Boating has always been in my blood and at the first opportunity I built a canoe and later owned a number of boats large and small. Probably the pleasure I derived came from the fact that once on the water with your boat or watercraft you leave your connection to land with it's demands. When our children were very young we owned a cottage and had three watercraft. The kids used to love the old punt. It was a home made ,flat bottomed boat , powered by home made oars and leaked like a basket in spring.
The kids with life jackets in place , would bail out this boat with the help of their friends and amuse themselves for hours. Many years later we had a slick 22 foot Starcraft with an inboard and toured the Ottawa River over a sixty mile range. Once on board the family were compelled to adjust and cope with each other for the hours we plied the river. We came together as a family on these ventures and pulled into beaches for bathroom breaks and exploration. These adventures made our kids understand the nature of the out of doors and an appreciation for the natural beauty of our environment. They also became good boaters and were my stable crew when we bought a larger boat.
This new boat had a long history dating back to the second world war when it was commissioned into the Royal Navy as Jocelyn the Third. After years in the service it was purchased by a man in Peterborough and sailed the local waters for years before I managed to buy her and take her to the Ottawa River and renamed her Miss Pembroke.
This purchase was without a doubt one of the best family motivators. We as a family used every opportunity to get out on the river. The big thing was that she was large enough to take all the friends. Miss Pembroke was registered to carry 55 passengers and a crew of three. There were times that we filled the Quota and then some. The other day I was looking through the captains log and estimated that over the years we sailed this boat several thousand friends and family benefited from their trip on the Ottawa.
We had cabinet ministers, Lords and Ladies, men and women of the cloth and all between risk a cruise on the Miss Pembroke. She was a fine stable craft capable of handling bad weather and on one occasion sailed by a tornado with my son in law hiding under the seat afraid for his life. The storm came within a hundred meters of us and veered off to the Quebec side. The real story of the Miss Pembroke was that it was a family boat where everyone was welcome. She re-opened up the Ottawa River after fifty years of neglect. The lumber industry polluted the river with millions of log and made it unsafe to travel this magnificent seven hundred mile waterway until the industry started to truck the logs rather than to have log drives every spring and summer.
For we, the family she was freedom to go up the river for corn boils, sunset cruises and just plain pleasure. I loved that boat and feel sad that she now rests out of water with a new name as a tourist bureau. Yes boats help to bond families, educate people about our water resource, provide a peaceful time for us to just chill out and escape the rigors of the day.
The kids with life jackets in place , would bail out this boat with the help of their friends and amuse themselves for hours. Many years later we had a slick 22 foot Starcraft with an inboard and toured the Ottawa River over a sixty mile range. Once on board the family were compelled to adjust and cope with each other for the hours we plied the river. We came together as a family on these ventures and pulled into beaches for bathroom breaks and exploration. These adventures made our kids understand the nature of the out of doors and an appreciation for the natural beauty of our environment. They also became good boaters and were my stable crew when we bought a larger boat.
This new boat had a long history dating back to the second world war when it was commissioned into the Royal Navy as Jocelyn the Third. After years in the service it was purchased by a man in Peterborough and sailed the local waters for years before I managed to buy her and take her to the Ottawa River and renamed her Miss Pembroke.
This purchase was without a doubt one of the best family motivators. We as a family used every opportunity to get out on the river. The big thing was that she was large enough to take all the friends. Miss Pembroke was registered to carry 55 passengers and a crew of three. There were times that we filled the Quota and then some. The other day I was looking through the captains log and estimated that over the years we sailed this boat several thousand friends and family benefited from their trip on the Ottawa.
We had cabinet ministers, Lords and Ladies, men and women of the cloth and all between risk a cruise on the Miss Pembroke. She was a fine stable craft capable of handling bad weather and on one occasion sailed by a tornado with my son in law hiding under the seat afraid for his life. The storm came within a hundred meters of us and veered off to the Quebec side. The real story of the Miss Pembroke was that it was a family boat where everyone was welcome. She re-opened up the Ottawa River after fifty years of neglect. The lumber industry polluted the river with millions of log and made it unsafe to travel this magnificent seven hundred mile waterway until the industry started to truck the logs rather than to have log drives every spring and summer.
For we, the family she was freedom to go up the river for corn boils, sunset cruises and just plain pleasure. I loved that boat and feel sad that she now rests out of water with a new name as a tourist bureau. Yes boats help to bond families, educate people about our water resource, provide a peaceful time for us to just chill out and escape the rigors of the day.
What great memories the boat has given you. It will be interesting to hear more.
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