Lilian's passage on the Groote Beer in 1954

My 92 year old mother Lilian and her late husband Jack (1922 - 88) set sail from Rotterdam on the Groote Beer on Feb. 17, 1954, immigrating to Canada from the Netherlands.

One of my cousins in the Netherlands was poking around on line the other day and found a sight showing the original steamship passenger lists, courtesy of the Rotterdam archives for the passage my Mom and Dad took from Holland to Canada in 1945. I got curious and started looking for images of the ship, the Groote Beer (Great Bear) and was surprised to find a good deal of information about the ship. Wikipedia has the history and the Pier 21 Archives in Halifax have images of some of the passenger lists. There is also a Facebook page where passengers can reminisce and share images. 

I printed a few images out and asked my mom what she remembers about the trip. It was late in February 1954 and the North Atlantic was rough. The men and women were separated at night. Her primary recollection is of being sea-sick. She was berthed in a dorm with 3 other women and a small baby.  All 4 adults experienced bouts of sickness, paper bags were at hand everywhere. The stewards tried to stay cheerful but some days even the word "food" would start stomachs roiling and mutinous epithets from the passengers. Upon further reflection she said there were also good days when she and Jack strolled the deck under the big roof and watched the sea slip by. Then they would head over to the big dinning hall for a warm meal. "The food was good." "There was dancing every night, with a live band."

To put things into context we need to understand that the Dutch economy was in the basement and there was no work to be had for either of them in 1954. The government encouraged emigration and paid for most of the fare. Being a young women, a teenager during the Nazi occupation, she was understandably not confident with the idea of leaving her familiar Maastricht for parts unknown. Australia seemed "too far away" and so Canada it was. In other reminiscences there was some debate between Canada and the USA. They only had impressions from afar. No internet to look up job markets, cost of living etc. While most of Holland was liberated by Canadians in 1945, Maastricht was liberated by Americans in 1944. Lilian had formed a not altogether positive notion of their character when they rolled in. 

Feeling nervous about an uncertain future and missing her mother did not put Lilian in a good place to start so she tends to over-emphasize the negative and forget the positive. "Ship personnel were rude." probably means someone lost patience in what must have been a trying situation. "Someone in Halifax called me a DP and railed against me for taking Canadian jobs." Yea that sounds familiar. I guess some things never change. It's just so sad that these little things blow up in her memory. "Do you have any of those old menus or the passenger list mom?" "No, I want to forget that time.", she said.

They had secured guarantors, a couple from Maastricht who had emigrated earlier to Toronto. They lived with 3 different families in Toronto before striking out for Hamilton in 1956. What always fascinates me are some of the original shipping crates we still have and the contents. Furniture, china and glasses which all survived the trip intact and still hold tea and wine today. The stevedores in Halifax were gentle giants!

Lilian never saw her dad again. He passed away in 1956 but her mother, my Oma and her youngest son Henry travelled to Canada on the Groote Beer's sister ship the Waterman in 1956. My dad's brother and his wife also came to Canada on the Groote Beer in 1956. 

Garden Gate Pergola

 

We put up a new fence around our property this summer and I thought the main gate deserved a little more than your basic gate kit from the local hardware supplier. I fudged around with pencil and paper for a while but decided I wanted a more wholesome look at what I was trying to build before I started cutting.

The old bush in this corner never flowered and was just a pain to trim 4 times a year. I thought about roses and what a climbing rose would need to be happy. Plenty of sunshine. Check. A good supply of water. Check (irrigation system nearby). Something to climb. A pergola built around the gate! I looked at designs online and around the neighborhood and started playing in Google Sketchup. By modelling in 3D I could look at my design from different angles as well as getting dimensions for cutting.

The 2x8s are 6 feet long cut out of two 12 footers. The 2x6 cross pieces are 3'8" long cut out of three 8 footers. The diagram below shows other dimensions used. The S curves were created by bending a slim piece of plastic around 3 finishing nails on a 1/8" piece of plywood to make a template. I cut 3/8" deep dados where the cross pieces meet the 2x8 main beams to help seat them. Since there are 24 dados I clamped the 6 cross pieces together, marked the dado positions and used a router set to 3/8" depth to cut away material. The cross pieces are held in place with 31/2" screws countersunk through from the top. The countersink holes are covered with buttons to keep the rain out. All the cut edges are treated with a matching (brown) stain made for this type of pressure-treated lumber.

Dual DN enclosed trailer part 1

My cousin Lester Druiven and I build and sail DN ice boats for fun and the odd race.

A couple of years ago we purchased a 15 ft. 1000 lb single axle boat trailer with no bunks or winch. The long tongue makes for some interesting times backing up the trailer but made it easy to strap on our DN Ice Boats. I sewed a couple of bags out of heavy cloth to help protect the hulls from stones on the road. With an added cross brace and some kayak brackets we were able to trail our boats cross country. It would take us some time to strap everything on and the hulls still sustained damage from stones and from rubbing against other parts.

We always planned to make an enclosed trailer that could house everything, 2 hulls, 2 masts, 2 runners, skates, sails and booms, tools and clothes in a "ready to go" state. The method seen above to clamp the cross member to the tongue worked well. Les welded up a 4 ft by 8 ft frame out of 2 inch square steel and we clamped that onto the tongue by welding 5 1/2 inch x 5 inch plates to the frame using a second set of plates and 1/4 20 bolts. We brought out the marker lights and skinned it over giving us a 4 by 13 foot base.

The base is 3/4 brown plywood and the sides are 3/4 sanded plywood, 2 feet high. We used 2x2 offset from the edge to attached the sides. Everything is bolted down with plenty of 1/4 20 bolts and nyloc nuts. Joints are glued and screwed with 2x2 and 2x4 reinforcing backing.

Next time I will discuss the construction of a lid. The ribs are done and final assembly of the lid will start soon. You can see a quick mock-up below.

The trailer will look like and open like a giant coffin. The 6 inch pipe will project forward and aft to house the 16 ft masts. I thought it might be best to make the 2 bottom outside stringers out of solid 2x2. It turns out you can't buy a 16 ft 2x2 so I bought a 16 foot 2x4 and split it in two. It was amazing to see a straight 2x4 go into a table saw and watch the 2 twisted and warped 2x2s emerge!

Shooting an eclipse

I'm getting ready for the eclipse on August 21. I've used pinhole cameras made out of cardboard boxes with foil pinholes in the past. It is a good safe way to view and even photograph an eclipse without looking directly at the sun. This time around I decided I would like to try for some direct images. I have a Nikon D90 and a 70-300 lens so I started looking into how to make photos of the sun. I discovered this video on Youtube which shows how to manufacture your own lens filter. I purchased a small sheet of Black Polymer Filter and came up with the rig shown below.

The Polymer sheet is sandwiched between 2 cardboard rings and held in the end of the lens hood by friction.

The next problem I faced the first time I pointed the camera at the sun was "How do I aim the camera?" The sun is almost overhead which means I need to bend down awkwardly to look through the lens. I really should not be looking through a lens at the sun! I found an old flash foot guard - a little piece of plastic that slips over the contacts to protect them. I glued a small plastic L bracket to the guard and inserted a small bolt through the top of the L. I placed a small white card onto the vertical plain of the bracket as seen above. Now I can point the camera directly at the sun by reducing the bolt shadow on the card to nil.

The last problem I had was "How can I quickly look at the shots to judge exposure?" Even in the shade on a sunny day the LCD on the back of the D90 is very difficult to see and I don't really want to move the camera just to look at the images. It turns out Nikon has a neat piece of software called Camera Control Pro 2 that lets me work the shutter and settings from a laptop. The laptop screen is also difficult to see but I can sit in front of the laptop with a sheet over my head and the laptop. It looks old school but it works.

It was cloudy today but I had a clear sky for 15 minutes and after several test exposures I figured I was getting somewhere.

Shot with a Nikon D90, Sigma 70-300 F4, 2 seconds at F32.

Seeing the Venus Transit for myself.

Seeing beautiful pictures of the Venus transit Tuesday June 5 2012 is as easy as a couple of mouse clicks but I wanted to see it for myself. I've spied on a few solar eclipses through pin hole back of a box set ups over the years but I did not have time to fashion one on this day. Of course looking directly at the sun is suicide on your eyes. One web site suggested using a binocular lens to focus an image of the sun on a white surface and with only a half an hour before the sun started to dip below neighbourhood trees I managed to focus a wiggly image of the sun on our front door. I needed to set the binoculars onto something solid so I improvised a chair, shoe and the dish towel I was using to dry dishes at the time into a tripod. I was so pleased to see that tiny black dot on the suns white disk I think I shouted!

Here's the set up.

Here's the scale.

And here's what I saw.

Thank you Sandra for taking these pictures.

I guess you can tell I get excited about science! Look up the history of this event and you will see why. 

Iceboating on Hamilton Harbour

Me and Rachel, Sarah, Lester and Dorothea (& Sandi taking the picture) out on Hamilton Harbour today sailing Lester's DN Iceboat. "Wait a minute Dad - that boat's going faster than the wind!" That's right - over 5 times faster! 11 KPH winds today. You do the math.

Petroglyphs in Temagami

Last week my daughter Rachel and I headed up to Temagami for a few days of wilderness canoe camping. We are not especially keen on fishing (which is supposed to be quite good) or wildlife (plenty of beaver, loons, ducks) or geology (mountainous shield, upthrusts and cliffs) but we did hope to find some of the petroglyphs that are mentioned from time to time in ads and blogs about the region. In a survey of writing about the region 2 locations are mentioned. One is near the "drop" from Diamond Lake into Lady Evelyn Lake. We reached this location after battling into 40km headwinds for 2 days. The second is on an Island in Wakimika Lake. This location was unreachable to us as we had become too tired to continue on into these headwinds. The lakes are large enough that the swell combined with the wind to make paddling unpleasant. In Diamond Lake we had to examine several rock faces because no one can say exactly where the rock paintings can be found. On some faces we found evidence of recent chiseling. Portions of the rock face were removed or destroyed (stolen? inter-tribal in fighting? were cited as possible causes). We saw many shadows, cracks and Lichen patterns that could all be mistaken for petroglyphs but no actual painting was found. We supposed that if one was shown precisely where to look, perhaps some faint shadows of former markings do exist. Without exact GPS coordinates or similarly accurately measured instructions it does not seem possible to find anything. The region is beautiful, the camp sites were very nice, the insects were not bad at all, the water is warm, except for the wind (which accelerates between cliffs and hills) the weather was very nice so all in all Temagami offers some great canoeing/camping. We hope that future Temagami advertising and literature excludes mention of petroglyphs because these are just too hard to find. If one is attracted to the region solely for this purpose then disappointment will be the result. Oh! And these are big lakes and big hills. Be prepared for the wind and steep portages. ADENDUM: Oct 3 2010 I spent some time talking with a former Temagami guide today. This person spent 2 months paddling the Lakes and rivers in the region and never saw a Petroglyph!