Prior to the railway’s arrival, little of the forest along the northern and western shores of Lake Joseph had been harvested. There was simply no practical way to deliver it to paying markets. But when trains arrived in 1906 with the opening of the Canadian Nation Line, local landowner John Edward Woodroffe saw an opportunity. He built a sawmill on Woodroffe Bay, and the steamers operated in support of this industry became a common sight on Lake Joseph as they towed booms of logs to the awaiting saws.
In fact, son Charles became so associated with his tugs that locals began referring to him as “Captain” Woodroffe. He certainly didn’t to anything to dissuade the title. He was always extremely proud of his boats.
And yet, neither Charles nor John Edward Woodroffe had any maritime background prior to coming to Muskoka. There was more soil in the Woodroffe blood than water. John Edward was a farmer in Redwood for much of his early life. Charles was born there in 1889. A few years later, the family moved to Foot’s Bay and struggled to carve a farmstead from the dense forest and rocky soil. Their first hint at prosperity didn’t come until a decade later, in the early 20th century, when John Edward elected to build a sawmill on his property. And it was at that time he purchased the first of the Woodroffe steamships, a vessel called the Ethel May.
The Ethel May, which even the most charitable observer could hardly describe as an attractive boat, was built near Foot’s Bay by Captain Alfred Mortimer around 1892. Her hull was new, but the engine had been salvaged from a previous vessel of the same name that had simply been worn out by years of wear-and-tear.
The Ethel May soon solidified a well-deserved reputation for dependability plying the lakes.
After a decade of jack-of-all-trade work – everything from carrying freight to towing logs and skiffs loaded with tanbark – the Ethel May was sold and converted into a laundry delivery boat. She served in this capacity for a single season, and then sat idle for a year or two. She might well have rotted away if she hadn’t been rescued by John Edward Woodroffe.
Woodroffe’s sawmill was located on the shores of the bay named in his honour, but the mill’s appetite for logs was insatiable and he needed a tug to deliver the logs that would feed it. That’s where the Ethel May, and all the subsequent boats, came in. John Edward purchasing the Ethel May, placed Charles, who had his inland water captain’s papers, in command of the vessel, and then began felling trees all around western Lake Joseph in earnest. It was a common sight to see the little tug, with her young skipper proudly at the wheel, out in the waters pulling booms encircling literally dozens of logs.
The Ethel May’s career came to a sudden and perhaps untimely end in 1914. That summer, the First World War had broken out in Europe and Charles enlisted to fight for King and Country. With its master gone, the boat sat idle and untended in the water, slowly rotting away. When Charles returned at war’s end five years later, he found his one-time pride and joy a worthless hulk.
The Woodroffes quickly got back into their pre-war routine and woke the mill from its long slumber. By this stage, John Edward had ceded much of the mill’s daily operation to son Arthur (1893-1980), while Charles remained family boat-handler. Scouring the lakes for a suitable craft to replace the Ethel May, Charles came upon the Annie May (sometimes called the Animay). This vessel, a former yacht, was relatively new, having been built just six years prior in 1912. As a result, her hull and engines were in prime condition. But, at only 4.57 tons, she was tiny and really unsuited for the task assigned to her. She struggled to pull even a fraction of the load the Ethel May managed.
Nevertheless, the Annie May gamely towed log booms across the waters of Lake Joseph until 1925, when she was scrapped in favour of yet another steamboat, the Voyageur.
By the time she came into Woodroffe’s possession, the Voyageur was already an aging vessel. Built in Montreal in 1895, she had spent the majority of her life serving on the tempestuous waters of Georgian Bay, at one point ferrying tourists to Christian Island off Midland. Thirty years of riding out the sudden storms that appeared over Georgian Bay had resulted in wear and tear on the vessel, but it proved she was seaworthy and sturdily built. The Voyageur was also far larger than the Annie May, a 30-ton tug capable of carrying considerable freight and pulling large booms much as the Ethel May had years earlier.
Ray Woodroffe, Charles’ son, worked at the sawmill as a young teenager alongside his uncle in the 1930s and remembers the Voyageur well.
“I can vividly recall it out on the lake towing a boom full of logs that had been cut elsewhere on the lake,” he says. “The boat also delivered cut lumber and firewood for cottagers around the lake, and carried rocks for cribs. She was a hardworking boat.”
By that point, there was only one other sawmill on Lake Joseph, so demand kept the Woodroffe mill, and by extension the Voyageur quite busy. Lumber would be needed for building cottages. Firewood was still a major source of fuel; and many of the steamships plying the lakes continued to operate off cut wood
“I was told when dad bought the Voyageur, she was sailed up to Parry Sound where she was loaded onto a train flatbed to be brought down to Lake Joe (Lake Joseph),” Ray continues. “When they came to the bridge just north of MacTier they found her smokestack was too tall to pass underneath, so it had to be cut off. The tracks ended where the CNIB camp is today, so that’s where the boat was put into the lake.”
The tireless Voyageur ran faithfully and without major overhaul from that day until the early 1930s, when economy was brought to its knees by the Depression and demand for lumber dwindled considerably.
“The boat was tied up to the dock year after year, just wasting away. We’d have to chip ice away from her hull in the winter to prevent damage, and she leaked a bit so she’d have to be pumped out with hand pumps,” Ray remembers. “Around 1938, she was bought by a gentleman from Richmond Hill who intended to convert her into a yacht for his Muskoka cottage. The last time I saw her was on my way home from school when she sailing south on Lake Joseph to the locks at Port Sandfield.”
Sadly, the Voyageur would never see better days. The Second World War erupted and put such elaborate plans on hold. Her brass fittings were stolen and then, after a few years of languishing at dock at Muskoka Wharf, in Gravenhurst, she was cut up by blowtorches for metal to fuel the war effort.
Her dismantling marked the end of an era. For four decades Woodroffe owned and operated steamboats had been plying the waters of Lake Joseph, but no more. The sawmill these vessels served was razed to the ground a decade later, but the fire could not burn away memories of the Ethel May, Annie May, and Voyaguer. They remain a part of Woodroffe family history, and a part of Parry Sound/Muskoka lake lore.
Woodroffe owned steamboats remain part of Lake Joseph lore
Date: Feb 05, 2010
The Wodroffe steamboat, Voyageur.
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