The McCharles clan signed on for one of the tacky tourist attractions in Arizona. The boat departing under the London Bridge.
Surprisingly, we all quite enjoyed the trip.
Wild burro. In the wild. 🙂
Of a few different companies, we decided on Blue Water Jet Boat Tours. A 2½-hour narrated trip up the Colorado River to Topock Gorge in the Starship. Recommended. 🙂
Oatman is a former mining town …
… it began as a tent camp soon after two prospectors struck a $10 million gold find in 1915 …
Oatman has undergone a renaissance of sorts in recent years thanks to burgeoning worldwide interest in Route 66 and the explosive growth of the nearby gaming town of Laughlin, Nevada, which promotes visits to the town. …
Wild burros freely roam the town and can be hand-fed carrots and “burro chow,” both readily available in practically every store in town. Though normally gentle, the burros are in fact wild and signs posted throughout Oatman advise visitors to exercise caution. The donkeys are descended from pack animals turned loose by early prospectors …
“Wild West” shootout
Great family road trip.
My parents hosted dinner the day after Christmas.
Delish. 🙂
Who won the Mexican Train, again?
Rob and Yvonne hosted in their new Parksville house. Christmas will be forever more in Parksville now that my brother and parents both live here.
We surprised by showing up “dressed”. … not usually the McCharles way. 🙂
Mom and Dad
Classic Christmas turkey dinner enjoyed by all.
Merry Christmas to all. And to all a good night. 🙂
First published 1908.
One hundred years after it’s original publication, Martin (Marty) McAllister took it upon himself to republish this fascinating memoir from one of my ancestors. It was his pet project in retirement.
Sadly, Marty died of cancer just a few weeks before the book was released.
_____
A terrific read.
It’s very entertaining. Very informative.
He never liked his name, Aeneas, and preferred Angus.
Angus was born in Middle River, Cape Breton, N.S.
They had 5 girls, 3 boys in the family.
The memoir is mostly a recollection of his best friends & acquaintances. He was proud to have saved several potential suicides.
And stories. Angus had stories.
He spent time in 1901 with Thomas Edison.
He was much traveled for that age. Across Canada and back through the northern U.S., visiting Montana to see the world’s largest Copper mine, Anaconda near Butte. Also California, Mexico and all the way down to Panama. And Jamaica.
He was a skilled outdoorsman:
… I have lived a great deal in the open air and sunshine; I have roamed at will in the bush among the trees I love, and also on the beautiful plains ; I have had soft water to wash with every day of the year; I have been away from the sick noise of life in cities and towns ; I did not have to dress to please others, mainly fools; and, above all, I have been a free man, and not a slave. …
He survived stepping into a steel bear trap.
Scrambling up a slope, a big fallen log started rolling down hill, taking Angus with it. He escaped with only one bad cut.
He had many skills. And worked hard.
The best cabin I ever had in the bush I built in three days, with an axe, a saw and an auger, and one man to help me. The total outlay in cash was only thirty-eight cents, for two pounds of wire nails and hinges,latch and padlock for the door. I got a small window out of an old abandoned hut on the trail, and carried it four miles through the woods without breaking any of the glass in it. I made the bunks, table and other furnishings of the cabin from split cedar on wet days. A couple of French scientists from Paris had dinner in it with me once, and were greatly astonished when I told them that “dis leetle house,” as they called it, had only cost two francs. …
Angus was racist, as were men of his age. But not cursing the native peoples of the new world. Angus disparages the Irish. The French Canadians. Jews.
The Scotts were the superior race, in his opinion. All porridge eaters. A real man eats porridge every day.
Though Angus admired entrepreneurial Americans, he generally referred to them as “bands of colossal thieves”. “Unscrupulous grabbers”.
Angus had a very loving marriage, short-lived as his wife died young.
Emily Anne Muma, died March 23rd, 1875 (?).
Of their two sons, one died young. The other — Harry A — Angus hardly knew and only mentioned once in the book. (Though he did leave Harry a good part of his estate.)
The new edition published 2008 includes a bonus section covering Harry’s reported “suicide”, concluding it was a covered-up hunting accident. Harry died Nov 1st, 1924. For some odd reason his headstone says Henri McCharles.
_____
The fates were unkind to Angus, hence the title. Yet he struck it rich in mining shortly before he died.
Inspired by the Nobel Prize, he donated an amount worth about $260,000 in today’s dollars to education.
The McCharles Prize
Created from an endowment to the University of Toronto as a condition of Aeneas McCharles’s estate, the $25,000 McCharles Prize for Early Career Research Distinction is awarded every three years in recognition of exceptional performance and distinction in early career research on the part of a pre-tenure member of the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering at University of Toronto. …
My family once drove past McCharles Lake east of Whitefish, Ontario, close to Sudbury. Angus on his death donated land there originally as a Park.
Angus is buried beside his wife in Mt Pleasant Cemetery, Toronto. He died of carcinoma of the stomach.
related:
“The actual struggles and experiences of a Canadian pioneer, and the recollections of a lifetime”
by Aeneas (Angus) McCharles (Oct 17, 1844 – 1906)
Bemocked of Destiny was first published in 1908, a condition of the last will and testament of an extraordinary Canadian pioneer. Teacher, speculator, geologist, prospector, community organizer and outspoken advisor to provincial and federal politicians, McCharles’s first-person account of life in the heady days of the late-19th-century frontier offer us more than a glimpse into the age in which he lived.
The story begins with McCharles’s boyhood on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, and goes on to describe the periods of his life spent in Bruce County and the cities of London, Ottawa and Toronto, Ontario, in the 1870s. He was part of the exciting booms in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, in the 1880s. Finally McCharles settled as a prospector in Sudbury, Ontario, where he staked the North Star Mine, eventually part of Vale (Inco) mining property inventory.
Here’s a PDF of the scanned book – Bemocked of Destiny
My relative, Angus, was a terrific writer. I’ll post a review tomorrow. 🙂
I’m headed for the ‘toon today.
We’re planning for Christmas 2012 here.
Starts today.
Dad’s out all this weekend with a friend from Edmonton.
I hope he wins this year, in case it’s the last.
… “We’ll see if there is a No. 42 after we crunch the numbers from this one,” festival organizer Dan Washington said. “The board said let’s go for it this year so we’ll see where it goes.”
According to Washington, changes to the marina grounds and liability requirements significantly raised the event’s costs. “The festival is 41 years old and you could say it’s going through a mid-life crisis,” he said. …
After years of waiting, Yvonne’s requested transfer to Parksville came though. She works for Canada Post.
Long planning to move to the left coast … one day, that day came a little early. My brother and his wife drove possessions not abandoned in Calgary to my parents place on Vancouver Island.
Departing 8:30am, arriving Parksville about midnight.
How about this packing?
Most went into a storage locker — free month with a U-Haul rental.
Brandi? … How much do you bid for this locker?
Next? … Rob & Yvonne are shopping for a house.
Randy won two more Auroras, literary awards for Canadians in Science Fiction or Fantasy.
He’s the most hirsute of the winners.
That’s Robert Sawyer, holding the trophy far left. Rob won (again) for the third book in his Wake, Watch, Wonder trilogy.
Rick McCharles 