London Bridge, Camping, Trailer Trash
Brian Riders camping story reminded me of the time John Merkley and I camped out at the golf course right beside the riverbank the day before thanksgiving. All was well until morning when we woke up much to our surprise to find the ground and our tent covered with a inch or two of snow.We trudged on home later cold,  tired and sure were hungry for a huge thanksgiving dinner.
Also, I remember hiking out there many times along the old rail bed to the abutement that Brian was speaking of across from the golf course.
I believe it was the remains of the railway bridge called London bridge and part of the old C.P.R.  line that went from Wingham to London which was established in 1874.
 Business men and families could ship out their goods from Wingham to London. In 1876 the travel time from London to Wingham was 3 hours  The service was abandoned in 1931. Wartime shortage of steel resulted in the lifting of the rails for the war effort. In the later years of the last century the C.P.R. had much to do with the movement of settlers from this section of Ontario to Western Canada. Periodically a "exhibition car" would be sent to Wingham filled with visible evidences of the opportunities in the West.
Many people will remember the flood of 1948 which destroyed the C.P.R.
bridge. It was temporarily fixed but in 1954 when repairs were again needed
the C.P.R. decided against it and by 1957 they abandoned their right away
between the North and South branches of the Maitland river. The bridge was
removed entirely in 1959 and Lloyds used the freight sheds for storage.
The property was sold to the town through Mayor R.E. McKinney's efforts
for $1.00 and Linear Park had its beginnings. The station house was turned into a Scout House  and later torn down to make room for the centenial swimming pool. On a personal note here, when I was married in 1963we lived in a small rented trailer which we parked right beside the Scout House as we only needed temporary living quarters for two months before we left for Germany for a 8 month extended honeymoon. We used the bathroom upstairs in the Scout House, it was great fun then and we still have a trailer today we use occasionally. Trailer trash they say!

Bob McIntyre

Our Big Golfing Holiday

Paul used to live at a new house literally at the edge of Wingham on Highway  86  on the way to Listowel,  He lived right on the bend just past Diagonal Rd.  (we always said he was round the bend).  It was a big house with quite a lot of land and a tree house and everything needed for a good adventure childhood.    As is befitting a school holiday we got very bored.  You need to remember that as we were both fairly high up grade wise we didn’t have to take our final exams.  So we were on vacation from June until September - quite  a long time and certainly long enough to get bored.  We often used to go out into the woods for hiking adventures.  We used to end up directly opposite the Golf Course  which was across the river.  Indeed I knew the golf course quite well as I used to try a few rounds when I was 12 with a mate from England.  I think it might have been Teddy Wormworth who was later a great friend of Paul’s but I am not sure.  Anyway we spent quite a long time on the golf course but I was basically rubbish and we lost patience with all the wasted drives and putts.  In fact I never returned to the golf course after that , I didn’t want to be  a laughing stock. Back to our story.  So the scenery was familiar and there was something like the remains of an old bridge high up  on our side of the river ,but it might have been my imagination and just a pile of rocks.   As you know we were founding members of the new Cub and Scout movement in Wingham - we were certainly the biggest Cubs ever as we were nearing 6 foot even then at  12 and still in the Cubs before graduating to the Scouts.  I think they had to wait for us to make the Scout numbers up.  Back to the story.  We decided, one summer, that it would be a great wheeze to camp out in the woods overlooking the gold course.  Seemed like a good idea at the time, to pass away some days or even weeks out there.  In those days you left your front door open so we had no problems taking all our gear out to the woods and leaving it there.  So we started humping the stuff out.  We took the tent, sleeping bags,  cooking gear,  knives forks plates etc.,  food,   We even took a  3 foot high storm lantern so we could read in the dark.  In fact we took about everything excluding the kitchen sink, although we did have a kitchen bowl.  In total we trekked out to the campsite over the best part of a week erecting the tent making it liveable and comfortable etc.  Anyway, finally, we were satisfied that we had enough gear, books, comics, foodstuffs etc and went out for the first night to stay the night.   Unfortunately reading by storm lantern is not all that good and requires feeding with fuel.  It is also a bit creepy out there in the woods.  After a few hours we decided this wasn’t a really good idea after all.  The next day we started taking all the gear apart and trekking it home.  All in all we probably spent around 10 days taking the stuff out and back, assembling and disassembling.  It certainly took away the boredom for quite a few days but as we only spent 1 night under the stars I wonder whether it was worth it.

Apart from that one episode we never went camping on our own again.  We did however go to Scout camp many times (see the image on the photo page)  We used to go mob handed.  I remember Jimmie Wilde was with us a few times.  He was usually in my tent as I was a patrol leader and Paul had another mob.  I remember vividly on one occasion that we had arrived at the camp and we were in a sort of race to get the tents up and settled in before we went on the razzle.  Being not a very good outdoorsman I made an absolute siting blunder.  I had pitched my tent virtually in the middle of a stream.  It wasn’t a stream when we erected the tent but when the downpour came that evening a virtual river was running through the tent carrying away all our loose bits.  As I was in charge I was not too popular.  The next day we had to do it all again but this time not on such a big slope and not in the middle of a river.

 Brian Rider