Tag Archives: friends of Gatineau Park

On February 14, 2010 The Friends of Gatineau Park held a Heritage Day event at which Canadian Ski Museum Director Arnold Midgley and Gatineau Park Ski Patroller Julien Raby gave talks on some of the history of skiing in Gatineau Park.

The event went on for some time (and YouTube limits video uploads to 10 minutes) so what you see below are some of the parts of that event.

Here Arnold Midgley talks about how skiing first came to Ottawa. (apologies for the quality of the video – the camera was unmanned)

Here he goes on to talk about when skiing moved to Gatineau Park.

Mr. Midgley presented a series of photos and if we can get that series I’ll post it here too.

Following the photos Mr. Midgley answered questions from the audience gathered at 33 Scott (the Gatineau Park Visitor Centre). The follwing two videos are those Q&A sessions.

Julien Raby’s presentation was on the history of cross country ski patrolling in Gatineau Park. He presented in French. Videos covering his talk are still in preparation.

The following is a transcript of Mr. Midgley’s talk:

Arnold Midgley: I thought it would make a little sense to give context if I gave you just a little bit of a capsule summary of the history of the Ottawa Ski Club, and how they came to be in the Gatineau Park . People often got confused. They say, “The Ottawa Ski Club? Where do you ski in Ottawa?” People did ski in Ottawa. The early Norwegian settlers in this country, many of them came in the late 1800′s for the mining work in the north, particularly, and various centers across Canada.

Those who were in the Ottawa area brought their love of skiing with them. The Norwegians are fanatical about their love of skiing. They’re outdoors, in the open air as much as they can through the winter. They brought that love of skiing with them.

Some of the Norwegians who were particularly keen on one of the two aspects, that they thought of as sking.  Jumping and cross country were the two principle means of participating in skiing at that time. A group of the jumpers got together in 1910 and formed the Ottawa Ski Club in Rockcliffe Park, just around the corner from the Governor General’s. They built a little ski jump that they had fun on, and then they built a bigger one, and then they built a bigger one, and eventually they built big enough, with a tower structure on one side of the road. They would jump over the road, down the riverbank, land on the riverbank, and along the ice of the river. You’ll see that in some of the slides.

The first president of the Ottawa Ski Club was Sigurd Lockeberg, that many of you will remember for being in the park for some time. He was at Camp Fortune on a regular basis, until he died. He was the first president. They started with the ski jump in Rockcliffe Park. It got bigger and bigger. The big advantage of Rockcliffe Park was that you could get there on a public transport. You could get there on a streetcar.

People would go to Rockcliffe Park, and there was a circuit of jumpers for demonstration on weekends. They’d be one weekend in Toronto, one at the Three Rivers, one in Ottawa, one at Quebec City, and so on. They made this tour, and put on this demonstration of jumping. People would come, and many thousands to watch these daredevils jump these incredible distances.

At that time, the style of jumping was lots of arm waving, flapping, and it was like jumping down an elevator shaft. You jumped as high as you could, and then you fell until you landed down the hill. It was quite different than what you see on the Olympics today.

But, the big advantage was you could get there on public transport. Many people not only went to watch the jumping, but they learned to ski amongst the pine trees…they were little then… on the slopes at Rockcliffe Park. It was a very popular place to ski. My mother told me that she learned to ski, a little bit. She hated having her feet frozen all the time and she gave it up. It was a good thing.

I was fortunate my older brother, David, started skiing. He and his friends introduced me to skiing. I learned to ski on a golf course in the west end of Ottawa that isn’t there anymore, and quickly graduated to coming up to Camp Fortune. Again, by public transport. I could get a streetcar downtown to catch a bus, and then the bus would take me up to Lemay’s on the Kingsmere Road, or the Hull City bus would take me up to the Dunlop parking lot on Meach Lake Road, and we could ski in to Fortune from there.

The early days, though there was a bit of a hiatus in the Ottawa Ski Club operation in World War I. But after World War I, it gained popularity again. The people who were active at that time were more interested in cross country than they were ski jumping. Although the jump continued for quite a few more years, the center of operation of the ski club gradually moved up to Gatineau Park.

The new president of the Ski Club at that time was called Charles Mortureux. He was highly influential. He was a very keen canoeist in the summer and a very keen outdoors skier in the winter and he was obviously a good salesman because he interested a lot of people in coming with him on tours of Gatineau Park.

He made an arrangement with a farmer called Dunlop who, in by Chalet des Erables there’s a little flat area in there which was a meadow, it was his farm. He made an arrangement with Dunlop who used that space for the benefit of skiers who had come up from Ottawa. In the early days they would come mainly by train and they would come mainly to get off the train and ski cross country, across the fields to Camp Fortune, cook their lunch and ski home. That was a day’s outing. As they got better at cross country to get there they had more time at Camp Fortune and started to develop the trail network that we know now that’s so fantastic.

Charles Mortureux was a keen promoter of this. He bought a woodcutter’s shack that was on the top of what we know as Mort’s hill and he built a cabin, a beautiful cabin. It unfortunately suffered the fate of winter buildings in remote areas. It burned down sometime in the ’60s. I don’t remember the date. ’66? Thank you.

There was another enterprising farmer named Murphy who had a farm up in the Kingsmere road. He would bring a sleigh down to Chelsea station. And those who didn’t want to make the cross‑country trek he would haul people in his sleigh up the Kingsmere road and they would go out in the property behind Eddie Quipp’s place, somewhere in there where there was some open ground, and they would go up and down the trails and of course climb into Fortune.

The Canadian Amateur Ski Association was formed in 1921. That’s the organizing committee, the organizing body for the sport of skiing in Canada. It was organized in 1921 mainly for people from this area. Mort amongst them ‑‑ Charles Mortureaux ‑‑ better known by the name Mort.

Touring was very popular, of course, as the trail systems grew the touring was popular and competitions began. Always young men particularly would challenge each other to see who was fastest. Quickly the competition circuit grew as well. There was a, a group was formed in the ’30s, late ’20s and early ’30s called the Night Riders. And it was a group of young men, mostly late high school, early university age and it was organized by a fellow named Joe Morin. Who was the right hand man in the organization of the ski club. They were engaged to maintain the trails, cut the trails, maintain the bridges and so on.

They basically kept the ski club facilities alive for many years. Gradually that, later on John Clifford was a Night Rider. John and his brother Harvey were both members of Night Riders under Bill Irving for many years if you remember. They were members of this volunteer team and there was quite camaraderie there. When John started building rope tows, some of the Night Riders were attracted to the Alpine aspects of skiing and more and more of the Night Riders became the maintainers of the hills and the lifts, rather than the trails.

A group in the ski club who were much more keen on the trail skiing organized themselves as the Trail Riders and first they had a bunk house in upper half of Lockeberg Lodge. Later they built the Rider’s Roost which is over behind the Chalet des Erables.

One of the other popular spots to ski during the day was Dome Hill, again accessible by public transport. You can take a streetcar to Wrightville and ski across a mile or two across the field. There was a story that I think that Julin was going to talk about… there was a young man who was feeling daring and he waited, hung around at the end of the day at Dome Hill, until everybody had gone so he can go off and have a run all by himself. He zoomed down the hill, he crashed and broke his leg. He was there overnight.

That was a start of another part of the story of skiing in the park right there that you’ll hear about later. The same group cut a trail basically on King Mountain for downhill races. I remember my first big downhill was on that track. We would climb up to pack the trail and then race our way down. That’s how you learn the course by climbing it.

The lodges were all built by volunteers, members of the club. It really was a club in the sense the members were actively operating it. There were many activities besides just the basic skiing, there was square dances and parties and celebrations and all kinds of things going on.

But the lodges themselves were physically built by the membership. First there was a small lodge where the Chalet des Erables is now. And then it was added to, and added to, burned down. They built a bigger one. It gradually was used for many years and it gradually was used for many years and burned down, too. The one that’s there now is the one that replaced it.

The lodges were recyclable to a great extent. Whenever the need for a lodge was low, and there was a need for a lodge somewhere else, they would physically disassemble the lodge here, take the material over there and build another one. So there was no wastage of materials. Some of those lodges have been recycled a few times. Pink’s Lake Lodge went through several versions over the years.

Eventually it was disassembled, taken to Fortune where it became Cassel Lodge at the foot of Pineau Hill, Art Pineau was keen on teaching youngsters to ski. He used to have classes on the lower slopes of what’s now Pineau Hill.

Sigurd Lockeberg continued his jumping ways and was instrumental in creating a series of jumps at Camp Fortune, including the 60‑meter hill where we had many good competitions under the auspices, or direction I should say, of my father‑in‑law, Fred Morris, where he was very active in the ski jumping program for many years. He kept the ski jumping program for many years. He kept that activity going for many years.

The Governor General Lord Alexander loved to ski, so I was a frequent visitor at Camp Fortune. One of the more recent lodges built under the ski club regime was Alexander’s club. That was built on the sunny side of the Fortune Valley.

Eventually a road was built in from Dunlop’s and people started to drive right to the area, and that era of a volunteer club, creating their own public benefits, gradually subsided and it became a commercial operation. Now of course, there’s been a huge rebirth in skiing, cross‑country skiing on the wonderful trails system we have in this area. It’s a tremendous benefit that we have so close to the natural habitat. It allows us to get out and enjoy the outdoors, as Mort than others visualized it. It’s wonderful to see these things come full circle.