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HomeNewsDean Junkin Remembers His Grandfather Stan Nichols

Dean Junkin Remembers His Grandfather Stan Nichols

KAWARTHA LAKES-The experience of hiring a guide and spending the day fishing on Pigeon Lake was shared by countless visitors to Bobcaygeon in the 1940s and 1950s. These fishing guides were a huge part of local culture—both in terms of the number of locals employed, “there were 60 guides on Pigeon Lake at one time in the 1950s”—and how much people seemed to enjoy fishing. In that era, fishing was one of the primary draws and just about every community or lodge boasted about how it was home to the best fishing. Many Bobcaygeon’s guides were from either the Nichols and Kimble families.

Ernie Nichols

Stan Nichols had five younger brothers—Hort, Len, Percy Jr., Ernie and Don, and they all guided, “though I don’t think that Don guided as much as the others. Going back a generation, his father, Percy Sr. was also a guide. “He had about fifteen siblings, and most of the boys were guides too.” For other Bobcaygeon residents who worked in shops, domestic work or as labourers, it was a very different life—spending summers out fishing on the lakes and winters trapping around Bobcaygeon. Boys growing up in other walks of life might wonder how different their life might have been if they were a guide like the Nichols brothers. They made their living by hunting, guiding fishermen and trapping.

Jim Gordan, Bob Adams, Stan Nichols

In winter, Stan Nichols often went trapping with his youngest brother Don, either north of Bobcaygeon or on Emily Creek. When asked what the experience was like, Dean simply replied: “cold.” He continues, “Muskrat trapping began as soon as the first ice went out—as soon as they could get a canoe into open water. They had a camp on Crown land up on Emily Creek. In fall, it was beaver trapping—you could go and check the traps without having to get out of the canoe. He might have 100 muskrat traps out at a time,” using steel leg traps. “He had a licence to harvest furs in a certain territory. At the end of the day, he would bring it all home to a little shack, and he and his brothers would do the skinning there. Once the animals had been skinned and the hides stretched, Gordon Oliver took the fur up to a North Bay auction house to sell. In the early 1980s a mink was worth $100, today it is worth $10.”

In winter, when they weren’t out hunting or trapping, “Anderson’s Pool Hall was the winter hang out. They would play pool and tell stories. Stan also gathered with his friends to play euchre at the firehall or in the dressing rooms of the Bobcaygeon arena. It seemed that everyone was smoking their cigar or pipe in the pool hall or the dressing rooms. It was so smoky that you could hardly see across the room—everyone smoked everywhere back then.”

Guiding had been an occupation since the nineteenth century when the construction of railways made long distance recreational travel feasible to the lakes of south-central Ontario. Prior to the second half of the twentieth century, few people were wealthy enough to be able to afford a cottage, and visitors would stay at a lodge or hotel when they came to the region. Since only a small minority of people owned their own boat, most visitors would hire a guide if they wanted to experience the lakes. Without broadcast media, people made their own entertainment together with those around them—visiting, having tea, dancing and fishing were all very popular activities.

The first guides used rowboats or canoes to paddle their guests to favourite fishing locations. By the 1920s, motor boats were beginning to become popular—they were faster and carried more people, though they were not necessarily more reliable at first. Stan’s younger brother Hort recalled that when he began guiding in 1928:

The first boat that I started out guiding in is what they call a disappearing propeller boat. They were made in Lindsay at the time. They were like a rowboat, like a lifeboat that you’d see on the side of a ship. They were pointed at both ends, had a little one cylinder motor in it and it had a universal joint on the shaft and in the middle of the boat, there was a little lever and if you wanted to go into shallow water, you’d just reach down and you’d pull this little lever up, that pulls your propeller up into a housing in there, and you could go along as you would in a rowboat. That’s why they called it a disappearing propeller.

Stan Nichols, Don Nichols

Dean elaborates: “The first boats just had a one-cylinder motor, and just went put, put, put across the lake. My grandfather’s boat was just a car engine of some kind modified into a boat motor. It did not have an alternator, it just started with a battery, so he would have the carry the battery in every day to charge it. In winter, when they were not out guiding, there was a lot of work to do to get the boat ready for summer. Those old wooden boats would rot, and they would have to fix the holes.”

“Being a fishing guide was a job that Stan took seriously and he was basically in a boat all summer—he would go fishing himself or take his grandkids out when he wasn’t working. Though it was a party atmosphere, he would not drink while guiding—it’s not that he wouldn’t drink, just not when he was guiding. He and his brothers respected their guests—they would do the fishing and the guide looked after baiting the hook and running the anchors. After fishing all morning, Stan would take you to the island for a shore dinner. They all had their own spot—my grandfather’s was a little island off the south end of Boyd Island.” They had cabins on the Island, which were taken down after the Kawartha Land Trust took over Boyd Island.

“All of the guides had a flamboyant nature—that was part of the entertainment. But Stan was actually very easy going. He could get along with anybody, unless you crossed him, and then it wasn’t good. He loved people, he loved his family and he loved life. When their clients were here, they looked after them 24/7, and they got to be friends with them. Many would come back year after year to spend time with their favourite guide. By the time he retired, my grandfather was on his third generation of customers. The visitors were practically all Americans.”

Buckeye Centre, 1954 – Tom Thompson Sr foreground, with Tom Thompson Jr (store founder) behind

The first day of fishing season was a huge event in Bobcaygeon. “The town was full of fishermen—the dam was lined up and the bridges were lined up.” Fishing season officially started at midnight, but “Dar Kimble at the bait shop would fire off the shot gun at ten o’clock instead of midnight and start a little early.” Many locals affectionately called his gun “the cannon,” though it really was a shotgun. Dar would stay open all night, and many people fished into the wee hours of the morning. “In the 1940s and 1950s, much of the excitement was catching walleye. Walleye did not come to this area until the 1940s.”

At one time there were four bait shops around Big Bob Channel: Oliver, Elsner, Poole and Kimble. Dar Kimble was an unforgettable Bobcaygeon personality in the mid twentieth century. “He was loud and he loved to laugh. He was a great friend of my grandfather. He was often smoking a cigar, and stood in the same spot every night at the Bobcaygeon arena to watch kids play minor hockey. He never missed a minor hockey game for years. A group of his old friends would gather each morning in his bait shop to talk about hunting, fishing and trapping. He had coffee there, and the same six guys would come in, have coffee, shoot the sh*t for half an hour, and then go on about their day. He had the minnow licence for this area, and my brother would work for him catching minnows. He also caught frogs and leeches to sell as bait.”

“At the end of the swing bridge there was a board that listed the guides and whether they were for hire that day. The guides would meet at the Canal Boat Livery for breakfast. That’s where they loaded up their boat for the day and headed out to the place where their guests were staying to pick them up. Once they were out on the lake, it was mostly bass fishing. There were no fish finders or GPS back then, so they found rock piles. When they were trolling with 10 feet of anchor line for muskies, when they hit a rock, then they knew there was a rock pile there, then they would remember that spot and come back with their guests. Once they had spent the morning fishing with a customer, and hopefully caught a bass, the guide would take you to their site for a shore dinner. They got a fire going, peeled potatoes, boiled them and fried bacon. They would fry the fish in bacon grease, with a little lard or butter. Once the potatoes were boiled, they were put in the frying pan, and they were called Yancey potatoes.”

In the 1950s, Bobcaygeon was a dry town. However, Harvey Township was not, so anyone venturing as far as Nogies’ Creek could buy alcohol from Karl Beck’s lodge there. Booze could also be purchased in Lindsay, and it was common practice for people to pick up drinks for their friends when they were in town. This was extended to the guiding business, as many of the tourists would appreciate having beer with their store dinners. “Full service was steak, fish and drinks,” Dave Poole explains. At the time, to some local residents, it was scandalous that the guides had alcohol. “Bobcaygeon’s first liquor license was for the El Toro restaurant in the 1970s.”

Stan’s brothers Ernie and Percy both made their own lures.  “Gordon Oliver was famous for making bucktail jigs for walleye.” Then as now, it seemed that everyone had their own ideas of the best way to catch a fish, and Stan guided using Pflueger lures. Whatever the guide was using, they all seemed to be successful. “All the guides, used to catch their limit every day, then they would hang them up in front of the hardware store.”

Stan and his wife Gertrude (Byrne) also owned and operated a floating restaurant called the Ark, which was near the mouth of Big Bob Channel at Pigeon Lake, just offshore from where the sewage plant is today. As was common in restaurants of the day, it served hamburgers and French fries. “It was an experience to eat in a floating restaurant and had a pretty view of Pigeon Lake. It was my grandmother and her daughter Carolyn who were working there much of the time.”

The Nichols family was very involved in their community. “My grandfather was too young to fight in the First World War, and too old for the Second World War, but all his brothers went. Stan played hockey a bit, but Ernie and Perce were really the hockey players. Percy had played professional hockey for the Vancouver Canucks and won the Pacific Coast Hockey League championship in 1948. Ernie coached the Bobcaygeon junior hockey team and Percy coached a lot of minor hockey teams. They were both great motivators. Percy went on to manage the liquor store and be Reeve of Bobcaygeon. He was tough and he knew people, but it was not like they were educated. Percy liked to see advancement in the community—that’s what motivated him to be Reeve.”

Oliver’s Bait Store (green roof) and Dick Taylor’s Furniture with Brown Front, Bobcaygeon, 1965

In the 1980s, there were still six or seven guides working out of Bobcaygeon and Stan would carry on as long as he could. When he was born in 1911, Stan was just two pounds two ounces and was dispatched by train to Sick Kids Hospital—they were not sure if he was going to live. Eighty years later he was still out in a fishing boat, guiding just as his dad had done for so many years. He would guide until the year he died in 1991. He was still using a plywood boat that George Hill and Norman Swartman had built for him in 1971—they were both guides who built boats on the side. “He loved the life of guiding. He liked seeing the satisfaction of people catching a fish, maybe for the first time. He was much happier watching someone else catch a fish, than catching a fish for himself.”

This story is a memory and memories aren’t perfect. Sometimes details get a little mixed up, things get forgotten or overlooked, and the perspective is inevitably subjective. If you notice something that’s not right, have something you would like to tell us, or a memory to share the museum would be happy to hear from you: [email protected]

This story is part of our partnership with Maryboro Lodge, The Fenelon Falls Museum and was written by Glenn Walker.

If you want to make a donation to the museum, you can e-transfer to: [email protected] or mail a cheque to :

Maryboro Lodge Museum

Box 179

50 Oak Street

Fenelon Falls, ON

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