealth resided from January to March each year), managed the Malvern Hotel (and its grand cottages) in Bar Harbor, Maine, in the summer.

Figure 70 Buffalo Morning Express and Illustrated Buffalo Express, 8 August 1914, p. 4

In 1914, Thompson secured a summer position as manager of the large and popular Hotel Brant in Burlington Beach, Ontario. He was happy here, but the hotel was taken over by the Canadian government and used as a military hospital during World War I, so Thompson suddenly needed a new gig for 1915, which may explain why he ended up in Farm Point.

When he agreed to manage the Coxes’ hotel, Thompson may not have been enthusiastic about the odd name that the Coxes proposed to give it.

Note that Thompson’s announcement in the Ottawa Journal in April of 1915 that he would be managing the Farm Point hotel refrains from calling it Lnwarn Lodge, referring to it instead simply as the “Summer Hotel.”

Figure 71 Gatineau Valley Historical Society document.

Whatever reservations he may have had about the odd-looking and apparently unpronounceable name of the hotel, Thompson nonetheless brought his tried and trusted promotional skills to bear on the situation.

As he had done in Bermuda, so he did at Farm Point: he published a brochure about his new hotel and then published advertisements in the newspapers inviting readers to send for it.

As seen on the left, the first page of the 12-page brochure provides photographs of the “Golf Links” and “Tennis Courts.” Subsequent photographs show guests gathered at the front of the lodge, the view from the front lawn overlooking River Road and the Gatineau River, the Annex, the bathing beach at the river, two views of Paugau Falls, views of the Gatineau River looking south and north from a vantage point near the hotel, as well as views of nearby Carman Lake and Bernard Lake, but the fact that the hotel is associated on the front page of the brochure with its “Golf Links” shows how important Thompson thought the golf course would be to the success of this resort hotel.

To accompany the photographs, Thompson also wrote over 600 words of text to describe the attractions of the hotel, the Gatineau River, and the surrounding hills and lakes. Perhaps the key paragraph is the following:

The Lnwarn Lodge is not in one particular a hotel of extremes. New, but not offensively so. Big enough to accommodate one hundred guests. High priced, far from the highest price. Well served but not overserved. Well filled with guests, who come again and again, not overcrowded. Lnwarn Lodge is situated on fifty acres of land Figure 71 Gatineau Valley Historical Society document. 89 bordering on the Gatineau River, with tennis courts, nine-hole golf links, gardens and groves, instantly accessible to the City of Ottawa. (Lnwarn Lodge brochure, p. 5)

Compare this writing to that in the 1915 advertisement below for Thompson’s Eagles Nest Hotel.

Figure 72 Sun (New York), 3 January 1915, p. 82

So far from wasting words, Thompson actually recycled them.

And why not? Words that brought guests to a hotel in Bermuda should be able to bring guests to the Gatineau Valley.

Figure 73 Ottawa Citizen, 19 May 1915, p. 9

Thompson was at Lnwarn Lodge well before the Victoria Day weekend, and the advertisement that he published in the Ottawa Citizen indicates that guests could expect to play the golf course by that weekend, if not before.

Thompson was thoroughly professional during his term at Lnwarn Lodge. Whereas Tuppins had hired in a seemingly fitful, ad hoc way, Thompson knew what he needed from the start: “Plain laundress, chamber maids and good handy women for kitchen, good wages. Lnwarn Lodge, Farm Point, Que.” (Ottawa Citizen, 10 June 1915, p. 4).

Whereas Tuppins sowed fear with talk of bugs in water and typhoid in the city, Thompson was soothingly positive: "You will find the climate neither too hot nor too cool, never enervating but with sufficient crispness in the clear air and sunshine to provide that stimulant and outdoor tonic that makes one feel at their best" (Lnwarn Lodge brochure, pp. 3-4).

Thompson sold the idea that Lnwarn Lodge was special:

The dining room at Lnwarn Lodge is supplied daily with every possible delicacy. Prime beef from the Ottawa Market. Little chickens that come unplucked from neighbouring farms, home grown vegetables. Everything that is best to begin with, cooked most simply, beautifully served, piping hot from the ranges …. Coffee that is a delight in color and savour; rolls that are crisp and delicate. Country butter, milk and eggs from nearby farms.

Our guests are not overserved, but there is always a servant near to do just what you want done just the way you want it done on the instant. Never a servant to annoy you with superfluous attention. A valet always on hand to brush your clothes and press them.

Lnwarn Lodge is just big enough to command the best housekeeping superintendence in every department. Small enough so that no tiny detail escapes attention. (Lnwarn Lodge brochure, p. 6-9).

And Thompson also sold the idea that under the management of “Allan P. Thompson of Bermuda,” Lnwarn Lodge was exotic: “With my mahogany staff from Bermuda, I will be in a position to give you the very best service and cuisine” (Lnwarn Lodge brochure, p. 9). At a Lnwarn Lodge event in June of 1915 to raise funds for Red Cross support of Canadian soldiers, the music was provided by his “Bermuda quartet” (Ottawa Citizen, 26 June 1915, p. 10). Thompson seems to have emphasized the idea that by visiting Lnwarn Lodge his implicitly white guests could experience aspects of the black West Indies – as well as the American South, perhaps, for it was presumably the “mahogany” Bermuda quartet that provided the music for the “Southern Chicken Dinner and Dancing every Wednesday and Saturday” (Ottawa Citizen, 25 June 1915, p. 14).

Thompson distributed his brochure about Lnwarn Lodge widely. He was ambitious to attract guests not just from Ottawa, but also from Montreal, New York City, Boston, and Philadelphia. That is why the cover of his brochure contains a sub-heading: beneath the address presented as the brochure’s title, Lnwarn Lodge, Farm Point, Quebec, we find “via Ottawa, Ontario.” Pointing out that the train ride from Philadelpia is 12 hours, and just eight hours from New York City and Boston, Thompson suggests that Lnwarn Lodge should be “of great interest to travellers, for here they will find, after only a few hours’ ride practically, the dry bracing climate not to be had elsewhere” (Lnwarn Lodge Brochure, p. 4).

Throughout the spring and summer in Ottawa, his advertisements in the Ottawa Citizen and the Ottawa Journal continued to emphasize that Lnwarn Lodge” was “Improved” and that it had a “New 9-hole golf course”; readers were encouraged to “Call for inspection” or to “Write for Booklet” (Ottawa Citizen, 11 June 1915, p. 14).

He was tireless in promoting the hotel. In July, he somehow managed to persuade the Ottawa Journal to publish a distilled version of his brochure’s text as an item of objective new reporting:

Ideal Summer Home in the Gatineau Hills

Lnwarn Lodge, Farm Point, Proving Exceedingly Popular This Season – all Modern Improvements

Admirably situated on the Gatineau River at Farm Point, Quebec, is Lnwarn Lodge, an ideal summer hotel, embodying all the comforts and conveniences of a modern hotel, plus the prized boon of atmosphere such as cannot be obtained anywhere but in the Gatineau.

It is only during the past few years that the wonderful qualities of the Gatineau climate came into prominence. Farm Point, situate some sixteen miles from Ottawa, reposes at the foot of the Gatineau hills, which raise themselves in towering majesty throughout the surrounding country.

It is new without any of that garish offensiveness which often marks the new from the old. It can without trouble accommodate 100 guests. Reasonable in figure, it is an ideal summer hotel.

In addition to its many excellences of cuisine, it has outdoor attractions that are unparalleled in this section of the country. There are several tennis courts and a ninehole golf course. The house and grounds are lighted throughout with electricity, with hot and cold running water.

One of the most important attributes of the hotel is the dining-room. Everything that comes into the dining-room of the Lnwarn is specially prepared. The country around provides the best available in the line of foodstuffs.

Home grown vegetables, and country butter and eggs, are some of the delicacies which are served in this hostelry, and which are secured near at hand.

Bathing, boating, mountain climbing, golf and tennis can be indulged in at any time. Within a radius of ten miles [the] gamiest bass abound in beautiful lakes, and will test the skill of the most accomplished and ardent angler.

Lnwarn Lodge is under the personal management of Allan P. Thompson, of Bermuda. (7 July 1915, p. 6)

Figure 74 Tennis at Lnwarn Lodge. Photograph undated, but perhaps 1915, to judge by the car tire, fender, and headlight visible on the right side of the photo, which are suggestive of a 1915 Model T Ford. Gatineau Valley Historical Society photo CD049/02719-024.

For Dominion Day, Thompson persuaded the Women’s Canadian Club of Ottawa to stage their concert at Lnwarn Lodge: “the proceeds will be devoted to the Red Cross work of that society” (Ottawa Citizen, 26 June 1915, p. 10). Performing in the Lnwarn Lodge dining room, among others, was a pianist from New York City as well as a pianist and a violinist from Winnipeg. In August, Thompson brought the 200 attendees of the Ottawa meeting of the Dominion Fire Chiefs Association to Farm Point for a taste of exotic Gatineau Valley culture: their “fleet of autos left … for Farm Point. When the grandeur of the Gatineau scenery had been admired, the chiefs and ladies were provided with a real shanty dinner which, by arrangement, took place in the bush near the local hostelry” (Ottawa Citizen, 27 August 1915, p. 14).

Thompson’s term at Lnwarn Lodge seems to have been a success. Yet he did not return for the 1916 season. His career in Canadian hostelry was moving onward and upward.

From Farm Point to Wawa and Royal Muskoka

After his brief stint at Lnwarn Lodge, Thompson became manager of the Wawa Hotel, built at the extraordinary cost of $100,000 in 1908 at Norway Point on Lake of Bays in the Highlands of Ontario. A few years into his seven-year term as manager of the hotel, Thompson married Margaret Robertson, the daughter of the man who had originally settled at Norway point in 1873, George Robertson.

Figure 75 Wawa Hotel, circa 1920

Built in 1908, the Wawa Hotel was located beside the Glenmount Golf Course, built in 1907.

Figure 76 Postcard circa 1926 called "The Glenmount Golf Links."

Guests of the Wawa Hotel had access to this golf course, and as he had at Lnwarn Lodge, Thompson made sure that this information was disseminated in newspapers: “The beautiful summer resort district in the Highlands of Ontario is …. attracting many golfers. A fine course is available near the Wawa Hotel at Murray Point” (Windsor Star, 5 June 1916, p. 2).

Figure 77 Canadian Golfer, Vol 5 No. 1 (May 1919), p. 67.

Through his hotel-keeping experience in Bermuda, Quebec, and Ontario, Thompson recognized that golf was booming not just at northern and summer resorts in North America and the Caribbean, but also in hundreds of communities big and small across Canada, so he used his publishing know-how to produce a little book for keeping account of golf scores and offered it for sale through advertisements in Canadian Golfer magazine.

And of course he continued to publish brochures about the hotels he managed. As he had at Lnwarn Lodge, he made a brochure about the Wawa Hotel available to prospective guests: “Illustrated descriptive literature sent on request” (National Post, 17 May 1919, p. 11).

And as he had at Lnwarn Lodge, Thompson made sure that the newspapers mentioned his connection with Bermuda: “The Wawa Hotel at Norway Point will open its season on June 28th.

Mr. A.P. Thompson of Bermuda is returning as manager with many new and novel ideas for the comfort and care of his guests” (National Post, 17 May 1919, p. 11).

Thompson seems to have liked the kind of employees who answered his call for staff at Farm Point in 1915, for he advertised in Ottawa for waitresses willing to work in Wawa, and he promised them more than good wages: “Waitresses for the Wawa Hotel, good salary and conditions. If satisfactory will be sent south for winter. Apply A.P. Thompson, Wawa Hotel” (Ottawa Journal, 7 June 1920, p. 17).

When the Wawa Hotel was completely destroyed by fire in the earliest hours of Sunday, 19 August 1923, eight women were burned to death – four of them being hotel employees, but none of these were from Ottawa.

About 300 guests were sleeping in the 153-room hotel when fire broke out in the elevator shaft, making escape via the elevator impossible. Most guests and employees nonetheless made a relatively orderly exit from the building. But “When the servants were notified of the fire they tried to escape by a lower door, which, it is believed, they found locked. Upon going back upstairs they were trapped, it is thought, and jumped from windows” (Buffalo Courier, 20 August 1923, p. 1). All exits became inaccessible within half an hour as flames swept rapidly through the wooden building and completely destroyed it in less than an hour. Fire hydrants were too close to the building and could not be accessed because of the intense heat from the burning structure, and ladders were not long enough to reach people who had gone to the rooftop to escape the flames. Many guests and employees who jumped from the roof or from windows sustained severe injuries.

The Buffalo Courier described the scene:

Anxious survivors rushed about in futile efforts to ascertain whether their relatives and friends had escaped. They made a strange spectacle, some hysterical, many weeping, as they ran about in the lurid glow of the blaze….

The fire burned itself out. This morning nothing was left of the once beautiful hotel but the gaunt, toppling remnants of the huge fireplaces for which the place was noted.

These huge open hearths added a touch of irony to the scene. Aside from these, only twisted metal of the water pipes [and] the blackened relics of bathtubs gave proof that the hotel had once stood there. (20 August 1923, p. 1)

At an inquest just three days later, Thompson’s testimony did him no credit:

Witness [Thompson] narrated the events that transpired on the night of the fire, relating how he was awakened by a kick at the door and the cry “fire,” the alarm being given by one of the bellboys. Witness ran down the corridor to the baggage room, where there was a length of hose operated by a valve. This hose witness put into operation, but although the fire was extinguished at the ladies’ parlor, flames broke out in other places and he had to retreat. This time occupied about ten minutes. Witness did not give any alarm to the occupants of the rooms above the place where the flames were. He thought the bellboys had already done that. Had the people in the rooms been aroused they could have escaped down the stairway…. Asked … whether he had any suggestions to make regarding the protection of guests in similar hotels, Mr. Thompson said he thought it would be wise to instruct them in the correct manner of descending ropes, which was by giving the rope a turn around the leg to check friction on the hands. (Gazette [Montreal], 23 August 1923, p. 6)

Neglecting to give the alarm to occupants of rooms above the flames! Recommending that hotels teach guests how to shimmy down ropes!

Oh my….

Although this notorious disaster covered on the front page of newspapers all across Canada and the United States (three Americans had died in the flames), as well as Bermuda, Thompson’s career was not set back at all by the Wawa Hotel fire and his unavailing management of the scene that night.

Figure 78 Canadian Golfer, January 1935, p. 23. The 9-hole golf course of 1924 was eventually expanded to become an 18-hole championship course.

In Bermuda, Thompson became manager of Belmont Manor, where he prevailed upon Nicol Thompson, golf professional of the Hamilton Golf and Country Club, and brother of Stanley Thompson, to lay out a nine-hole golf course in 1924. A Canadian guest who played the new course (and made a hole-in-one on its second hole) wrote a letter to the editor of Canadian Golfer magazine crediting Allan Thompson as a co-designer of the course: “You may be interested to know that the 9-hole course was laid out by Mr. Nicol Thompson, of Hamilton. Ont., assisted by Mr. Allan P. Thompson, the manager of the hotel” (vol 10 no 12 [April 1925]), p. 932).

Allan P. Thompson as golf course architect!

In Ontario, Thompson became manager of the Royal Muskoka Hotel, where he fostered a country-club atmosphere at the resort, which had a championship golf course, and where he also continued to promote his black Bermuda staff as exotic enhancements of resort life in the Highlands of Ontario.

Figure 79 Gazette (Montreal), 11 July 1936, p. 2.

On the one hand, we read that the “Maitre d’Hotel” is “Pedro from Bermuda” (Gazette [Montreal], 18 July 1936, p. 5). On the other hand, in the advertisement, the people cavorting at the water’s edge with a beachball are depicted as black.

And as always, for more information, write for a brochure!

In the 1930s, Thompson toured important North American cities holding seminars and lecturing on best practices at resort hotels. He had become a celebrated figure in resort hostelry.

He also toured major cities to promote Bermuda tourism in general, and of course he also promoted the Belmont hotel in particular: lecturing on the hotel’s attractions and showing motion pictures to illustrate his claims.

Old Names Again, and Still No More Golf

In the spring of 1916, Mr. and Mrs. A.M. Biggs again took over the running of the Farm Point hotel, this time as the A.M. Biggs Company.

Figure 80 Ottawa Citizen, 23 May 1916, p. 7.

Mrs. Biggs was the proprietor, advertising in June for a laundress, kitchen help, and waitresses (Ottawa Citizen, 12 June 1916, p. 4).

As of June, the newspapers were full of lists of people spending time at the “Summer Cecil,” or travelling to Farm point to attend dances or bonfires at the “Summer Cecil.”

When Mrs. Biggs hired staff in April of 1917, however, she asked applicants to write to her at “Island View House”: there would be no more “Summer Cecil.”

The newspapers still referred to the Farm Point hotel as the Summer Cecil as late as July of 1917, however. Then someone – perhaps Mrs. Biggs – had the Ottawa Journal print an item clarifying the matter in its section on “Farm Point” news: “The name of the hotel here has been changed from the ‘Summer Cecil’ to ‘Island View House’” (Ottawa Journal, 14 July 1917, p. 10).

Neither at the Summer Cecil of 1916 nor at the Island View House of 1917 and 1918 did Mrs. Biggs ever refer to golf as one of the recreations that could be pursued.

The Farm Point hotel was advertised as “Island View House” until the end of the 1918 season. The Biggs, however, did not return for the 1919 season. Instead, Cox advertised the hotel as available for rent: “Summer Hotel or Boarding House to rent, furnished, 50 rooms, at Farm Point, Que., on the Gatineau River; good large business established” (Ottawa Citizen, 26 May 1919, p. 4).

At the beginning of 1920, he tried to sell the hotel and the annex, but he offered just three acres of land with these buildings, retaining for himself most of the other 50 acres associated with the hotel in 1915.

Figure 81 Ottawa Journal, 15 February 1920, p. 15.

At the end of March, 1920, six weeks after trying to sell the hotel and its annex, Cox advertised rooms in the Annex as available for rent for the coming resort season: “Summer apts. – Farm Point Annex, bedroom suites to be leased, furnished, from May to Nov. All meals can be obtained at The Lodge (hotel) adjoining” (Ottawa Citizen, 30 March 1920, p. 6). That Cox indicated that meals would be available from the hotel suggests that he had sold neither the hotel nor the annex and did not expect to do so.

And his reference to “The Lodge” suggests that he still thought of his hotel as Lnwarn Lodge, regardless of what other proprietors and newspapers had called it. In

1921, Cox apparently continued to rent out rooms in the Annex by the season – advertising the availability at Farm Point of “sleeping apts, for the season” (Ottawa Citizen, 3 May 1921, p. 6).

In December of that year, however, fire changed Cox’s plans for his hotel:

Fire of unknown origin completely destroyed the Farm Point Hotel annex, at Farm Point, Que., early this morning [December 16th]. The building, which was not open to guests in the winter months, was owned by Mr. J.E. Cox of Ottawa. The loss on the building is estimated at $8,000, partially covered by insurance, and on the furniture $4,000, with $2,000 insurance…. Another hotel building standing a short distance from the annex was not touched by the fire. Owing to the lack of fire protection, and the deserted condition of the popular Gatineau summer resort in the winter months, there was no hope of saving the building once the fire gained headway. An inquiry is being made into the origin of the fire today. Mr. Cox intimated that he would probably rebuild the hotel annex, but it was too soon yet to make any definite announcement. (Ottawa Citizen, 20 December 1921, p. 2)

Ironically, Cox the insurance agent did not have his Annex completely ensured: “Insurance of $4,000 was carried, but the damage was about $10,000” (Ottawa Journal, 20 December 1921, p. 3).

Lenwarn Golf Course

In addition to trying to sell his hotel or to rent it out in 1919 and 1920, Cox was apparently also trying to sell other land. In the summer of 1920, he advertises river front lots for sale in Farm Point, with good soil, suitable for tennis, lawn bowling, and so on.

These lots were located “close to hotel and station” (Ottawa Citizen, 30 July 1920, p. 23). Was he selling off part of the 50 acres of land where the 1915 golf course had presumably been laid out?

If so, perhaps he was unable to sell these lots, for it is clear that he retained most of the 50 acres of land associated with the hotel in the Lnwarn Lodge Brochure of 1915, for in 1921 Cox built another 9-hole golf course on this land.

The Ottawa Citizen reported that John E. Cox and his Farm Point neighbours got together in the spring of 1921 and arranged for a new nine-hole golf course to be laid out at Farm Point:

Farm Point to Have Modern Golf Course

Farm Point, Que., will have an up-to-date golf course this summer, the only one up the Gatineau. At a meeting last evening of a number of people who have cottages at Farm Point and who spend the summer there, it was definitely decided to declare the course open for play sometime during the first week of May. The meeting was presided over by Dr. R.E. Valin, who is acting as president of the club, which is to be known as the Lenwarn Golf Club.

It is the intention of the club to offer the use of the course to members of any recognized club in Canada who wish to spend a day or so at Farm Point. It will also be open to the guests of the summer hotel at Farm Point.

Others who are interested in the project are Dr. J.L. Chabot, J.A. Mackenzie, S.O. Fillion, John E. Cox, E.E. Emmerson and A.R. Tibbits. (Ottawa Citizen, 2 April 1921, p. 1)

The meeting to organize the golf club had been held on April Fool’s Day, but the news that came out of the meeting was no joke.

The fact that the golf club was to be named “Lenwarn” suggests that Cox was not just another member of this club. This suggestion is confirmed when the Ottawa Journal, following up on the Ottawa Citizen’s story about the Lenwarn Golf Club (if only to contradict its claim that this “up-to-date golf course” at Farm Point would be “the only one up the Gatineau” that summer), wrote “There are to be two new golf courses opened up the Gatineau this year and summer residents are looking forward to a splendid season’s sport” (Ottawa Journal, 13 April 1921, p. 14). The other golf club (to be developed at Blue Sea Lake) is discussed in a section below; additional information in this item about the Farm Point golf course tells of Cox’s instrumental role in its development: “Summer residents at Farm Point have decided to accept the offer of Mr. John E. Cox to rent to them a stretch of ground for a nominal sum” (Ottawa Journal, 13 April 1921, p. 14).

The Ottawa Journal reports on 13 April 1921 that “The course … has already been laid out and the work of rolling and removing obstructions commenced” (p. 14). Given the pace of golf developments in Farm Point at the beginning of April, it is likely that well before making his offer to his fellow cottagers, Cox had been developing this golf course on his own, probably in connection with his hotel.

The claim that Farm Point would have a “modern” golf course implies that it would be designed by a golf professional and constructed according to prevailing golf industry standards. Unlike many small-town golf courses in the late 1800s and early 1900s, this “up to date” golf course would be more than flag poles stuck in holes on pastureland.

And so it seems unlikely that between the meeting of Farm Point summer residents on April 1st and the publication of the Ottawa Journal story on April 13th the Lenwarn Golf Club could have contacted a golf professional, proposed the laying-out of a nine-hole course to him, agreed to terms with him, and then arranged the time for a mutually convenient visit to Farm Point by him and a day of work marking out golf holes on the stretch of ground in question. After all, although we read that “The election of officers will take place at an early date,” no officers had been elected by April 13th . Valin had simply agreed to serve as acting president (Ottawa Journal, 13 April 1921, p. 14). Yet also underway before April 13th was the “rolling” of the greens and fairways and the “removing” of “obstructions.” Daily labourers had to be found to do these things, and they needed to be directed by someone with knowledge of golf course construction.

A number of these arrangements must have been undertaken by landowner Cox before it was “definitely decided” by Farm Point cottage owners to form the Lenwarn Golf Club.

The golf course was a “nine-hole” links. We read that it “will be 1600 yards long and will possess many features to interest the golfer” (Ottawa Journal, 13 April 1921, p. 14).

The course was a short one, but similar 1600-yard nine-hole golf courses had been laid out by Royal Montreal Golf Club professional James Black at Almonte in 1902, by Weston Golf Club professional Charles Murray at Caledonia Springs in 1904, by Ottawa Golf Club professional George Sargent at a new site in Almonte in 1907, and by Toronto Golf Club professional George Cumming in Picton in 1907.

It is as though a 1600-yard layout was regarded by golf professionals in those days as an appropriate “starter” course for new golf clubs in small communities.

Of the “features to interest the golfer,” the land that Cox owned next to the hotel and along the Gatineau River possessed a creek that could be crossed several times by fairways, and it possessed land both flat and sloping up the side of a hill, which would allow for elevation changes in the playing of golf holes. Other artificial features, such as bunkers, could well have been added.

Figure 82 Dr. R.E. Valin, Ottawa Citizen, 15 June 1951, p. 39.

Acting president Dr. Romuald Eugène Valin (1883-1964), had been born in Ottawa and attended local schools there but pursued his medical studies at McGill University in Montreal. Immediately upon graduation as physician and surgeon in 1905, he joined the staff of the Ottawa General Hospital, where he remained for the rest of his career. He rose through the ranks to become President of its Board of Directors. He “guided Ottawa University’s medical school through its first years” and became first a professor of surgery at the university and then the Head of its Department of Surgery (Nanaimo Daily News, 1 August 1955, p. 2). He was elected a city alderman in Ottawa in 1912 as part of “his fight to get the capital’s water supply filtered, but he was before his time and that development came some years later” (Nanaimo Daily News, 1 August 1955, p. 2).

In 1919, he was one of the two physicians who attended Sir Wilfrid Laurier on his deathbed. He was Honorary Treasurer of the Royal Society of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada from 1932-49, and he was honoured with admission to the American College of Surgeons in 1938. After 12 years as its active medical director, he was in 1953 made “honorary medical director of the French-Speaking Doctors Association of Canada” (Ottawa Journal, 7 November 1953, p. 31). He was also appointed to the Federal District Commission (forerunner of the National Capital Commission) and the Province of Ontario Cancer Commission.

Valin dedicated himself to hunting and fishing when he retired, but in his younger days he was a golf enthusiast. He had been an early member of the Rivermead Golf Club (from at least 1915 onwards), and he played regularly in Rivermead competitions, where he became a serious competitive golfer: shooting scores in the 90s in 1915, he was by 1920 shooting scores in Club competitions in the mid- to low-70s. In 1921, he was elected a director of the Club.

Given Valin’s Rivermead connection, one wonders if the golf professional brought to Farm Point to lay out the nine-hole golf course for the Lenwarn Golf Club was James (“Jimmy”) Clay, appointed head pro at Rivermead in 1920 on the recommendation of Royal Ottawa’s golf professional Karl Keffer, who had brought Clay with him from the Toronto Golf Club as his apprentice when Keffer was appointed head pro at Ottawa in 1911.

Although officers in addition to acting President Valin had not yet been elected, a consensus had emerged at the April 1st meeting on at least two questions: “There will be no club-house erected this season. Play will commence in May” (Ottawa Journal, 13 April 1921, p. 14).

Lnwarn Lodge III

Cox did not rebuild the Lnwarn Lodge Annex. He simply offered the main hotel, which had survived the annex fire unscathed, for rent – and he suggested a new purpose for it: “To rent, very suitable spot for a tea room on the Gatineau highway; spacious verandah and dining room, 15 bedrooms partially furnished, situated at Farm Point, Que. Further information, John E. Cox, Union Bank Bldg” (Ottawa Citizen, 5 June 1922, p. 6).

This effort to rent out the hotel was a success: Lnwarn Lodge opened again in the summer of 1922 under the proprietorship of Mrs. E.M. Howell. She emphasized that the establishment was “Under entirely new management” (Ottawa Citizen, 1 August 1922, p. 6).

She did not mention a golf course in any of her advertisements.

How long the Cox family owned Lnwarn Lodge after 1922 is not clear. At some point, Freeman Cross seems to have acquired it. When the the Gatineau Power Corporation proposed to flood some parts of the Farm Point area by means of the dam it was building on the Gatineau River at Chelsea in the late 1920s, and Freeman Cross successfully opposed some of the Corporation’s plans in court, he was described in the 1927 court decision as owning the hotel in Farm Point.

For some reason, even after Cox had no more interest in the hotel, it continued to be called Lnwarn Lodge.

From 1922 onward, Mrs. Howell continued to post a virtually identical advertisements each year from spring to fall in the Ottawa newspapers.

Figure 83 Ottawa Citizen, 30 May 1923, p. 6.

After the end of the 1928 season, however, there are no further references to Lnwarn Lodge in the Ottawa newspapers. The Gatineau Valley Historical Society reports that it may have burned down in the early 1930s (https://www.gvhs.ca/image-bank/ib-display.php?search=lnwarn&row=0&kind=like).

Rewarding Recovery of Mr. Cox

Captain Charles Cropley, captain of the steamer “Russell,” was the first to see the body floating in the river, and he told Albert Charron, 90 Garneau Street, Hull, and Armand Ranger, a bargeman, where they could find it.

They decided to split the reward.

It was offered by Mrs. Cox.

(Ottawa Citizen, 19 June 1923, p. 3)

Cropley, Charron, and Ranger all worked for the Ottawa Transportation Company, operating between them just two of the 250 vessels owned by the company. It was just after they had enjoyed their lunch on June 13th, 1923, that Charron and Ranger manoeuvred the barge on which they were previously loading lumber from the Booth mills to the place near the interprovincial bridge that steamboat captain Cropley had directed them.

Figure 84 A barge of the Ottawa Transportation Company loaded with lumber in the Ottawa canal system, circa 1920. Norman Lafrenière, Ottawa River Canal System (Parks Canada, 1984), p. 56.

At 1:05 pm, Charron reached over the side of the barge and hooked a pike-pole into the body’s overcoat. He called to Ranger to let him know that he had secured the body and held on tight as Ranger slowly steered the barge to the wharf behind the Capital Brewing Company plant, a wharf that belonged to the Perley Residence, Ottawa’s “Home for Lost Women” (these two buildings were located where today one finds various government buildings at 395 Wellington Street).

Figure 85 The back of the Capital Brewing Company plant circa 1912.

Once the barge was moored to the wharf, Ranger reached down over the side and tied a rope to the overcoat and then tied the body to the wharf.

It floated there as they had found it.

And so it was still face-downwards in the water: they had not rolled it over. They called the police, and the police called the coroner, and the coroner called a funeral parlor. When the police descended the hill behind the brewery to the wharf, they immediately realized that the great height of the wharf where the body was tied precluded its removal from the water there. After consulting with the coroner, they directed that the body be towed about 200 yards further downstream to the Government Central Heating Plant where they could reach the body from that much lower wharf.

At 3:00 pm, the body was finally removed from the water. Its advanced state of decomposition indicated that it had been in the water for months. The afternoon edition of the Ottawa Citizen said that “Its condition makes it hardy recognizable” (13 June 1923, p. 1). In fact, however, it was almost immediately recognized. Charged with handling the body was a team from Woodburn’s Undertaking Parlors, whose owner, Charles Woodburn, had come to the site himself. Despite the effects that the river had wrought on the body, Woodburn recognized the face of a man he had known for many years: Jack Cox.

Later that day, Cox’s sister’s son Allan Fowler (who was studying to become a doctor) confirmed that the body was indeed that of his uncle, and so did the Coxes’ Farm Point neighbour, S.I. Fillion, who had a cottage on the riverbank opposite the Cox cottage and who had represented Farm Point baseball alongside Cox at meetings of the Gatineau Valley Baseball League before World War I.

Key to confirming Woodburn’s provisional identification of the body was inspection of the contents of its clothing. A gold watch was found in a pocket, and on it was an inscription: “Ottawa, Jan. 13, 1910. Awarded to Local Agent John E. Cox, by the Canadian Railway Accident Insurance Company, Ottawa, for having in his class increased business [the] largest percentage during 1910” (Ottawa Journal, 13 June 1923, p. 1). The award had been noted in the Ottawa Citizen in 1910: at the annual banquet of the Canadian Railway Accident Insurance Company, “beautiful solid gold watches were … given to the agents making the greater percentage of increase in their business during the year…. Mr. J.E. Cox [won] the local agents’ [prize]” (14 January 1910, p. 5). Cox was proud of this achievement and carried that golf watch in his pocket for the rest of his life.

John Cox entered the waters of the Ottawa River on Friday, December 29th, 1922; “the hands of the timepiece were stopped at eleven o’clock” (Ottawa Journal, 13 June 1923).

During the 164 days that his body had been in the water, it had moved just 400 yards from where it had entered the river. Cox died within minutes of entering that river, but his health had been declining for months before this. One newspaper said “Mr. Cox had been suffering from severe nervous strain for two months” (Ottawa Journal, 2 January 1923, p. 5); the other newspaper said that he “had been suffering from a nervous break-down for the last three months” (Ottawa Citizen, 2 January 1923, p. 13).

Some thought that his nervous strain and ultimate breakdown had been caused by financial problems: “He had failed to collect some accounts and on top of this lost several large policies” (Ottawa Citizen, 2 January 1923, p. 13). It seems that “The failure of some of his debtors, both in real estate and in insurance deals … caused him considerable worry and he began to show signs of this by increased nervousness” (Ottawa Journal, 2 January 1923, p. 5).

There was also the suggestion that an unsound mind had preceded his financial problems and that mental illness had led him to misunderstand his financial situation. We read that “Mr. John Edward Cox was considered to be in a sound financial condition and had many assets in the form of real estate in Ottawa, Farm Point, and Hull, Que. Until last October, he had no cause to worry in his business affairs” (Ottawa Journal, 2 January 1923, p. 5). And the worry he experienced was disproportionate to the cause: his “losses were not of a serious nature, but his condition of health made him feel the loss exaggerated” (Ottawa Citizen, 2 January 1923, p. 13). He was trapped in a whirlpool of worries: “He began worrying over little matters and as a result lost much of his sleep” (Ottawa Journal, 2 January 1923, p. 5).

Cox tried to hide both his mental condition and his financial condition from his family: “He never confided his business worries to his family and, therefore the extent of his troubles was not realized by them until lately” (Ottawa Journal, 2 January 1923, p. 5).

When his mental and financial difficulties arose around the beginning of October in 1922, Cox would have been alert to the fact that his wife’s best friend had just come through a harrowing bankruptcy with her husband John Angus Mackenzie.

The Mackenzies not only had a cottage at Farm Point near the Coxes; Jean Mackenzie (née Andrews) and Bertha Cox spent winters together on the South: “Mrs. J. Angus Mackenzie and Mrs. J.E. Cox left today for Ormond Beach, Florida, to spend several weeks” (Gazette [Montreal], 25 January 1916, p. 3). “Mrs. J. Angus Mackenzie and Mrs. J.E. Cox, who have been in Florida for a short while, have left for Bermuda” (Ottawa Journal, 16 Feb. 1916, p. 8). “Mrs. J. Angus Mackenzie and Mrs. J.E. Cox have returned home after spending several weeks in the south” (Gazette [Montreal], 28 February 1916, p. 3).

Jean Mackenzie’s world had come crashing down around her in 1921. Until June of that year, she continued to hold social events at her home (elaborate teas, musicales, and so on ), she continued to perform as a soprano soloist at various amateur entertainments, and she continued to cut quite a figure at public events (such as the horse races, where what she wore was reported in the newspapers),but then her world changed with a headline: “Mackenzie Limited Makes Assignment: Well-Known Ottawa Firm Can’t Meet Obligations. Liabilities of Half Million” (Ottawa Citizen, 29 June 1921, p. 1).

John Angus Mackenzie’s bankruptcy became a national spectacle, receiving blanket coverage in the Ottawa newspapers, of course, but also occasioning commentary as far away as British Columbia.

There can be little doubt that Bertha Cox would have heard all about the problems at Mackenzie Limited from her friend, who was not just the wife of the president and manager, but also a director of the company.

Figure 86 John Angus Mackenzie, Ottawa Journal, 5 May 1947, p. 14.

John Angus Mackenzie had been born in Guelph in 1875 but came to Ottawa in the late 1890s to work as an accountant. In 1901, he married Jean Andrews (born in Ottawa, also in 1875). He then took a position as a travelling salesman with the Woods Manufacturing Company – a maker of sleeping-bags, tents, and related outdoors equipment (this company with the stylized pine-tree logo still exists today).

In 1907, however, Mackenzie formed his own company in the “general commission business “with two silent partners, but soon “branched into the … manufacture of flannel shirts, flags, awnings, tents and overalls. He was appealing to the lumber and mining trade and personally went out after business” (Ottawa Journal, 30 June 1921).

Then came the war, and then came controversy.

To some, Mackenzie was a business hero and Canadian patriot:

On August 4 [1914], Great Britain declared war and the next morning Mr. Mackenzie kept the telephone and the telegraph wires hot, both east and west. He purchased every yard of flannel he could lay his hands on and gave orders to the mills which would keep them busy for some time. Although he had no knowledge that Canada would enter the war, his intuition told him to go ahead. So roll after roll of flannel began to arrive at the Mackenzie warehouse, extra employees were tentatively engaged, and the factory rearranged to handle the coming work. Then came Canada’s entry into the war….

Mr. Mackenzie immediately saw General Sir Sam Hughes and told him he was ready to put his whole factory at the Government’s service and that the manufacture of shirts could be started that very day.

"Make 36,000,” was Sir Sam’s prompt reply. So it came about that the shirting of Canada’s contingent fell to Ottawa and J. Angus Mackenzie. After receiving this order from the Government, Mr. Mackenzie wrote to all of his customers explaining that he was putting his factory at the Government’s service and asking their consideration.

A year after the war broke out, Mr. Mackenzie bought out the other share holders, so that the business became a personal one….

Canada threw herself wholeheartedly into the war. A lot more shirts than could be supplied by Ottawa were needed, but other shirt contractors could not get flannel. Angus Mackenzie of Ottawa held it all. Mr. Mackenzie did not expect to make all the shirts for the Canadian army, but by buying when he did, he got the flannel at prewar prices, and thus protected both himself and the Government. (Ottawa Journal, 30 June 1921, p. 1)

From this point of view, Mackenzie patriotically gave up his regular business for which he had many customers, selflessly put his factory at the service of the Canadian government, and at great personal risk bought all the flannel in Canada to save the Canadian government from price-gouging war profiteers.

To others, Mackenzie was the perfect example of the very war profiteer that the newspapers in Ottawa saw him as opposing. So when the market for Mackenzie’s flannel shirts evaporated after the war, and he was shortly thereafter caught between too many inescapable contracts for the purchase of flannel, on the one hand, and a raft of cancelled purchase orders for his shirts, on the other, there was gloating in some quarters when he was forced by creditors to declare bankruptcy:

The War-Time Millionaire

Many of the mushroom financiers who floated into fame and fortune on stupendous war orders are today sinking back into the business obscurity whence they came. Witness the tale of John Angus Mackenzie, who shirted the entire First Canadian Contingent in 1914.

When war broke out Mackenzie was running a small shirt manufacturing company in Ottawa. Just before Canada came into the argument, he risked all on a bold throw. He got hold of all the money he could beg or borrow and bought flannel from mills south, north, east and west. He bought all the flannel in sight and ordered every yard in the making.

Then he saw Sir Sam Hughes and secured the order to supply shirts for Canadian soldiers. Overnight John Angus Mackenzie became a millionaire. It appeared that he had solved the eternal problem of making something out of nothing.

Every buck private that the recruiting sergeants could draw to the colours in those days meant, to John Angus Mackenzie, not another rifle to help win the war, but another back to put a shirt on.

He dreamed of the advancing troops in terms of shirts. Although he could not shirt everybody, he had all the flannel, and other manufacturers had to buy from him. It looked pretty soft for John Angus Mackenzie.

He just grasped the war by both horns, forced it to the ground, and put a flannel shirt on its back, regardless of the consequences. The war to him was something to make money from, and while the thing lasted, he prospered.

But it is an axiom of business that success must be founded on a firm basis. John Angus Mackenzie’s rise to opulence was founded on war – and unfortunately for him, war is not a permanent institution. So today John Angus Mackenzie is a failure. He couldn’t function on a peace-time basis. He was an opportunist rather than a sound business man. His business was all froth churned up by the turmoil of battle….

With the war profiteers, the war opportunists and the war makers in full control, business was pretty badly knocked about, During the past two or three years, business has suffered because of the activities of these people. But when they commence to fail it is a sure thing that the money is coming back to the honest, straight-going plodders, who, after all, form the backbone of trade and industry.

The failure of the fly-by-night companies is proof positive of the soundness of solid business integrity and level-headed “normalcy.” (Vancouver Sun, 9 July 1921, p. 6)

From this point of view, bankrupt John Angus Mackenzie got what he deserved!

Did John Edward Cox fear that he was on the verge of a similar experience and a similar judgement?

Suffering from what the newspapers characterized as unfounded, exaggerated and irrational fears about his financial affairs, did Cox believe that he was on the verge of bankruptcy? Did he anticipate detailed newspaper coverage of his failure at business? Did he anticipate embarrassment and shame?

Perhaps he worried that bankruptcy would ruin his stage career? His humour depended on making fun of others: how could he continue to do this if he believed that he had become an object of derision himself?

His greatest fear might have concerned how bankruptcy would affect his marriage.

In an interview Mackenzie gave to the Ottawa Journal, we can see that there were discussions going on between John and Jean Mackenzie with regard to which family assets were owned by the husband and which family assets were owned by the wife:

I am sorry, for their sakes as well as my own, that the unsecured creditors did not accept our offer of 25 cents on the dollar. At that time, I believe, I could have secured sufficient outside capital to permit of that distribution and the carrying on of the business …. I have handed over all my personal property to the creditors; I had very little, you know, outside the business. The house on Clemow Avenue belongs to my wife; we moved into it in 1911 when I owned practically nothing. The summer residence at Farm Point, built in 1914, my wife says also belongs to her. But I suppose I have an equity in it. I bought the land for a few hundred dollars and the deed for it is in my name. There is no deed for the house. I suppose there are ways of deciding the matter. I repeat that I want to turn over to the firm’s creditors all my personal property, and I have already done so. I shall have to begin all over again. (Ottawa Journal, 30 June 1921, p. 1)

The Ottawa Journal expressed sympathy for the couple – “During [Mr. Mackenzie’s] business success he and Mrs. Mackenzie were fond of entertaining socially, and they were also very generous to their friends. A good deal of sympathy will go to them both now” – but we can see in the passage above that there were presumably tense discussions between husband and wife about how assets that Jean regarded as her own might be affected by her husband’s bankruptcy (Ottawa Journal, 30 June 1921, p. 1).

She had inherited the house on Clemow Avenue from her father in 1907, and she had also inherited from him valuable shares in a dairy. When her husband’s business began to founder at the end of 1920, he asked her to hypothecate her shares as collateral security for Mackenzie Limited’s present and future debts and encouraged her to consult with the Manager of the Ottawa branch of the Royal Bank of Canada to put her mind at rest about the advisability of such an arrangement. Over the next twelve months, she signed a variety of documents with regard to these shares at the request of her husband and on advice of the Bank Manager, being told that unless she signed these documents, she had no chance of recovering her shares.

She came to understand that she had been incorrectly advised and sued her husband for exerting undue influence over her and sued the bank for its manager’s inaccurate advice. After many years, in many courts, she succeeded in her suit against the bank but not against her husband.

But then she sued him in divorce court, and she won.

Had Jean Mackenzie confided her concerns about these matters to Bertha Cox from 1921 to 1922? If so, had Bertha kept John Cox apprised of the tensions arising between Jean and John Mackenzie?

It may well have been John Cox’s awareness of the great toll on the Mackenzie’s marriage that the bankruptcy of Mackenzie Limited was taking that kept him from sharing with Bertha his grave concerns about the precariousness of the financial condition of his own business: J.E. Cox and Son.

Figure 87 Union Bank Building, Ottawa, circa 1920. Its address today is 128 Wellington Street.

Note that Cox, who had had several business partners between 1910 and 1920, now had a new partner: Leonard Cox, his firstborn son and a newly minted graduate of McGill University. By 1920, Cox had “worked up a large insurance business which took in the agency of half a dozen prominent insurance companies and, later, real estate … [and] he took his son, Mr. Leonard Cox, into a partnership, known as J.E. Cox and Son, with offices in the Union Bank building” (Ottawa Journal, 2 January 1923, p. 5).

It may well have been Leonard who prompted his father to confide his fears about the company’s situation to his family, for Leonard would presumably have become privy to his father’s financial activities in the fall of 1922.

It seems that Cox had consulted a doctor about his health, but he had neglected the doctor’s advice – his family reporting that “Although he had been advised to take a complete rest, he refused to do so and was untiring in his efforts to tidy over his financial worries” (Ottawa Journal, 2 January 1923, p. 5).

On Thursday, December 28th, sleep-deprived and worn out with worry, Cox finally succeeded in putting together a deal that would resolve all his financial concerns.

Through his lawyer, Hull notary Louis Bertrand, “He had been successful in making arrangements to raise a small loan … on some of his Quebec properties sufficient to tide him over his financial difficulties” (Ottawa Journal, 2 January 1923, p. 5). That he required only “a small loan” to see him through the situation perhaps confirms the newspapers’ characterization of his worries as overblown, but there is no denying the happiness that Cox’s success in negotiating this loan occasioned: “He was overjoyed at his success on Thursday night” (Ottawa Journal, 2 January 1923, p. 5).

Ironically, after his banking success on Thursday, he probably lived through another sleepless night – occasioned this time not by anxiety but by exhilaration.

Nonetheless, “he left his home Friday morning to close the deal in excellent spirits” (Ottawa Journal, 2 January 1923, p. 5). And he left his home in one of his favorite outfits: he wore his brownish grey Ulster overcoat; on his head he cocked a grey fedora hat; he complimented the palette of colours he had put together with “tan boots” (Ottawa Citizen, 2 January 1923, p. 13). And his “grey, close-cut, clipped moustache” was newly trimmed (Ottawa Journal, 2 January 1923, p. 5). Cox had dressed for success.

The meeting at Bertrand’s office on Main Street in Hull took no longer than Cox had thought it would, but it did not go as he expected. There was a problem: “When he arrived at Mr. Bertrand’s office, it was found that one of the parcels of land on which the loan was being made had a 25-year-old assignment to it. Although Mr. Bertrand pointed out that this was invalid owing to later transfers, a discharge would be necessary to satisfy the loan company” (Ottawa Journal, 2 January 1923, p. 5). The minor nature of this impediment to the loan process is confirmed by the fact that about 90 minutes after this meeting, “Mr. Leonard Cox, [John Cox’s] son and partner, …. went over to Mr. Bertrand’s office and was successful in getting the necessary release and completing the deal” (Ottawa Journal, 2 January 1923, p. 5).

In stead of his father, Leonard Cox had had to attend to this matter because John Cox had left Bertrand’s office dejected and disconsolate in the face of the complication that had arisen:

The hitch in securing the loan, with the cheque for the necessary amount lying in front of him on the table, appeared to daze Mr. Cox, according to Mr. Bertrand. He appeared to be unable to grasp the triviality of this matter and apparently thought that the property he had been holding for years was worthless. Mr. Bertrand stated that Mr. Cox acted as though he did not hear or understand him and left his office with a promise to return within a half hour. (Ottawa Journal, 2 January 1923, p. 5).

According to the newspapers, it was “10:30 that morning” when Cox left Bertrand’s office, promising to return in half an hour, but Cox did not return and so it was by Bertrand at 10:30 a.m. that “he was last seen alive” (Ottawa Journal, 2 January 1923, p. 5).

But this is not quite true.

The last person to have seen Cox alive was “Mrs. James Cochrane, 558 Wellington Street, who saw the stranger as he jumped off the bridge” (Ottawa Journal, 2 January 1923, p. 5). Where Cox was going when he left Bertrand’s office is not clear. He seems to have walked across the Chaudière bridges back to the Ontario side of the Ottawa River. Perhaps he was walking back to his office in the Union Bank Building on Wellington Street.

Cox did not jump into the Ottawa River from any of the bridges of the Chaudière Crossing. Perhaps at that point he had not formed the plan to kill himself. Or perhaps the outdoorsman who had become an excellent swimmer feared that a jump into the river from such bridges would be too easy to survive were he to change his mind at the last moment and try to swim to shore.

Mrs. Cochrane saw him as he walked onto Pooley’s Bridge near the Fleet Street Pumping Station.

This three-span closed spandrel stone structure was built in 1873 and is today the oldest bridge in Ottawa. It continues to span the channel tailrace of the pumping station. It was this tailrace that had caught Cox’s attention. He had stopped in the middle of the bridge and looked over each side at the water racing below the bridge. The volume, speed, and turbulence of the torrent flowing from the pump station – so much greater than the flow of water today – struck Cox as absolutely perfect for his purpose: no one who fell into that water could survive the plunge.

Mrs. Cochrane was surprised to see him mount the railing on the east side of the bridge. What was he doing? He stood erect, with perfect balance, his head inclined slightly downward, as though mesmerized by the rushing water. Then he reached inside his overcoat and pulled an object from his waistcoat pocket: it was a watch that glinted for a moment in the low winter sunlight.

The time was 11 0’clock: he was due back in Bertrand’s office.

Figure 88 Contemporary photograph of Pooley's Bridge.

Then horror, then shock: Cox jumped, and Mrs. Cochrane shouted “No!”

She was the last person to see him alive, but although she immediately rushed to the railing of the bridge, she saw nothing more of him. He was gone.

As for John Edward Cox, he immediately

Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell

And the profit and the loss.

A current under sea

Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell

He passed the stages of his age and youth

Entering the whirlpool.

(T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land, 1922)

Of course Mrs. Cochrane called the police, and they “dragged the whirlpool at the edge of the tail race and the Ottawa River all day Friday in an effort to recover the body but were compelled to give it up”; the city police explained to the newspapers: “The ice in the river and a quantity of baled wire, and rubbish lying at the bottom of the whirpool, makes recovery very uncertain” (Ottawa Journal, 2 January 1923, p. 5).

Figure 89 I believe that this photograph of an unidentified skier at the Tibbitts’ cottage in Farm Point shows John E. Cox on the New Year's weekend that he spent with the Tibbitts and Sherrins in 1922. Gatineau Valley Historical Society photo.

And when John Cox did not return home Friday evening, his family became increasingly worried and in great distress called the police the next morning. Bertha gave the police an old photograph of her husband, and when it was shown to Mrs. Cochrane, she confirmed that the man in the photograph was the man she saw jump off the bridge.

Still, his family wanted proof: “Although the family has practically given up hope of ever seeing Mr. Cox alive again, no efforts will be spared by them to have the body recovered so as to make identification absolutely certain” (Ottawa Journal, 2 January 1923, p. 5).

As we know, Bertha Cox offered a $50 reward for the recovery of her husband’s body.

The funeral was a private affair. John Cox had been “a member of All Saints Anglican Church, and took considerable interest in church work,” but his funeral service was conducted at Woodburn Funeral Home at 8:00 a.m. on June 14th, 1923 (Ottawa Journal, 2 January 1923, p. 5). Family and a few good friends came to the Woodburn Funeral Home for the service.

Then the body was taken to Union Station for transport by train to Wakefield for burial at Hall’s Cemetery.

Rolling into Farm Point later that morning, the train carrying Cox’s coffin passed Lnwarn Lodge on its right, where Mrs. Howell was still hiring staff for the resort season of 1923.

One could see past the hotel to the ruins of the Annex on the riverbank. The train stopped at the Farm Point station, as usual, but it picked up a few more passengers than usual: several of Cox’s friends in Farm Point were determined to attend the interment in Wakefield.

Figure 90 Grave marker of John Cox in Hall's Cemetery, Wakefield, Quebec.

As the train pulled out of the station, it passed immediately on its right the Coxes’ family cottage.

The recovery of Cox’s body in the middle of June seems to have changed the family’s plans for that summer: they would not spend it at the cottage.

After the funeral, and after paying the promised reward to the three employees of the Ottawa Transportation Company who had recovered her husband’s body, Bertha Cox advertised the cottage as available for rent for the month of July, completely furnished – right down to the linen.

She asked that anyone interested in renting the cottage write to “Mrs. J. E. Cox,” the form of address she preferred for the rest of her life.

John Cox had left her assets of about $50,000 when he died – perhaps $800,000 dollars in today’s terms. She lived quite comfortably for the rest of her life and maintained a social standing that brought her into the company of prominent politicians and visiting British royalty.

After a prolonged illness, she died in her 80th year in the fall of 1949, grandmother of five. She was also buried in Hall’s Cemetery.

Tenaga Golf II: The Clubhouse Links

How long the Horwood golf course lasted is not clear. What is clear, however, is that the Tenaga cottage colony remained interested in a variety of sports.

In 1929, the Tenaga cottagers built a clubhouse and tennis courts: “With their well-known community spirit, the Tenaga [Tennis] Club has recently erected a clubhouse 24 feet by 24 feet with a spacious tenfoot verandah extending on three of its sides. Four courts will be in play this year” (Ottawa Citizen, 25 April 1929, p. 10). In the event, just three courts were available for the official opening in July (Ottawa Citizen, 15 July 1929, p. 12).

The back of the clubhouse can be seen in the photograph below, as well as a portion of its verandah and part of the tennis courts in front of it.

Figure 92 Gatineau Valley Historical Society photo CD-051/02795-007.

On the lawns around this clubhouse the cottagers would also build a lawn-bowing green and a nine-hole “pitch-and-putt” golf course. The golf course seems to have been laid out not long after the clubhouse was opened, for in August of 1930 the Iron Works Company of Ottawa held its annual picnic at Tenaga and included bowling and golf contests for the employees (Le droit, 30 August 1930, p. 3). Similarly, in September of 1930 Le droit refers to “un membre … du Tenaga Lawn Bowling club, du club de Tennis et de Golf” (5 September 1930, p. 13).

The sketch below shows the finished sports complex of the early 1930s.

Figure 93 Gatineau Valley Historical Society photo CD-051/02795-005.

Given that the playing surface of a tennis court is 12 yards wide and 26 yards long, one can see that most of the golf holes were between 25 and 60 yards in length, with the 7th hole being slightly longer – perhaps as long as 100 yards.

It is not clear how long the golf course was maintained. There is a photograph from 1942 that shows a woman observing two men holding golf clubs at Tenaga, perhaps suggesting that the golf course was still in use during World War II.

Figure 94 Gatineau Valley Historical Society photo CD-051/02795-009.

Note that the men hold clubs with wooden heads, which would not be used on a pitch-and-putt course.

Perhaps the golf course had been enlarged by 1942.

Or perhaps the photograph is meant to be comical: the posture of the two men holding driving clubs so as to place them face-to-face is not part of golf. They look more like hockey players than golfers, with the woman as referee waiting to drop the puck at a face-off.

Still, one supposes that there must have been some reason that the men had brought golf clubs to Tenaga in the summer of 1942. Perhaps they played golf at the Gleneagle golf course, which was less than a mile from Tenaga.

But that golf course is a story for a later chapter.

The North Wakefield Golf Links

Called Alcove as of 1928, North Wakefield was another resort site on the Gatineau River, just over a mile north of Wakefield.

And for at least one year during World War I, it had a golf course of its own: “Two of the added attractions to North Wakefield this year are the tennis courts and golf links, which have recently been laid out. The young folks of the village especially enjoy these pastimes, which are open to all members of the Alcove club house” (Ottawa Journal, 29 July 1916, p. 12).

The Alcove clubhouse was a new building, under construction in the spring of 1916: “Work on the new club house is making satisfactory progress, and when completed it should add much to the life of the young people” (Ottawa Citizen, 2 June 1916, p. 15). It opened in July: “The shareholders of the Alcove clubhouse have been anxiously looking forward to the time when the building would be finished, and this week saw the realization of their hopes. The wide verandahs overlooking the river, the comfortable chairs and the beautifully finished auditorium are sources of great satisfaction to those who planned the enterprise” (Ottawa Journal, 15 July 1916, p. 3).

The clubhouse was so close to the Gatineau River that it was in danger of disappearing into it when there was flooding in 1919: “While the Gatineau River is still higher than it has been these last ten years, the water has gone down considerably this week. Shareholders in the Alcove Club House are congratulating themselves that the foundations of the building have been so well and truly laid that they have resisted absolutely the floods beating against them” (Ottawa Citizen, 5 June 1919, p. 3).

When it opened in the summer of 1916, the clubhouse immediately became the centre of North Wakefield community life:

The Alcove Club House was formally opened on Friday evening under the most auspicious circumstances and with ideal weather…. The buildings and grounds were artistically decorated with flags…. After the programme dancing was indulged in. The management of the Club House generously offered the Red Cross Society an opportunity to augment their funds that night by the sale of refreshments, and as a result $50 was raised. Tables were placed on Mr. Jas. Mullen’s lawn and were well looked after by the committees in charge…. Mr. and Mrs. J.E. Cross … and others motored from Farm Point on Friday evening to enjoy the festivities here. (Ottawa Journal, 22 July 1916, p. 8).

Within two weeks, a sports field day was organized at the clubhouse: “A committee has been appointed to arrange a field day of sports on Civic Holiday. On Monday, Civic Holiday, in the forenoon, lawn tennis and golf tournaments” (Ottawa Journal, 5 August 1916, p. 7). There were so many competitors that tournaments could not be concluded on the Civic Holiday weekend: “On Monday morning the first tennis and golf tournaments of the season were held, proving a decided success. Several of the finals have yet to be played, and results will be published later” (Ottawa Journal, 12 August 1916, p. 12).

Note that the Alcove clubhouse was designed primarily for the use of the summer residents of the village. These people owned cottages along the river or in the hillsides around the village.

Figure 95 Three cottages circa World War I appear to the left of the back portion of the North Wakefield schoolhouse that appears on the right margin of the photograph. Gatineau Valley Historical Society photo, CD-005/00598.

Visible in the foreground of the photograph above is the pastureland where the North Wakefield golf course was probably laid out. This pastureland was located between the cottages clinging to the side of the hill on one side of the village and the railway tracks, train station, houses, warehouses, and Alcove clubhouse strung out along the Gatineau River on the other side. Another view of this pastureland can be seen in the postcard image below that dates from 1910: the schoolhouse is in the foreground; the train station, its lumberyard, and the buildings along the river take up the left side of the image.

Figure 96 North Wakefield postcard, circa 1910. Gatineau Historical Society photo, CD-032/02404-001.

The photograph below provides a view of this pastureland as it was beginning to be developed in 1926.

Figure 97 1926 view of the pastureland in the village of North Wakefield as buildings were beginning to be constructed on it. Gatineau Valley Historical Society photo, CD-040/02501-006.

This pastureland was the only area within the village suitable for golf. All else was river or mountain.

Figure 98 Rube Mullen, Ottawa Journal, 27 February 1915, p.6. Rube Mullen starred for Hull and Hamilton hockey teams from the mid-teens to the mid-1920s.

Note that one of the summer residents – his cottage lawn apparently adjoined the grounds of the Alcove clubhouse – was “Mr. Jas. Mullen” (Ottawa Journal, 22 July 1916, p. 8). His summer home at North Wakefield was called “Ugo-Igo Cottage” and he regularly entertained at this cottage a number of his brothers and their families.

Two brothers were particularly important to the development of a golf course in North Wakefield: Wyman and Rube. They were both professional golfers.

And both brothers were visiting James Mullen at North Wakefield on the Civic Holiday weekend in question.

That weekend, in fact, both Wyman (born 1894), who lived at Wakefield, and Rube (born 1891), who lived in Hull, played for the North Wakefield junior baseball team against the married men of the resort, and they probably also played in the golf tournament held on the Monday of the long weekend.

As the final matches were not completed on the holiday weekend, and Wyman Mullen returned to North Wakefield the following weekend, we might suspect that he did so to compete in the championship match.

Since Wyman was the brother who visited North Wakefield most frequently in 1916 (not just playing baseball, but also serving as umpire), my suspicion is that he was the one who laid out the golf course.

Wyman had begun his golf career as a caddie under golf professional William Divine at the Ottawa Golf Club when it was still located at its Chelsea links (from 1896 – 1903). He moved to the Club’s new golf course on the Aylmer Road in 1903 and continued to work as a caddie under professional John Oke. He was eventually chosen by George Sargent in 1907 to serve an apprenticeship in club-making under him as assistant golf professional. Sargent left for the United States in 1908, however, and so Wyman served a year each under Sargent’s successors, George James (“Jim”) Bingley (who had been assistant professional under Sargent and left the Club in the middle of the 1909 season to join Sargent again in the United States), the latter’s replacement E. Burrows (who lasted just half a season), and J.C. Blair (who served from April to October of 1910).

The instability and inexperience in the pro shop at the Ottawa Golf Club may have been the reason Wyman Mullen “dropped out of golf for a period of years”: none of the three professionals who replaced Sargent was more than a year or two older than Mullen himself, and some of them had less pro shop experience than he had (Ottawa Citizen, 1 April 1922). He seems never to have risen above the level of caddie master. When the clubhouse of the Ottawa Golf Club burned to the ground in October of 1909, “Young Wyman,” who heroically helped to save furniture and equipment from a number of buildings and also freed two horses and three ponies from burning stables to the safety of nearby fields, was described as “the boy who takes care of the caddie house” (Ottawa Journal, 21 October 1909, p. 6).

There may also have been no more room for Wyman in the Ottawa pro shop after Karl Keffer had been appointed the Ottawa Golf Club professional in 1911, for Keffer brought his own assistant golf professional with him from Toronto: Jimmy Clay.

When Jimmy Clay was appointed golf professional at Rivermead in 1920, however, he brought Wyman back into the game as his assistant professional, and it was after two years at Rivermead that Wyman graduated to the head pro position at the Gananoque Golf and Country Club, where (but for a year in Ogdensburg) he spent the rest of his career.

The North Wakefield golf course may have lasted just the one season: there is no reference to it after 1916.

The Blue Sea Golf Club

Figure 99 Lismore House under construction, circa 1917-18.

In 1917, the Duke of Devonshire, Canada’s new Governor General, purchased property on Blue Sea Lake (70 miles north of Ottawa) and built a 14-room cottage there, which he called Lismore House.

For the convenience of the Duke, as well as for the convenience of his many distinguished visitors, the Canadian Pacific Railway Company built a flag station on the eastern shore of Blue Sea Lake. It named this station (which was directly opposite Lismore House on the lake’s western shore) “New Lismore.”

Figure 100 The Duke of Devonshire hunting with his son William, circa 1908.

The CPR added four other stations from the bottom of Blue Sea Lake up to the little town of Burbidge (now Messines) – all for the convenience of the members of Ottawa’s elite society who also had cottages on the now famous lake.

The old-time cottagers on the lake were more than pleased to have the Governor General and his family as neighbours, and newcomers bought lots on the lake precisely to acquire the Devonshires as neighbours. All cottagers were keenly aware of when the Devonshires were at their cottage (which was frequently) and paid close attention to what they were up to: their cottage activities included swimming, boating, hiking, hunting, fishing, and camping on the lake’s Presqu’ile peninsula, and of course there were dinner parties for important guests and chosen neighbours.

Figure 101 Justice Anglin, circa 1920.

The man who occasionally met the Duchess and her guests in Burbidge to transport them by boat to Lismore House was Justice Francis Alexander Anglin, one of the six judges of Canada’s Supreme Court. The Devonshires became friends of Anglin’s, on occasion accepting invitations to swim at his cottage and at other times accepting invitations to have tea with the Justice and his wife. Another thing that brought the couples together was the fact that they each had a son the same age -- teenagers who liked to chum together and share adventures on and around the lake.

It was Anglin who became the first president of the Blue Sea Golf Club formed in the fall of 1920, and one can be sure that as he helped to bring this club into existence he had half an eye on how much a local golf course would please the Governor General.

A keen golfer, the Duke in 1918 donated the Devonshire Cup as the trophy to be awarded the champion of the newly-formed Canadian Senior Golf Association. Before he came to Canada, he had served as president of the Matlock Golf Club in Derbyshire, donating a Presidential Challenge Cup that is still awarded today. When he returned to England after the conclusion of his service in Canada in the early 1920s, he commissioned famous golf course architect Dr. Alister Mackenzie to lay out an 18-hole course on the moorland of the Devonshire estate in Buxton, Derbyshire (a course still regularly voted one of the top 100 courses in England).

Figure 102 Napoléon Belcourt, circa 1905

Prominent cottagers at Blue Sea Lake – including Justice Anglin, Sir Arthur Percy Sherwood (Commissioner of the Dominion Police of Canada), Senator Napoléon Belcourt, Venerable Archdeacon Johnston McClelland Snowden, Lieutenant-Colonel J.E. Gravelle, and Sarah Sparks (in addition to about 14 other men and two women, half anglophone, half francophone) – held several meetings in the fall of 1920 and decided to form the Blue Sea Golf Club. The key to the success of these meetings was “the kindness of Senator Belcourt”: “the distinguished senator generously offered to give a perpetual lease of enough land on his beautiful country estate for a golf links” (Ottawa Citizen, 11 April 1921, p. 2).

Officers were elected in April of 1921 and one of the most distinguished golf professionals in Canada was invited to lay out a nine-hole course at this time: “Mr. Karl Keffer, of the Royal Ottawa Golf Club, spent a day on the grounds laying out the holes and expressed himself very favorably as to its possibilities” (Ottawa Citizen, 11 April 1921, p. 2). The description of the golf course property that was published in the newspaper probably came from Keffer’s report to the club: “It comprises the greater part of an undulating grassy plateau which has been pastured by sheep for generations and will therefore provide an excellent fairway” (Ottawa Citizen, 11 April 1921, p. 2).

The officers of the Blue Sea Golf Club announced that “Work will be commenced at once cleaning up the grounds, preparing the greens and building a modest club house so that the course may be in playable condition by the early summer” (Ottawa Citizen, 11 April 1921, p. 2). Le droit implied that the golf course might be playable as early as May: “Sur la magnifique propriété de l’honorable sénateur Belcourt, à Blue Sea Lake, un club de golf est actuellement en formation, et dont feront partie plusieurs résidents de l’endroit. L’endroit est, paraît-il, des plus propices pour ce genre de sport. Ce club ouvrira sous peu” (20 May 1921, p. 4).

Sadly, on the day that this item in Le droit appeared, an important founding member of the Blue Sea Club, Sarah Sparks (“granddaughter of the late Nicholas Sparks, founder of By Town,” and “for a long time one of the leading players in the Ottawa Golf Club”) passed away (Ottawa Citizen, 21 Nay 1921, p. 1). President of the May Court Club, Sparks had seen the Duchess of Devonshire at this Club’s annual meeting just five days before her death. Although Sparks seemed to have been in excellent health (“Her death was quite unexpected”), and although she was known to spend time at her cottage on Blue Sea Lake in May, it is unlikely that she ever got to play the golf course.

The golf course was located very close to Lismore House.

The course, which is most picturesque, is situated at the foot of a range of Laurentian Hills, a short distance from the west shore of the lake…. The course will be equally convenient of access to residents from either end of the lake. It is reached from the north at the end of the deep bay next to the residence of His Excellency, the Governor-General, and boats will be able to dock within a few minutes’ walk of the first hole. (Ottawa Citizen, 11 April 1921, p. 2)

The location of Lismore House at the end of the bay in question can be seen on a topographic map of the area dating from the 1930s, on which is marked the word “Club.”

Figure 103 Circa 1931 topographic map of Blue Sea Lake representing late-1920s features. Lismore House is at the location marked by the word “Club.”

The word “Club” on the map above indicates Lismore House, which the Duke of Devonshire had sold in the mid-1920s to a group of outdoorsmen from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, who made it the clubhouse of their hunting and fishing organization: the “Blue Sea Club.”

Figure 104 Members of the Blue Sea Club at "Lismore House" in the 1930s.

Whether the Duke of Devonshire ever played the golf course at Blue Sea Lake is not clear. His term as Governor General did not end until 2 August 1921, but in April he put his summer home up for sale. No sale occurred for two years, and so he rented his cottage for most of the summer of 1921 to Alan Keefer, the Ottawa architect who had designed Lismore House (although then serving as the staff architect of the Department of Public Works and heavily involved in the reconstruction of the Parliament Buildings after the fire of 1916).

Still, the Devonshires continued to spend time at Lismore House in May. And there may have been time in late spring and early summer for a game or two on the new golf course with the Duke’s favorite neighbours at Blue Sea Lake.

How long the Blue Sea Golf Club lasted is not clear, but the golf course itself was certainly in operation for at least two seasons, for in the spring of 1922 Archdeacon Snowden himself put his cottage up for rent, indicating “golf club membership included” (Ottawa Citizen, 7 April 1922, p. 9). In May, another cottage owner advertised the same sort of deal: the rent for the season included “golf and fishing privileges” (Ottawa Citizen, 13 May 1922, p. 8).

The 1930 aerial photograph below shows the land that Senator Belcourt donated for the Blue Sea Club golf course. Below this photograph is a recent Google satellite image of the same area.

Figure 105 Royal Canadian Air Force photograph of the Belcourt property on Blue Sea Lake, 1930.

Figure 106 Contemporary Google satellite image, annotated.

CONTENTS