Skating at Duck Pond R W Johnson from The Evening Guide  Wednesday January 10, 1956 At one time there was a big frame skating rink on the east side of Mill Street some distance south of the viaduct. This burned down about 1880, so that in our early school days we skated outdoors on one or other of the various mill ponds. These were Helm's below Walton Street bridge, McCabe's at Ontario Street, Barrett's farther up, and Beamish's which later was called the File Factory Pond. It was the biggest and most popular of the four, but after Dr Corbett rebuilt the Orr's Pond dam to provide power for electrilc lights we flocked up there where we could skate a whole mile from the dam up to Boice's Bridge. On this big sheet of ice the horsemen used to lay a kite-shaped mile track and hold trotting races every winter. A few days' skating was generally followed by a snowfall, so that we always had more bob-sledding than skating. After a thaw, however, the snow on the ponds would be washed away, and one or two cold nights would give us skating again. Often such a change would give us ice all along the lake eastward. The accumulated barrier of ice ten feet high, formed by the splashing of the waves along the beach, would hold back the flood waters long enough so that the return of cold weather would enable us to start at Old Mac's swamp, cross Gage's Creek, go on to the Cedars, hobble through there a couple of hundred yards to Duck Harbour, and proceed past Green Point all the way to Hon Sydney Smith's estate on the outskirts of Cobourg. Stops could be made anywhere along the way to rest, eat lunch, or dry out wet feet at a cheerful bonfire. Combining skating with exploration down through the alders and musk-rat houses we had a pleasant and easy-going way of spending a Saturday afternoon. It was much better than the steady, monotonous exercise at Corbett's, where there was no protection from the cold north wind. There, however, the big boys would willingly face it, and put on a game of shinny (this was before the days of hockey sticks and hockey skates) with fifty players a side and goals about half a mile apart. Sometimes it was Protestant Hill against Englishtown, but nobody ever knew how many players came on or went off or what the score was at the end of the day. At Duck Harbour we had similar games of shinny, sometimes Town against TCS, that enabled us to renew acquaintance with boys against whom we had played rugby during the fall months. In those days me met Paddy Renison, Billy Broughall, Joe Seagram, one of the Ogilvie's from Montreal, a dark-skinned lad from the West Indies named Daykin, who was a wonderful cross-country runner, and many other fine fellows. On new ice there were always weak spots caused by current or weed-patches, and at such places there was always some lad who could blunder in up to his neck. I remember that one Saturday afternoon we were half an hour rescuing one of the TCS boys at Duck Harbour, and he was thoroughly exhausted before he was hauled out. We got results in such cases by forming a living chain, one of the bravest of us getting as close to the victim as possible on his stomach, with a fence rail or a long pole from somewhere, and others holding each the heels of the fellow ahead of him. There were many rather narrow escapes but the luck was with. On one of the winter bathing parties I remember that 'Joe' Vincent, who was, I think, a cousin of Mrs Haultain, went through into four feet of water and lost one of his skates kicking to keep afloat before he found out that he could touch bottom. After we got him out he decided that he couldn't get any wetter, and he was unwilling to give up his skate. So as we stood by to help him out again he dove in again, located the skate and came up smiling. Can boys take care of themselves and work out their own problems as well now-a-days when they play their hockey indoors with factory-made equipment? Peter Landry tells me that bird-lovers make interesting discoveries in summer in the swamps below Duck, and I hope that the many rare botanical specimens that we used to get there still thrive. He finds several birds there now that were not summer residents then. The swamp was almost impassible with water waist-deep in May and June, and wading in the muck was rather difficult. How we would love to be able to explore those swamps again, and to note the many changes that have taken place in the [last] sixty or seventy years!