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Cultural Musings on Chatham-Kent
THE DEATH OF THREE CHATHAM MEN IN 1894 DEVASTATED THE TOWN
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
This past August as summer was starting to fade and hints of fall began to appear, our thoughts started to focus on a project for late October that Sheila Gibbs and I had often spoken. It was to be tours of Maple Leaf and St.Anthony’s Cemetery as the cool fall twilight descended upon them .Our ghost walks and ghost bus tours had been extremely successful but we wished to do something different and possibly something that incorporated not only the mysterious but the historical significance of those that rested there.
As we roamed the cemetery contemplating possible routes, stories and interesting stones we came across a rather formidable stone, that I mentioned to Sheila, had always intrigued me. It was the stone of one Donald Malcolm Christie and the inscription simply stated that he had died “… in a boating accident on the French River in August of 1894”.
I mentioned, almost in passing, that I was never able to find much more information on the event as the copies of the Chatham newspapers from that time frame were missing from the microfilm at the Chatham Central Library.
This last comment brought a spark and a determined look to Sheila’s eyes and she immediately donned, metaphorically of course, her former research librarian’s cape and tights and vowed to leap tall buildings and, “faster than a speeding locomotive“, find out the story behind the mysterious demise of Donald Malcolm Christie.
True to her word Sheila, after many hours of hard work and some excellent sleuthing using the Windsor and London papers of the day she managed to uncover “the story behind the stone.” This weeks column owes its very existence to Sheila’s hard work!
Christie it was discovered did not go on this fateful trip on his own. He was accompanied by two other very prominent residents of Chatham. Arthur P. Northwood , a recent graduate of the University of Toronto as well as George Rispin a ticket agent employed by the Grand Trunk Railway.
The three friends had departed from Chatham on or about August 15th, 1894 and proceeded to make their way to Byng Inlet on the French River near Nipissing where they met up with another group of friends on Saturday August 18th.
Both groups camped at the outlet of the south French River. The three from Chatham had a seventeen foot canoe rigged for sailing and the next morning took the lead. When the two groups reached the mouth of the river they found the stream blocked by with logs and had to take another route. That forced them to camp one more night (Sunday night) and started out again on Monday morning but made scant progress as the head wind was extremely strong.
On Monday night ( August 20th) the two groups once again spent the night together on an island in the main French River. According to members of the other party, Rispin had not been feeling well and as a result neither group managed to get going on Tuesday until later on and did not reach a spot on the river known as Horseshoe Rapids until around noon.
Both groups had their lunch at this spot but apparently the three men from Chatham were anxious to get on their way and arrive at the main object of the trip which was the rapids at Five Mile Rapids where they planned to maneuvre their way through the treacherous rapids.
At 2:30 P.M. on Tuesday August 21st the group from Chatham consisting of Northwood, Christie and Rispin left their travelling companions. According to one member of the group that saw them leave, the three of them were in high spirits and were singing “Sailing, Sailing” as they disappeared around a point and then … “we saw no more of them”.
Next week…the conclusion of this sad tale as we speculate what happened to these three young men as they approached Five Mile Rapids and the rather bizarre events that ensued before the three made their final trip back to Chatham.
Jim and Lisa Gilbert are local, national and international award winning educators and historians.
