At 80, Rigs and Launches His 2,500th: Schooner Days DCVIII (608)

by C. H. J. Snider

_______

AT this moment George Aykroyd is busy on three fine dinghies for Taylor Statten's big camp in Algonquin Park, an S.O.S. order which he couldn't refuse though it came just as he was hanging up his overalls.

It would be rash to say that the third of these dinghies will be his last, for great artists will rise to great occasions when destiny demands it, and George Aykroyd is a great artist.

But he has christened his 2,500th craft, and that unmatched record is enough for any First Lord of the Admiralty. If George Aykroyd, now touching his 80th milestone, feels like taking a rest, he has earned it. Pressure of war work made him close the lower part of his shop this spring for the benefit of a neighboring building firm rushing out war orders, and it maybe that when he closes the remaining and upper portion at the end of this season he will not reopen it.

MECCA FOR GENERATIONS

WHEN Grandfather Waterlover was missing from old U.C.C. at the "Education" corner of King and Simcoe streets, seventy-five years ago, headmaster Cockburn knew where he could find him.

Aykroyd's, at Milloy's Wharf.

When Dad Waterlover skipped a class the T.C.I., Jarvis street, before the South African War, Archibald MacMurchy, the rector, knew where he could find him.

Aykroyd's, at the foot of York street.

If Junior Waterlover was A. W. L. from U. T. S. anytime up to this summer the principal might have had him for the asking at just one place -

Akyroyd's, at the foot of Bathurst street.

This summer it was different, for junior was more likely to be pulling down a man's paycheck in a feather factory. Aykroyd's and such delightful places, full of smells of cedar shavings, new rope, Stockholm tar and spar varnish, were becoming barricaded behind "Keep Away!" notices as war contracts spread. Aykroyd's itself, loadstar of the waterfront for eight decades, never turned its doormat with this "Unwelcome" sign up. But it got so that you had to go past one of those stoplights to get to it, and that, and the attractions of the feather factory, put a brake upon young Waterlover's exploratory zeal.

WHERE TO GO

If you persisted (as many did) you would push past the Maple Leaf Stadium and the two yacht club yards at the foot of Bathurst street, till you would see a long laker cutting the street short as she slowly navigated the Western Gap, against a background of rising gulls and airplanes. You would push on past a flock of wooden warwork in all stages of progress, up a stair, and pull open a door and find yourself in a large, very well lighted room, one quarter of it partitioned off as a finishing compartment and office, work benches running around the other two sides under the windows, the walls hung with patterns, templates, tools, blueprints and gadgets. The floor might have shavings on it, where work was in progress, but it would be smooth and clean as a ballroom. Oars, paddles, gaffs, booms, plank and ribbing would be neatly arranged.

The first thing you would note would be that that highly specialized craft, the dinghy, gets its skin first, its bones last. The smooth thin planks are fastened, edge lapping edge, on to moulds, which like sectional bulkheads, and the ribs are bent in afterwards.

On trestles you might find several boats in varying stages of completion above little islands of shavings or sawdust, either outlined by their moulds and ribbons and braced to floor and ceiling, or planked and turned over for sandpapering, painting and varnishing. Everything in them would be of the best - cedar, oak, spruce, mahogany, paint, varnish, plastic wood, copper fastenings, bronze fittings, even to the modest brass plate on the oaken stemhead abaft the bronze nosing, with "G. Aykroyd" on it. And making all the wheels go round, two gentle old men each topping his four-score gracefully - George Aykroyd and his remaining staff, John R. Wells, who has worked with him forty-five seasons.

You would then be in the third and final shrine of a personal industry which honored Toronto by making this city its home for seventy-seven years.

WHEN BAY WAS BEST DRINKING WATER

LONG, long ago, when "Squaretoes" Medcalf was Mayor of Toronto, and Frank Jackman had brought back the Oakville brigantine Sea Gull from South Africa with sugar and ivory and gold dust and rum (and a deckload of cordwood thriftily picked up at Kingston while homeward bound) and the city was quivering with the excitement of the Fenian Raid of 1866, Henry Aykroyd arrived here from Kingston. His family was an old pioneer one, coming out from England a century ago.

Henry opened a modest boat livery at Milloys Wharf at the foot of Young street. Trains thunder across its site now at then rate of one every minute, for the water has retreated a quarter of a mile south in the march of improvement.

Toronto had only 45,000 inhabitants then, even including the bounty jumpers of the American Civil War. But 44,999 of them used boats for business and pleasure. Rowing and sailing was the chief recreation and a principal means of transportation.

There was nothing finer than a row or sail on the sparkling waters of Toronto Harbor then, to the Island, the little city's health resort, or along the new Esplanade under the terraced escarpment of the intended Mall or Prince of Wales Walk, backed by the mellow brick Parliament Buildings and the residences of the magnificoes of the city. Bay water was still so pure that it supplied all the drink that did not come from wells, creeks or bars, and all the city's ice. The bay was filled with clean-hulled schooners like the Royal Tar, Sea Gull, White Oak and so on, and such steamers as there were filled the air with fragrant smoke of maple, beech or pine, not the choking belch of low grade coal.

So there was lots of boating. The 45,000th person who did not use a boat much was Henry Aykroyd himself, for he was so busy renting his craft, keeping them in repair, and building new ones, that he seldom got a chance to dip the oar. He had to get his two sons, Maitland and George, to help him as soon as they were big enough. An interlude which "young" George - eighty on July 4th last recalls was an aftermath of probably the Fenian Raid. The long shed on Milloy's wharf caught fire, and an heroic effort to save munitions, hundreds of rifles stored in cases, were thrown into the Bay. Henry Aykroyd and his two boys worked hard night and day, salvaging them, for they got a dollar a case for all they raised.

THE MATE WHO WASN'T

As the twig is bent is the tree inclined, Maitland Aykroyd became the chief reliance of old Esplanade Constable Williams and many an anguished family whenever a drowning accident befell.

"…They were changing seats when the accident happened. Mait Aykroyd has been notified, and dragging operations proceeding."

We used to keep the paragraph standing.

He was always called Mait instead of Maitland, and half Toronto thought he was mate of some steamer or schooner. He was a good boatman, patient, courageous, and ever ready to help in trouble. He saved many lives in his long tenancy of the old waterfront, and some of them by his promptness with grappling hook and pilepole.

Wait brought back many pleasure seekers, dead or alive, but few of these were Aykroyd customers. Father and sons maintained faithfully a high standard of stability and safety in their boats. That was why, from the beginning, they built their own.

"Boat renting," says George Aykroyd, "was a favorite way of enjoyment for many years in the days gone by, and 20 cents per hour or 10 cents per half hour was a regular rate. A good number used the half hour.

"We somehow got the idea there was an opening for the hiring of a safe, small sailing boat. We produced them, and kept them going strong for many years. Eventually the evolution came to the 14-ft. dinghy as now is. I think I would be safe in saying they have been the most popular and satisfactory small sailing boat ever built.

AN ARTIST'S FAREWELL

GEORGE AYKROYD has always thought the 12-foot dinghy the ideal boat both for racing and pleasure boating, but the 14s got the name and the fame, particularly through the International 14s, which are superb racing machines, streamlined, smoothskinned, fast as bullets, light as swansdown and about as expensive. The Aykroyds always turned out fast dinghies, but specialized in lapstreaked construction within the reach of moderate means.

"During the past forty-five years or so the average of our output would be about fifty boats, in the touring and sailing line, exclusive of the sailboats and other small work, some of these going to distant ports, one in particular to an English colonel in England, who sailed it on the Broads there forty-five years past, I imagine. I have not the exact year.

"My work has been to a great extent a real pleasure and I am sorry to be forced by my physical condition to retire, as I know I will be missing so many old customers who have been with me for so long and who gave me the pleasure of satisfying their requirements. I egrets I have no successors, one of my sons being in the structural steel as a civil engineer, the other a leading draftsman with DeHavilland Air Plant Co. If I had another son he might have been a boat builder.

IN these modest words George Aykroyd punctuates three-quarters of a century of evolution and revolution in the smallboat sailing, in which, like Aeneas, "pars magna fuit."

His was a most important part. Seventy-five years ago the pleasure sailboat was either a cumbersome tub like a small lifeboat, and fitted with a dipping lugsail; or it was a deathtrap for the unskilled, a sharp-ended skiff with would capsize with the weight of its own sail, if this was hoisted before the crew got in.

Henry Aykroyd began the safe and sane compromise between the two as a matter of business. His sons, themselves keen sailors, developed the idea. The late Wilton Morse assisted greatly by introducing the 12-foot dinghy in 1898. This began to standardize the "safe" small boat. Wide enough to carry 600 lbs. of live weight safely, not hard to row, simple to sail, with a high-peaked gaff or lugsail, and handy either in open or enclosed waters, because equipped with a centreboard.

The Aykroyds had moved to the foot of York street by this time, in the great boathouse district below the old Union Station with its open tracks, level crossings, three towers and four clocks, occupied by the Royal Canadian, Toronto and Queen City Yacht Clubs, the Toronto Canoe Club, Argonaut Rowing Club, Noverre's, Van Winckel's and other boat liveries. Henry Aykroyd was not there long; he died when he was sixty-three. The two boys, Mait and George, had to buckle in on their own.

They saw possibilities in the dinghy undreamed of by Wilton Morse. Not only a pleasure boat, a camper's sailboat, but a sane racing type. The Aykroyds improved on the model and the size, never sacrificing stability to speed, but turning out a faster and faster boat. The Lake Sailing Skiff Association adopted the dinghy. At first with reluctance, soon with enthusiasm. Dozens, scores, hundreds were built - and Aykroyds built most of them.

Not they had any monopoly. Anyone with tools could build a dinghy to any design he might fancy. The only restrictions were standard length, standard sail area, standard scantling. The Aykroyd dinghy was not the only good dinghy - George Cornell, Charlie Bourke, Harry Hudson, Bastien, Salter, Warren, Taylors, and others, amateur and professional, built many good and successful boats - but the "Aykroyd dinghy" in three sizes, 14-foot, 16-foot and 18-foot, became a household word and a locker room word. They built "a good many" 12-footers, too, and their 18-footer was a grand big sailboat for any lake. But their most popular was a 14-footer, and still is.

They have gone everywhere - to Muskoka, where they used to be shipped like excess baggage, $2 a boat; to American lakeports, to the St. Lawrence, to Britain.

When the last dinghy is launched from the Aykroyd shop something will be gone beyond recall from the vari-colored life of Toronto's waterfront and the artistry of woodworking in Canada.

Launch of the JEWEL, 14-foot dinghy of J. and J. Worden, R.C.Y.C.; Master Builder Aykroyd and his foreman carpenter, John R. Wills, at the bow. JEWEL is the 2,500th dinghy to come from the Aykroyd shops.

Toronto Harbor when the Aykroyds' Boathouse was at the Foot of Yonge Street, seventy-five years ago, and drinking water was pumped from the Bay.

WATER WORKS R.C.Y.C. T.C.C. BOATHOUSES ARGONAUTS UNION STATION Q.C.Y.C. AYKROYDS

Club land on the waterfront fifty years ago, when the Aykroyds were at the foot of York street below the three towers of the old Union Station.