1979 J Craft (19 ft. pro-ski boat) 1979 – 1998 - To date we have been unable to determine the purchase history of this 1979 J Craft pre 1998.
1998 – purchased by David Rubenstein from McGregor’s Marina in Washago
2002 – George & Kay Moore purchased from David Rubenstein. Motor – put a 2001 135 horsepower Evinrude Ficht motor on this boat.
Fall of 2008 Linda and Rich Hughes re-configured and replaced the rotting seats and upholstery. Rich polished the exterior fibreglass to its original bright red and white colour.
2010 we were asked to bring our “classic” 1979 J Craft to the Gravenhurst boat show and enjoyed the well organized weekend event, friendly people and viewing the other boats. Our decision was easy – we immediately joined the Trent Severn Antique & Classic Boat Association. In three more years our J Craft will be an actual “antique”.
This is the perfect boat for the hours of water skiing, tubing and even low-key wake boarding on South Lake where we now live.
 |
 |
1979 Minto Canoe
(Owned by George & Kay Moore)
May Minto began building canoes in 1954 and built about 2 dozen a year for 25 years. In 1975 we purchased directly from May Minto our Cedar Strip/Canvas Covered Canoe, which Don Hutton and Kay and George Moore gave to Ted Hutton (our father) on his 50th birthday in 1975. The purchase price was $1,200 but today they are selling for $3,000. This canoe is now 36 years old (2011).
Excerpts taken from The Haliburton Echo – May 26 – June 16, 1998
MAY MINTO – Cedar Strip/Canvas Covered Canoe Builder
May Minto lived within a 10 mile radius of Minden all her life. For decades, she hand-crafted 25 canoes a year, cutting the wood, bending it into shape and then fitting it altogether into one of the most graceful modes of transportation ever invented.
Quote from May “First you’d bend the stems, then work on the inside gunwales, the ribs and planking to cover it with canvas and fill it in. You used to steam the stems and the ends of the gunwales because they were oak, the ribs and the planking were cedar. You’d let it dry for a month and then put on the outside gunwales, keels, deck ends, seats, thwarts, then sand them good and put three coats of varnish on the inside and a couple of coats of paint on the outside."
She became so good at it, that when her brother Bob sold Minto Marine and she decided to retire, too, the new owner begged her to come back when he realized he’d never be able to build an order of 12 canoes over the winter. May was 66 years old and those canoes were ready for spring.
Working hard, and working at a man’s job, seemed to come naturally to Miss Minto. Whether it was making canoes, constructing new buildings at the University of Toronto Survey Camp n Gull Lake, or becoming a “Rosie the Riveter” during World War II, she just loved it. She liked it much better than housework. Her twin sister Winnie was the opposite; she’d never go outside.
The identical twins (May & Winnie) were the second and third children – born in 1916 to James and Ethel Minto. The girls were born when their family lived near South Lake and they moved to Gull Lake when they were four and their father got a job as foreman of construction of the new survey camp. When the initial construction was completed, he stayed on through a year as caretaker.
Miss Minto’s Mom used to do the cooking and when May was 14 and her Mom had to go to the hospital, with appendicitis, she cooked for 50 men. Her Dad would get the potatoes and meat ready, and she’d do the rest. In the winter the twins would help cut the wood and ice. She and her Mom drew the ice from the lake with horses and sleigh and her sister put it in the ice house and stuffed snow into the cracks.
The camp ran for six weeks a summer to train University of Toronto engineering and mining students a few practical tricks about surveying. As the camp grew, young May was very much a part of it. In 1953 and 1954 she helped build the new teaching building. She and another worker shingled the whole building, 130 feet long. She just grew up doing a man’s work.
What did the men with whom she worked think about it? She used to be their boss so they either worked with her or they had to go. She was the only one who knew hot to build the canoes.
At first, the canoes were built for the survey camp and others in the area – Kilcoo, Gay Venture and Onondaga being just three. But as word of their craftsmanship spread, the orders kept coming in and they decided to make it a business.
May’s brothers moved away and her father wasn’t up to doing the canoes so May took it up. They had a workshop at the university and when they moved to Minden in 1956 to open Minto Marine (where Jug City now stands on Hw. #35) they had a shop there.
May’s only break from living in the Highlands came in the earl 1940s, when she and her twin sister, Winnie, answered the government’s call to help in the munitions factory. Living at a relative’s on Queen Street, May first worked the lathe on the nose cones for antitank shells at Massey Ferguson and then went to Victor Aircraft where she was a riveter on the Lancaster bombers.
It gave May pleasure to build things with her own hands over the years. Unfortunately, however, after inhaling cedar dust and smoking for most of her life, she developed breathing problems.
May passed away at Highland Wood, Haliburton on Friday, February 25, 2005 in her 89th year.