Cub Shahwandahgooze Reflections
In November 2003, Bob Mingie spent 1 ½ days in Montreal going through the Club Shahwandahgooze files. There are a number of things, that as part of our Club History, that we want to share with you.
1) The first is that while individual members come and go, and there have been quite a few, there appears to have always been a hard core of longer term members. In particular, the Club executive appears to have been relatively stable. Our records are not complete but our study of them suggests the following:
Presidents Secretary/Treasurers
John Anderson 1903-1942 C.W. Haentschel 1903-1937
W.H. Paul 1943-1949 A.E. Nixon 1938-1946
H.W. Thorp 1950-1956 E.G. Browne 1947-1954
Arthur Guthrie 1957-1968 H.J. Hardy 1955-1959
________________________________F. H. Mingie 1960-1968
Frank Mingie 1969-1980 P. Amys/D. Guthrie 1969-1980
Derek Guthrie 1981-1994 C. Guillon/B. Gelfand 1981-1983
________________________________R. Renaud/B. Gelfand 1983-1994
Bob Mingie 1995-2013 G. Guillon 1995 – 2013 ________________________________J. Guillon 2011- 2013
George Guillon & Christoper Guthrie 2014 — Present ________________________________J. Guillon 2014- Present
2) The second thing is that membership has typically been in the 20-30 range although it did get up to 55+ in the 80’s. Getting new members has always been a challenge and we even found an ad that was apparently run at one point to try and attract 5 additional members. They had a Membership Committee for quite a number of years and perhaps this is something that we should adopt.
3)There has been a tradition of electing long serving members of note to the position of Honorary Life Members when they were no loner able to make regular use of the Club. This status conferred all the privileges of membership without any of the obligations.
Albert Guthrie
Moffat Dunlap
Phil Amys
Frank Mingie
4) Many of today’s trails/roads were not there in the early years , even as late as the 60’s and 70’s. Clear Lake seems to have been a primary route to Foley Lake , Trout Lake and Bills Lake versus the roads we use to reach these locations today.
5) Another piece of information that became very evident is that our Guardians and Cooks have been much more than just employee’s, they are partners in operation of the Club and are essential to the success of the Club.
There has been no ‘standard model’, each has been unique, bringing different strengths (and weaknesses) to the Club. In the early years and even into the 50’s the norm seems to have been to have a Guardian and to hire a cook on a trip by trip basis. Starting in the 60’s this switched and a permanent cook, typically the Guardians wife, was retained to do the cooking.
Guardians
? – 1929 – 1947 — ? John Carey
? – 1951 Rivers
1951-1959 Otis Williams
1959-1965 Ted Wickens + Roberta
1966-1971 Urban Lecours + Simone (Maheu)
1972-1975 Wilfred Gravel +
1976-1981 Gerard Boudreau +
1982-1983 Rene Boudreau +
1984-1994 Maurice Carriere + a variety of cooks
1995 Bud Shell
1996 – 2011 Conrad + Fernande Duhaime
2012-present Paul + Brigitte Duhaime
6) There were also notes about the focus on Pike fishing in Club Lake with the intent of improving the Lake Trout fishing. This was in an era when the was no limit on Pike so you could catch them by the hundreds if you chose to do so – and apparently they did.
We think we should consider a similar focus and make it a tradition for each fisher-person who visits the Club to take out their limit of 6 Pike (assuming they are there when the Pike season is open). You’ll get good fishing action and help the trout at the same time; as well; properly filleted Pike are an excellent eating fish.
7) In terms of the longevity of the current members, the incomplete records make it hard to be too precise — but the data I (with the help of Jon Guillon) found suggests the following:
Year they appear to have joined
1956 Frank Mingie
1965 Derek Guthrie
1972 Jim McLean
1976 George Guillon
1981 Christopher Guthrie
1982 Bob Mingie
1991 Jonathan Guillon
1995 Christopher Guillon, Gordon Silverman
1997 Allan Cytrynbaum, Jeff Chorlton
1998 Peter Guillon (2nd time)
2003 Frank Guillon
2004 Tanya Hassanein
If you notice an error then please let us know so that it can be corrected.
We will keep working our way through the records and trying to extract interesting info so that we can all have a better understanding of the Club’s history.