Setting the Mark 1896-2021: Kingston Yacht Club at 125

By Kingston Yacht Club

Kingston Yacht Club (KYC) is located in the historic city of Kingston, Ontario, Canada, on Lake Ontario, where the first sailing vessels on the Great Lakes were built in the 1670s. The Club is particularly noted for the friendliness of its members, and has entertained several visitors from the British Royal Family including Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, winning Sail Canada's "Best Small Club in Canada" honours in 2016, 120 years after its founding. Over its lively and interesting 125-year history, the Club has surmounted fire and financial crises to contribute immensely to the development of the sport of sailing in Canada and internationally, creating and hosting the world's largest freshwater sailing regatta, CORK, and in 1976 KYC became the only club in Canada to have hosted a summer Olympic Sailing event. This book relates the entertaining history of the Club in a light-hearted, readable style, profusely illustrated with colour and black and white images.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 6, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664172166

Book preview

Copyright© 2021 by Kingston Yacht Club. 803404

Cover Photograph of Dani Boyd and Erin Rafuse

courtesy of Luka Bartulovic

Chart of Kingston Harbour by Permission of Canadian

Hydrographic Services. Not for navigation purposes.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may

be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by

any means, electronic or mechanical, including

photocopying, recording, or by any information

storage and retrieval system, without permission in

writing from the copyright owner.

Xlibris

844-714-8691

www.Xlibris.com

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021913490

Rev. date: 06/24/2021

Contents

Foreword

In The Beginning — Early Yachting To 1896

KYC’s First Ten Years

KYC 1906–1918

KYC In The Twenties: 1919–1929

KYC In The Thirties

The War Years: 1939–1945

Postwar: 1946–1959

The 1960S

The Canadian Olympic-Training Regatta At Kingston (CORK)

The Olympics

Post-Olympics, 1977–1986

1986–1999: A Century And Beyond

KYC In The Twenty-First Century: 2000–2021

Dedicated to all KYC members—past, present, and future.

Foreword

Editorial Board, Setting the Mark, 1896–2021: Kingston Yacht Club at 125

We stand on the shoulders of giants at the Kingston Yacht Club, and the Editorial Board wishes to acknowledge its debt and gratitude for the hard work of previous authors and editors, noted Kingston historian Margaret Angus, Maureen Garvey and Katherine Leverette (Crothers), whose unpublished history of the club at its centennial paved the way for this 125th anniversary edition. It has been a labour of love for all of us, and we hope that many future club members will be able to enjoy reading the story as much as we have enjoyed putting it together. This small club has made exceptional contributions to the world of sailing, consistently hitting above its weight class in innovating and leading the sport. It continues to uphold a deep and ancient maritime heritage in Kingston, which, standing as the club does on the traditional lands of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinabek peoples, encompasses pre-Columbian Indigenous history. The French regime left its mark here next, building and sailing the first sailing vessels on the Great Lakes in the late 1670s, followed by the British colonial times, which saw the construction of HMS St. Lawrence, the largest sailing warship ever launched on the Great Lakes during the War of 1812. A thriving commercial maritime industry continued to be at the centre of the city’s history through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, perhaps reaching its peak in the contribution of twelve doughty little corvette antisubmarine warships and crews to the Battle of the Atlantic and the defeat of Nazism in World War II. To this day, Kingston continues as a centre of marine innovation, with the fast aluminum workboats built here and sold internationally by Metalcraft Marine. KYC also continues that tradition, contributing both world-level competitive sailors and internationally renowned, award-winning regatta management while also winning prizes for its members’ very friendly and welcoming spirit. The Editorial Board sincerely hopes that its efforts measure up to that standard as well. It was a very difficult job to select the best of all the photographs available.

David More, Editor-in-Chief: KYC’s Junior Squadron instilled in Dave a love of sailing in the early 1960s that never left him. It inspired him to build and own half a dozen boats, including constructing a Roberts 31 yawl from scratch, and to volunteer on the board of KYC and CORK for years, earning him a Canada 125 Committee Award for supporting women’s sailing in 1992. During and after a career in medical laboratories, he published the award-winning four-volume Smithyman Saga, historical fiction rooted in the Kingston region. He recently received his PhD in Canadian colonial history from Queen’s University.

Figure%201a.jpg

Past Commodore Ross Cameron: Ross Cameron is a retired elementary school principal who has been sailing for seventy years, almost all of it competitively. He grew up on Toronto Island and attended the RCYC junior sailing program. He has been honoured many times at the local, provincial, and national levels, including the Rolex Canadian Sailor-of-the-Year Award. He became involved at the KYC board level in the early eighties and has continued that commitment for most of the last four decades. In 2018, Ross and Dave More recognized that the 125th anniversary was an irreplaceable opportunity to tell the club’s story.

Figure%201b.jpg

Past Commodore Megaera Fitzpatrick: Megaera’s grandfather, Hudson Stowe, raced eight-metre yachts at RCYC (coincidentally, with KYC Past Commodore Ross Cameron), and he bought her first sailboat when she was ten, which she sailed on Sydenham Lake. She attended KYC for a time and fondly remembers Gord Crothers as her skipper. He was so proficient, he never dumped, so she felt slightly robbed of the experience. Life moved on, and sailing was abandoned until she turned twenty-seven and returned to the club to reconnect and start racing. She raced with many different people: Bob Clark on his Mega 30; Rick Sellens on his Tanzer 26, Hughes 35, and Ultimate 20; Neil Hammond on his Shark, and numerous others occasionally. She eventually acquired her own Shark and received the Most Improved Skipper award one season. She has been involved on the board and with many club activities over the years, including organizing and chairing events, including world championships.

Figure%201c.jpg

Past Commodore Ralph Shaw: Ralph Shaw’s earliest memories are of KYC, which came when he was as a two-year old living with his mother in a white limestone house on Maitland Street while his father was overseas during the Korean War (1950–1953). A sailor since his teens, he has been a boat owner and avid racer since his early twenties. Along with partner Mary Westerland, Ralph currently owns Spindrift Q4, a beautiful C&C trawler, and they are active members of KYC cruising community. From the early 1990s and throughout the 2000s, Ralph served on the KYC Board of Directors, becoming commodore in 2006/2007. He continues to volunteer on several KYC committees and takes great joy in leaning on the bar at KYC and starting conversations with newer members with Well, in my day . . .

Figure%201d.jpg

Former Rear Commodore Suzanne Hamilton: Suzanne was born on the shores of Kingston Harbour and has always considered it home despite living away for a number of years. She is a proud graduate of both KYC junior sailing and the Adult Learn to Sail program, which reintroduced her to the club and sailing when she returned to Kingston. Her love of sailing and the water is deep despite harrowing experiences sailing with her mother as a young child in gale-force winds. Suzanne finally bought her very own sailboat in her seventieth year—a Laser!

Figure%201e.jpg

Katherine (Crothers) Leverette: When Kath was barely three, her mother warned her that if she didn’t stop running madly about on the KYC dock without her life jacket, she’d be sure to stub her toe and fall in. That was the day she learned to swim. For Kath, the Kingston Yacht Club is a multi-family affair, with four generations of Crothers kids who have learned to mess about in boats, teach junior sailors, race and cruise in yachts big and small, and discover a healthy respect for the water. Celebrating 125 years of the club, this colourful history book and the stories it offers bring everything full circle. Kath is grateful for the opportunity to contribute and hopes you’ll enjoy discovering the valued richness of KYC’s contribution to the world of sailing.

Figure1f.jpg

Cathi Corbett: Cathi Corbett is a retired librarian who recently moved to Kingston. She had been an out-of-town member of KYC for a number of years. Although not an active sailor herself, many of her relatives were and are. The most notable is her grandfather, Leroy Grant or Leary, the name by which many knew him. One of the first keelboat owners at KYC, he owned three boats, Four Winds and Tramp Royal, the latter of which was designed, built, and launched here in Kingston in 1939. Leroy won many sailing races on both boats on the Great Lakes, including the Freeman Cup in July 1945. The timing was excellent as the cup was used as a font for champagne at his daughter Bea’s wedding reception that year! Her mother Bea’s recollections of life at the club are highlights of the book. Cathi hopes you will enjoy the stories about Leary and her other family members in the book.

Figure%202%20QE%20Letter.jpgFigure%202aPM.jpgFigure%202bFord.jpgFigure%203%20MP%20letter.jpgFigure%203a.jpgFigure%204%20Mayor%20letter.jpg

Figure 4: Letter from the mayor of Kingston.

This wonderful compilation of the stories, challenges and accomplishments that defined our club’s first 125 years begs the question, What does our future hold? My hope is that KYC will remain a place to make good friends, laugh, enjoy a meal and/or a refreshing swim, a place for boats of all sizes and types and a place where one can break away from life in the city to enjoy a romping broad reach towards Garden Island, or turn east north east for a weekend run down the river.

KYC was the talk of the town and on the international stage leading up to, during and for many years after the 1976 Sailing Olympics. Our club remains at the leading edge of the sport having many of our Junior Squadron graduates experience success in competitive sailing, including most recently, Ali Ten Hove, who has qualified to represent Canada at the Tokyo Olympic Games in the Women’s 49er FX class.

The members, Board, and managers of KYC have, over the last 4 months, re-examined our governance, administration, operations, maintenance, and the condition of KYC’s facilities. Over the last four years we have endured two years of floodwaters and a global pandemic that put a strain on our services, programs and finances. We know we are faced with a very challenging short-term future while we up-grade our facilities but we remain very optimistic for the future. This year is the time to celebrate our 125th Anniversary, but it is also a critical time for the club to set a course for many more years of success. I am struck by the nature of the challenges we face, but am reassured as we respond with improved financial management, reduced cost of operations and right sizing our club working towards what can reasonably be achieved.

Over the next two years we will continue to focus on the Club’s long-term Master Plan by finding the determination, skills, energy and funds to renew ourselves. We are working under three guiding principles; Right-sizing the Club, Member Fees for Member Services, and Sustainability. Following these themes, we will re-define how KYC operates and create an optimistic future for both the sport and the Club.

I am very honoured to be part of the terrific leadership team stepping up to help KYC during this time of change. I will be even more proud every time I hear someone say, KYC, that is where I learned to sail.

signature.psd

Respectfully, Robert Crothers, Commodore

IN THE BEGINNING — EARLY

YACHTING TO 1896

There was a time when every year saw a regatta in these waters . . . the lovers of the

spoil may yet witness the triumph of Kingston against the world.

— Kingston Daily News, 1857

Recreational sailing in Kingston stretches back to early days in Kingston. Since the 1790s, on any fine summer afternoon, the harbour has been dotted with sloops, canoes, or gaff-rigged catboats tacking around the head of Garden Island and running for Point Frederick or the Shoal Tower. During and following the War of 1812, the naval squadron based in Kingston held rowing and sailing competitions among the ships’ crews. Rowing has not been active at the club for many years but in 2021 a new kind of rowing will usher in a renewal of the sport at KYC. By the 1830s, avid sailors had made and continued to make attempts to establish sailing clubs, but none lasted long, though Kingston sailors always did well at other racing venues. Yachtsmen joined forces to organize regattas (sometimes sponsored by groups such as St. George’s Society), carried off their honours, and dispersed. Yacht owners were usually leading citizens, so naturally enough, these regattas were regularly reported in the British Whig and Daily News. It was a freewheeling time of few regulations, and occasionally, the phrase a melancholy occurrence had to be used in the Whig to describe an incident concerning pleasure yachts instead of the shockingly frequent commercial shipping tragedies.

Figure%205%20regatta.jpg

Figure 5: Late 1800s regatta, Kingston Harbour (KYC Archives).

In the winter months of the late 1800s, intrepid ice yachters set up operations and established the Kingston Ice Yacht Club at the foot of Simcoe Street, pushing crafts with names like Snow Bird and Jack Frost out onto the ice beyond the pressure ridges. Then in 1896, sixty-one charter members of the Kingston Yacht Club founded the association that stuck—and is still going strong 125 years later. The history of the Kingston Yacht Club is part of the history of the city. The enthusiasm that generations of KYC sailors have brought to their recreation has been matched by their dedication to their community. Through their businesses and professional lives, their military and academic careers, members have left their marks. Today city streets like Dalton Avenue, John Counter Boulevard, and Leroy Grant Drive bear their names. Over the years, the club has attracted many distinguished visitors. In August 1927, the Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII) arrived at the KYC dock with an entourage of dignitaries. The lights of the Royal Yacht Britannia have illuminated the harbour, and Queen Elizabeth II and HRH the Duke of Edinburgh have signed the club’s guest book more than once. KYC’s old guard recall many non-royal VIP visitors as well, among them Governor-General Earl Bessborough, the comedian Ed Wynn, General Motors president R. E. Olds, and U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.

KYC itself became a name known to sailors across Canada and the United States through CORK, the Canadian Olympic-Training Regatta at Kingston. With experience and organizational expertise built through countless regattas, this small sailing club succeeded in developing the world’s foremost freshwater sailing regatta. In 1976, the vision, hard work, and sailing genius of the club members made KYC the only Canadian yacht club to host an Olympic sailing event. In 2016, KYC was named the Small Club of the Year by Sail Canada, the national sailing organization. Today KYC continues to partner with CORK at the Portsmouth Harbour site. KYC members represent Canada in national and international sailing competitions. From spring launch to autumn haul-out—with weeknight competitions, cruising races, spills and thrills in junior sailing, Friday-night TGIFs, interesting guest speakers in the fall and winter, and the commodore’s cocktail party—KYC offers a full calendar of events for sailing and social members, and what the 2021 KYC Board of Directors hold for the future and the original founders wanted in 1896 remains the same: to encourage the building and sailing of yachts, canoes, and motorboats, rowing, canoeing, and all aquatic and other sports. Through KYC, a love of sailing has passed from generation to generation, providing each new crop of sailors with knowledge of the sport and a healthy respect for the water. KYC’s anniversary in 2021 is a celebration of 125 years of adventure and competition on the water. It is also a recognition of the dedication and enthusiasm of hundreds of individuals for whom sailing has been not only a joy but also a challenge.

Kingston’s overall sailing heritage is ancient and significant. The French established Fort Frontenac at the site as a fur trading post in 1673, and five years later, the first European sailing vessels on the Great Lakes were constructed there by Sieur de La Salle. After the American Revolutionary War, the location was chosen in 1783 for its value as a port, and from the city’s British beginnings, its business and recreation continued to be oriented to the water. For almost three hundred years (until the opening of the vast Saint Lawrence Seaway system diverted shipping traffic away from Kingston in 1959), Kingston’s harbour and its position at the junction of the Saint Lawrence and the Great Lakes continued to be its greatest economic assets.

During the War of 1812, control of the lakes was of vital military importance. The Royal Navy took over the transport and defence responsibilities of the British Provincial Marine, establishing the main naval station on the lakes at Kingston—the largest west of Halifax. When the war was over, carpenters and shipwrights who had come to the navy dockyard to build warships stayed on, building merchant vessels and pleasure craft. One local historian has said that Kingston yachting was founded on the idle crews of British ships laid up here after the Rush–Bagot Treaty of 1817. Many navy and army officers, along with the city’s more prosperous professional men and merchants, were keen yachtsmen. Those who took part in early regattas were often associated with sailing as their livelihood. The Gildersleeves were boat builders and shippers. Kingston Gildersleeve patriarch Henry had been a shipwright helping to build the Frontenac, the first Canadian steamship on the Great Lakes in 1816, and went on to become a major shipbuilder in Kingston. William and Samuel Chambers worked at the naval dockyard. Thomas and Patrick Pidgeon were ship carpenters. James Wilson, the first manager of the waterworks, became superintendent of the dry dock. The first regattas included both sailing and rowing competitions. A memorable one took place in June 1837, when residents of Barriefield, Point Henry, and Point Frederick got together to offer a new wherry built by James Knapp as a prize in a skiff-rowing race. The Long (now Wolfe) Islanders had held the championship of the bay in all rowing contests for years, but that year, a young tailor from Barriefield by the name of Medley won in a Knapp-built boat. Organized sailing races for prizes took place usually once a year, often as part of the entertainment for the agricultural exhibition in mid-September. None but yachts or boats solely used for pleasure were allowed in the first three classes, and all boats were to be bona fide British built. Challenges were issued and taken in matches between two boats, with the rest of the fleet following as spectators.

Figure%205a%20Gildersleeve%20House.jpg

Figure 5a: Gildersleeve House, built 1825: owned by Gildersleeve family until 1909 (Ralph Shaw KYC Archive)

One such match in 1849 between the Sans Souci and the Golden Arrow ended in a tragic accident. Walter Macnee and Alexander McLeod drowned when James Wilson’s Rough and Ready collided with the island steam ferry. The worst tragedy in Kingston yachting happened two years later in August 1851, when Mr. B. Jenkins, a chandler and sailmaker, took a party of thirty-five out on his new forty-ton yacht, Jeannette. They stopped for a picnic at the foot of Wolfe Island and were sailing on to Clayton when a squall struck. The Jeannette was carrying an enormous spread of sail, and her canvas pulled her down; she sank in three minutes. Nineteen drowned, fourteen of them young girls and women. Forty-four years later, on the eve of the creation of KYC, some yachtsmen felt that the city had not yet fully recovered from that horrific blow.

The Kingston Yacht Club of today is the successor to a long series of regatta committees and short-lived sailing clubs. The City of Kingston Yacht Club announced in the Kingston Daily News in 1851 that a silver tea set would be first prize in a race on September 20. Sheriff Thomas Corbett was the club’s president; it dissolved without leaving any records. Every summer saw some organized yachting activity, and Kingston sailors competed in outside regattas as well. A Kingston yacht, the Jenny Lind, won races at Toronto in 1852 and 1856. In September 1857, the Daily News reported that the Belle of Kingston had come in second at Cape Vincent. The reporter went on to say, There was a time when every year saw a regatta in these waters . . . the lovers of the sport may yet witness the triumph of Kingston against the world, as they did last year. At all events, it would be nothing but fair to the members of RCYC at Toronto to give them a chance to win back the tin they lost last year. The writer reported the organization of the Cataraqui Yacht Club at Kingston, which would adopt the rules and the regulations of the Royal Canadian Yacht Club. Officers elected were Commodore O. S. Gildersleeve (son of Henry and mayor of Kingston in 1855–1856 and 1861–1862), Vice Commodore Thomas A. Corbett, Capt. Granville Moyle, RN, Treas. W. F. Grassett, and Sec. Alex S. Kirkpatrick. Committee members included Burrowes (Sans Souci), A. Phillips (Odd Fellow), and Osborne (Golden Arrow). That club didn’t last long either. There seems to have been a hiatus of a few years, for in 1859, the Daily News editor complained again of the lack of yachting spirit.

On August 24, 1865, a group met to organize a regatta on September 15. Charles Gildersleeve (also mayor of Kingston in 1879)—who had succeeded his late brother, O. S. Gildersleeve, in the family shipping business—was commodore of the day. The yachts Kingston, Belle, John A. Macdonald, and Garibaldi raced with the schooner Ripple from Brockville. Two tugs and the steamer Bay of Quinte, with spectators and the band of the Royal Canadian Regiment aboard, steamed over the course. A regatta ball held at the city hall the night before, with dancing until 4:00 a.m. (a tradition of pre-regatta festivities continues to the present day) may have contributed to a charge that races were not properly conducted or timed. Class A and Class 3 races were both disputed and had to be rerun the next day, but an editor commented about a similar regatta a few years later, Bearing in mind the haste with which the regatta was planned and got up, it can fairly lay claim to having been a very successful affair.

Figure%206-Notice%20of%20Regatta.jpg

Figure 6: Regatta notice, 1865.

Figure%207-%20Ticket.jpg

Figure 7: Ticket to the ball.

Kingston lost some keen competitors with the final departure of British troops from the garrison in 1870, but annual regattas continued. The Kingston Yacht Club of this decade seems to have been a committee who responded year after year to the call to arrange a regatta during the fall fair. Sailors came from around Lake Ontario, and there was a good list of local entries. In 1886, the vice president of the Lake Yacht Racing Association (LYRA) is identified as a [Colonel] Campbell of the Kingston Yacht Club. In 1887, John Bell Carruthers, also of the Kingston Yacht Club, became the LYRA president. In LYRA’s 1888 circuit regatta, Kingston was the first port, and it was a memorable meet. Starting on July 13, it went from Kingston to Belleville and then Oswego, Rochester, and Hamilton, finishing in Toronto on July 31, but heavy weather prevented the Oswego fleet from reaching this side of the lake, and Verve of Toronto was dismasted on her way and drifted for three nights before being picked up. In the Kingston leg, local entry Garfield lost her bowsprit, and Cygnet of Toronto and Gerda of Kingston collided. One of the buoys dragged anchor and drifted ashore, and the race had to be re-sailed.

Figure7a1.jpg

Figure 7a1: Mayor John Counter, (Ralph Shaw)

This ephemeral KYC too seems to have quickly faded. The Daily Whig noted that same year that only George Offord, James Wilson, and J. McKelvey remained from the active yachtsmen of a quarter century before. However, through the 1890s, the lack of a continuing club in this city of eighteen thousand didn’t deter Kingston sailors from entering competitions around Lake Ontario or building and sailing new, improved boats. In July 1894, Norma, owned by Frank and John C. Strange, won at Big Sodus Bay, New York. Norma won again over Vedette at Toronto in September, with fourteen minutes to spare. The local editor no longer complained of waning interest in the sport.

KYC’S FIRST TEN YEARS

Ronald Shaw Skinner, my stepfather, was a charter member. I remember him telling how as a young man, he and his friends

often took young ladies out for a sail when they had teas and dinners. He recalled one evening when a sudden storm came up,

soaking the red velvet seat cushions and staining the ladies’ dresses and the white flannel trousers of the lads! Posh!

— Bunny Danby

Figure%208-temeraire.jpg

Figure 8: Temeraire off Carruthers Point, ca. 1905 (KYC Archives).

Kingston had no shortage of keen sailors. The long interruption of activities over the winter and the lack of a clubhouse made it difficult to keep a yacht club going.