Bruce Ackert ('50s) Writes ...

Winter 2009

Sladds,

I have just reviewed the Camp Pathfinder web site.  I'm impressed.  And particularly so with the extent of your canoe tripping program.

A couple years ago I got a letter from Neal Hunter asking me if I was the guy that he knew at Camp Pathfinder many years ago.  I was delighted to be back in contact with him since I hadn't seen him since I made a quick visit to his fraternity house during our college years and we had lost touch.

Neal, Ron "Golden One" Trippi, who later became a priest, Jack "Ape" Van Horn, deceased, and I were junior counselors in 1953 and shared the last tent up on the hill -- Abaniki territory as I recollect and it was a long way to the Canary.  I was seventeen and had started attending Pathfinder the summer I was twelve after Chief Norton had come to our house on Chili Avenue in Rochester and had shown movies of Pathfinder.  Those were marvelous summers, which I anticipated all winter long.

That first summer I weighed about 100 lbs and when I had to carry a double duffel with canned goods on a tump line it was a little much for me.  The portage to Smoke Lake about killed me.  I must admit a counselor had to carry the duffel the last part of that portage.  I remember feeling totally embarrassed over my failing and extremely uncomfortable.  We spent a day of rest at Lake Louisa and I hooked a seven-pound Lake Trout.  I passed on the next set of trips that summer because of that first experience.  However, I found that I preferred the canoe tripping camaraderie to life in camp and so participated in the next trips that summer.  I guess I was getting conditioned.

By the next summer I had fleshed out to about 130 pounds and was eager to start the canoe trips.  Burnt Island was the first.  I remember making it to Cedar Lake and having steak at the CNR cook shack and re provisioning with supplies forwarded by rail.  Opeongo on the return.  Had a good tailwind and rigged ponchos into sails with paddle masts.

I remember taking trips with Bill Swift -- Swifty we called him.   On another trip Tom Dodd was the leader.  Jack Van Horn and I were in competition for the Tripper of the Year award, which he had won the year previous.  We were in the Otterslides and Jack and I took off with our packs in a race to the other end of the portage.  We were neck and neck when I tripped on a root on the edge of the trail and fell forward heavily with a lot of momentum but caught myself with my forearms but then the heavy pack rotated up over my head, crashed down and drove my face into the ground.  My nose was crushed on a root or a rock and my left nostril was split up to the bridge of my nose.  Tom bandaged me up and doped me up with codeine.  I don't remember too much after that except lying in the bottom of that Chestnut canoe as they paddled and carried me in the canoe over the portages back to the resort on the east side of Burnt Island Lake.  Tom arranged for me to ride along with the resort driver who was taking some guests back to civilization in a jeep.  The bumps and ruts throbbed.  I believe I was met by the camp nurse at Cache Lake and dimly remember the bright lights of the operating room but the next thing I clearly remember was awakening in the Huntsville Hospital with a new nose -- no more Roman nose which was a characteristic of my paternal side.  That was the end of tripping that summer and Jack got another paddle with his name on it nailed to the canoe in the Dining Hall.

The summer I was sixteen we all got to be Activity Assistants at a somewhat reduced rate.  My specialty was canoe tripping.  That summer I got teamed up with Swifty as one of his two underlings on his series of trips.  By then he had given me the nickname "Slugger," I guess because of my persistent and competitive spirit. That summer there was a teenager in attendance by the name of Steve (Lapey came to mind recently?), whose father was some sort of official from Samoa.  He was a wonderful guy with a cooperative, competitive spirit and a sunny disposition.  I liked him immediately from the time we were teaching the new crop the J-stroke alongside the canoe dock.

Up in the Trading Post as Swifty was doling out foods and supplies for their packs. I asked him to put Steve in my canoe that first trip.  We were always the lead canoe until one day at the start of the Opeongo portage where we had landed first and had cleared the landing for Swifty. Steve and my other camper were off down the trail and I was lashing down my paddles, Swifty told me in no uncertain terms that he was going to land first and if I didn't slow down he would take Steve away from me.  I took the threat seriously and henceforth idled the last few hundred yards to the landing to allow Swifty to land first.  I surely didn't want to lose Steve.  I wonder what life brought to him?  I understand from Neal that Bill Swift has recently passed and his son runs a canoe tripping establishment [Algonquin Outfitters].

More trips in 1953.  They all blend in now.  That summer someone suggested that after camp we should do the Mattagami River from Smooth Rock Falls to Moosonee on James Bay.  Tom Dodd approached Chief Norton and got permission to use Pathfinder equipment if we took lots of pictures and movies for his publicity purposes -- "This is what our counselors do on their time."  "Of course."  And so it came to be; Neal, Jack, Ron, Tom and I made the trip.  Neal and I were in his personally owned Red Chestnut, NH stenciled on the bow.  The others were in a Pathfinder Red Chestnut.  Since they drew more water they would bump and grind where Neal and I had floated free.  We had to stop one afternoon after they had gashed a 24-incher in their bottom canvas.  After drying for a few hours out came the wide adhesive tape and the tube of marvelous Ambroid Glue.  Makeshift repairs and we pressed on in the morning after eating mosquitoes for dinner.

Tom was an interesting character.  Dr. Dodd had a PhD in chemistry and taught at a Catholic women's college I believe in New Jersey; Saint Mary's was it?  He had some interesting stories to tell but he couldn't top Swifty's about his experiences with college girls.  I believe he was engaged to the Chief's daughter before she died unexpectedly.  Dodd never married.  Whenever we got to town he ate a quart of ice cream saying it was the perfect food.  His preference made me a life long addict.  Tom was killed just a few years after our trip while piloting a small airplane.

I Googled up Moosonee and it appears things have changed a bit since 1953.  At the end of our trip we slept in a boxcar for two nights to get out of the rain while waiting for the train back south.  A picture attached to the Google map shows a canoe carrying railroad car.  I'd never seen that before.  Guess things have really changed in the last fifty-six years.

Do add me to your alumni mailing list.


Bruce Ackert