84th Year (2017-2018) Meeting Talks
October 18th: Aubrey & Judith Millard will share the sixth in their Living the Dream series: North to Alaska from Alert Bay, north of Vancouver Island through the picturesque fjords & ghost towns of the B.C. coast. They will then take us up to Alaska to Ketchikan, Juneau & into Glacier Bay, where they anchored off & walked a glacier. They include dramatic pictures of wildlife of the area.
October 25th: Heather Beecroft, Arts and Culture Consultant for Adventure Canada, will take us Sailing on Haida Gwaii.
November 1st: Sally & Noel Lien will regale us with their adventures from Dingle Ireland to New Ross and Dianne Leggatt will tell tales of Dublin, Then and Now, after she left them at Dingle.
November 8th: Gail Fraser, Associate Professor in Environmental Studies, York University, will speak about the Double Crested Cormorant and Protected Areas in the Great Lakes.
November 15th: Zak Nesbitt of Brigantine tall ship renown, will, with much enthusiasm, share tales of the Golden Age of Piracy.
November 22nd: John Summers. Museum professional, educator, author and maritime historian, will speak of the delights and joys to be found in pleasure boats in his talk, Pleasure Boating History.
November 29th: Rob Mazza, mechanical engineer and naval architect, continues his acclaimed series in the Model Room on yacht design. He may even be able to complete the round of the room this time out.
December 6th: Don Ferguson, former Manager of QCYC, now a representative for Lee Sails of Hong Kong, will take us to The Amalfi Coast.
December 13th: Moosemilk – our annual Christmas/holiday gathering at Mimico Cruising Club.
2018 Meeting Dates
January 3rd: Richard Hudson will join us again to share his adventures Sailing the Antarctic.
January 10th: We welcome back Peter Rowe, who will share a movie he made about Waterspouts, a kind of tornado on water, found sweeping across large bodies of water more often now as the world experiences increased extremes in weather.
January 17th: Bruce Kemp, renowned photographer and now author, will share his research into Weather Bomb, 1913: Death on the Great Lakes, a work that took him 40 years to write. “It was an epic November hurricane that overturned large lake freighters, caused tremendous damage to numerous structures on land and ended up taking the lives of over 250 people.” (theobserver.ca November 18, 2017)
January 24th: Ron Mazza will share his Adventures on Six Metres, with particular focus on the refurbished yacht, Kisita II. The fleet of sixes sailed on the West Coast some 50 years ago. Ron sailed with twin brother, Rob, and his dad, Freddy out of Queen City YC.
January 31st: Sally & Noel Lien will regale us with their adventures from Glasgow and along the west coast of Scotland; Dianne Leggatt will tell tales of Edinburgh after she left them at Oban.
February 7th: Danielle Doggett, Sailcargo Inc. Managing Director and initially trained on the tall ship, St. Lawrence II, will share her experiences Building the Tall Ship, Ceiba.
February 14th: Bryan Gooderham, sailor extraordinaire, philanthropist, long-time contributor to the sport of sailing, will have a conversation with us about 100 Years of Sailing on Lake Ontario with the Gooderham family..
February 21st: Jodi Munden will speak of her experiences as a blind sailor in her presentation, Catch the Wind, Feel the Freedom.
February 28th: Beverley Darville, Curator, plans to give us A Brief History of the RCYC from the beginning to the present day and its place in the sailing world. She promises many interesting stories.
March 7th: Jennefer Laidley & Gene Desfor’s topic is Walking on Water (or reshaping Toronto’s Waterfront). They use a set of rarely seen lantern slides from the early decades of the 20th century as well as recent images to tell of the dramatic reshaping of the waterfront in Toronto.
March 14th: Dianne Leggatt, with the support of Rob Mazza, will tell the tale of The Vasa and why she sank on her maiden voyage.
March 21st: Richard Hudson, returns to tell us of his exploration ‘Round Newfoundland’ and what he discovered there.
March 28th: For the second time this year, we welcome back Rob Mazza. In his search for Frederik Henrick af Chapman (considered to be the first naval architect), Rob explored the Marine Museums of Sweden and Denmark in particular and took side trips to the Baltic and Estonia. He is in search of ideas for the re-establishment of the Marine Museum of the Great Lakes at Kingston.
April 4th: We welcome the return of John Summers. This time he will speak of the Canoes and Romance, from the late 19th century to the present day …. women & canoes, men & canoes, canoes with sails, without sails, designing & building canoes … John has covered the gamut with respect to canoes.
April 11th: Stephen & Fran Hill return to present Part II – Down East Circle Route They presented Part I of the trip on their 37’ Nordic Tug during the last session of Shellbacks in 2017. This past summer they continued their earlier trip, heading further down the eastern seaboard to NYC, up the Hudson, east to Lake Champlain, north to the St. Lawrence, up the Ottawa River, down the Rideau Canal & finally back up the Trent Severn to their home base on Georgian Bay.
Be a Shellback, come often, bring friends and enjoy the combination of good food, friendly people and interesting and often unique presentations about nautical and maritime topics.