"When Up High Dive Out!": Schooner Days DCLXXXII (682)

by C. H. J. Snider

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GOVERNMENT sniffers in these days of manpower shortage found time to open a private letter from Chicago last week and this is what they found:

"It's really a pleasure to sit down to write you after reading the clippings out of The Toronto Telegram about the wreck of the Augusta that went ashore just south of the Port Credit Harbor. I was only five years old at the time but I remember that was some exciting day for me. Capt. Hare of Port Credit was surely the man of the hour and all those men who took part in life saving around dear old Port Credit, which is my birthplace, and very glad to call it so.

"I read one of those clippings of the Jessie Drummond and you haven't any idea the kick I got out of reading it. I want the boys that are left in Port Credit to know that I have ridden on the Mary E. Ferguson and also the White Wings. That is the boat that could really scoot through the water.

"Capt. Hare has known me ever since I was a baby and he taught me my first strokes in swimming and how to dive and high dive. My first high dive was off the top of the old road bridge and Capt. Hare was right there on the job when I dove. He said, 'Jack, how was that?' and I said, 'Al, that was swell.'

"Well, after that I couldn't find anything high enough except they had a sand dredge in the river at the time and I walked up on top of the boom one day and I always remembered what Capt. Hare told me about living. 'When up high, dive out and not straight down.' I was up on this boom that was 55 or 60 feet high, and Capt. Hare was on the other side of the river, and he said, 'Jack, you know what I told you,' and I waved at Capt. Hare and down I came.

THE HUMAN CORK

"Capt. Hare was some dancer in his day. I received my first step from him and we used to dance together and I want you to know the fun we had around old Port Credit.

"Capt. Hare was a man who couldn't sink in the water. I have seen him read a letter without getting the pages wet, standing upright in 20 feet of water, and not only that, he would put hip rubber boots on and grab a real heavy crowbar and jump in and come up like a cork. And the old road bridge, well, he would take back dives off that.

SAVED TWO FROM ICY DEATH

"Capt. Hare made another good life saving when he saved my brother Seymour and a pal of his by the name of Tommy Howl.

"Lake Ontario was frozen over that year, about 38 years ago, and it was surely nice to get out on the lake after it had been frozen over. Those boys were out over a mile when the ice had broken about 25 or 50 feet from them, and not any chance of making a jump.

"Capt. Hare was sailing his iceboat up and down the lake and he noticed someone out there waving their hands, and he said 'My God, the ice has parted and those boys out there!'

"The wind was fresh off shore and not knowing any minute the ice would break up, Capt. Hare came in real quick with his iceboat and pulled a small boat out of one of those boathouses and placed in on his iceboat and he was on his way out again. Well, the boys were glad to see Capt. Hare, as they had the water up to their knees by the time he got to them. But we had men around Port Credit just like Capt. Hare.

QUALIFIED

"Now, I'm a disabled veteran from the World War No. 1. I was with the 126th Peel Battalion at Toronto, and joined the 18th Canadians in France.

I was wounded at Vimy Ridge, April 11th, 1917, gunshot wound in left forearm, and now I have a boy, John Henry Wilcox, of the 3rd Battalion, 2nd U.S. Marines, somewhere in the South Pacific. He makes a very good Marine; stands 6 ft. 2 in., weighs 210 pounds, and to any of the boys in or around Toronto that were with me in the 126th Peels I just want to say 'Hello Comrades'."

"Yours truly,

"JOHN F. WILCOX,

"300 N. Lockwood Ave., Chicago, 44, Ill."

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Mr. Wilcox will be gratified to learn that his "Hello Comrades" from Chicago was opened "to verify contents, in accordance with requirements of Foreign Exchange Control Board, and officially sealed," so that he may take it that his deserved tribute to Capt. Al Hare has received official attention. It should, for among the sixteen lives saved from drowning by Capt. Hare (still alive and cheery at 82, and a Conservative voter) was a son of the Liberal Minister of Justice.

Vimy Ridge Veteran Wilcox must be a grandson or great-grandson of the Wilcox who built a big double house, still standing on the west bank of the river in Port Credit, and known for a long time as the Sailors' and Fishermen's Boarding House, a popular port of call for everybody in schooner days. It was a licensed hotel at one time and a Presbyterian church at another, its ballroom over the driving shed probably providing the meeting place. It now houses six families.

BANJO DAYS

Another old Port Credit boy, Ken Evans, now lightkeeper at Point au Baril, with five channels to look after in navigation time, wrote to Capt. Hare recently—uncensored:

"I was pleased to get your letter and the newspaper account of your exploits—memory cantered up with a load of things I had forgotten.

I remember when you used to play the banjo. I can hear you yet and the old favorite song:

"When she called for pie,

I thought I'd die,

For I only had 50 cents."

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(HELPFUL HINT PEAKERS DISCOVERED IN VIMY VETERAN'S OPENED MAIL)

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NINETY-YEAR-OLD Wilcox home in Port Credit, in turn hotel, sailors' boarding house and Presbyterian church. It is now a six-family residence.

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CAPT. AL HARE HIGH-DIVING from the highway bridge at Port Credit at a big Y.M.C.A. festival in 1910.