Looking Forward, Looking Backward

By William J. Nissen

Presented at the joint meeting of

The Chicago Literary Club and The Fortnightly

March 8, 2013

It is a warm Sunday in September 2011. My friend Paul and I are looking forward to a day of canoeing as we push off from a small floating dock on the North Shore Channel in Skokie. Downstream, where we are heading, is Chicago where the channel joins with the Chicago River.

Looking backward in time, I can see Paul when we first became friends. We were both first graders at Hitch Elementary School on the northwest side of Chicago. We grew up together in the same neighborhood and were classmates throughout elementary school. We also spent much of our time outside of school together, with a large part of our lives being our Boy Scout troop, where we both learned to paddle a canoe and to appreciate spending time in the outdoors. We spent many days paddling the Grumman aluminum canoes which were used by the Chicago Boy Scouts at that time.

While Paul and I have been lifelong friends, we did not paddle together after our days as Boy Scouts until 1990, when I bought a canoe. It was a seventeen foot long, two person canoe, and it was only natural that I would ask Paul if he wanted to go out in it. We paddled the new canoe that year, and since then we have paddled several times every year, always looking forward to the spring when we can go on the water for a new season of canoeing. The slow meandering Midwestern streams in this part of the country are ideal for our type of canoeing which is to enjoy the outdoors, and get some exercise, but not have to deal with fast moving rapids or steep drops in water level. Since 1990, we have paddled on many waterways in northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin, including the Fox, Du Page, Des Plaines, Kankakee, Chicago, Skokie, Kishwaukee, Mazon, Milwaukee and Mukwonago Rivers, the Illinois and Michigan Canal, the Skokie Lagoons, Horicon Marsh, Cedar Creek, Turtle Creek, Eagle Spring Lake and Lulu Lake.

Looking forward as we paddle downstream from Skokie on the North Shore Channel, we see tree lined shores which make it easy to forget that we are in the midst of a heavily populated suburban area. As we paddle downstream, we cross into the City of Chicago where the urban surroundings become more visible. At River Park on Foster Avenue in Chicago, the North Shore Channel ends as it flows into the Chicago River. Because the water level of the river drops at this point, there is a small waterfall in the park where the river falls a few feet to meet the level of the channel. As we continue south, we paddle through the Ravenswood neighborhood, where there are well-maintained homes with wooded yards along the river. Many of the residents who live along the river in Ravenswood have erected small boat docks in the river, and some have their boats tied up to these docks just off their back yards.

As we continue to paddle downstream, we see our lunch stop at Clark Park, which is on the east bank of the river between Addison and Belmont. We pull up the canoe on the shore and unpack our lunches. The sun is shining and there are other paddlers in the park and on the river, because there is a kayak rental concession here.

Looking backward in time, I can look around and see what stood on this site for most of the twentieth century until the late 1960s: Riverview Amusement Park. This was a favorite spot for Chicagoans during my boyhood. A place which I often visited was Aladdin’s Castle, which was a castle-shaped fun house adorned by a huge picture of Aladdin’s face. As you walked through the castle you would encounter attractions such as a room with mirrors that would each change your shape in a different way, to make you short or tall, fat or skinny. There was also a large rotating barrel you had to pass through, and a padded stair case you would slide down at the end. One of my earliest memories is getting caught in the rotating barrel, and being rescued by my Uncle Joe who pulled me out to safety.

Riverview had the standard amusement park rides such as a Ferris wheel and merry go round but much more. It had several roller coasters of varying difficulties, with the scariest one being the Bobs, which I never had the courage to ride. There were two parachutes, each of which was attached to a wire, and on each the rider would be lifted to the top of a tower and would parachute down the wire to the ground. There was a freak show with a man in front with a microphone trying to convince the people passing by to buy a ticket and enter the show. There was a large dunk tank where men sitting on collapsible seats would shout at passersby to try to get them to buy some baseballs to throw at a round target which, if hit, would cause the seat to collapse and dump the man into the tank of water below. Constantly walking around the park were shills carrying large prizes that were offered at some of the carnival games to try to convince people that these prizes could actually be won. Riverview has been replaced by modern and antiseptic theme parks such as Disneyland, but its unique urban authenticity, which suited the times in which it existed, will never be replicated.

Looking forward downstream from Clark Park, the river flows into downtown Chicago. Looking backward in time, I recall when Paul and I have paddled south from here, as far as Goose Island, and have seen the increasing industrial character of the river bank, much different from the leafy shores and well-kept houses of Ravenswood. The river also becomes much dirtier as you approach downtown, and if you have ever heard or used the expression that someone looks like a drowned rat, the expression will take on a new and more vivid meaning if you paddle between Ravenswood and downtown. On the water, we confirmed that Goose Island really is an island, because we paddled around it. In view of the differences between both the river and the adjoining landscape in Ravenswood, as compared to those farther south, it is not surprising that the persons who operate the kayak rental at Clark Park advise their customers to paddle north.

Looking forward to our paddle back up the Chicago River and North Shore Channel to our starting point in Skokie, Paul and I push off from Clark Park and begin paddling upstream. Although the channel and river do not have much current, there is enough that it is harder to paddle upstream than downstream. We keep paddling, however, and by late afternoon we are back at our starting point in Skokie.

Looking backward in time, I can see when I first acquired my canoe in 1990. I went to the Chicagoland Canoe Base, a long-established canoe shop on the northwest side of Chicago which not only sold canoes, but also served as a great source of information on canoes and canoeing in the Chicago area. I was looking for a quality canoe that would that I could use on the waterways in the Chicago area. The store clerks recommended, and I bought, a model known as the Old Town Canadienne. The Canadienne was manufactured by the Old Town canoe company in Maine, but it had been designed by Ralph Frese, the owner of the Chicagoland Canoe Base. The Canadienne is a wonderful design for paddling Midwestern streams, as it is stable on the water, it is easy to paddle in a straight line, and it is light for portaging.

Ralph Frese was known nationally in canoeing circles. The canoe base stood on the same site where Ralph’s father had operated a blacksmith’s shop, and Ralph used the same workshop for repairing canoes. Whenever a story appeared in the Chicago press on canoeing, Ralph was quoted. He maintained that Chicago owed its existence to the canoe, because Chicago’s location on the Chicago River was close to a short portage to the Des Plaines River, which permitted a canoeist to go from the Great Lakes through the Chicago River, across the portage to the Des Plaines River, and from there to the Illinois River and on to the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. It was this strategic location, according to Ralph, which gave Chicago its start as a transportation hub.

Ralph was proud of the Canadienne design. He had originally built Canadiennes himself but apparently the demand became greater than he could handle so he permitted Old Town to use the design. At some point, however, he decided to take the design away from Old Town, and he placed it with Bell Canoes, a small canoe manufacturer in Minnesota. Later I heard that he became unhappy with Bell, and took it away from Bell, so that new Canadiennes were no longer being made, and the only way to obtain a Canadienne was to buy a used one.

After more than fifteen years of paddling the Canadienne without any major incidents, Paul and I had an accident in April 2007 while paddling the Canadienne on Turtle Creek, which is a tributary of the Rock River in southern Wisconsin. The water was moving very fast that day due to spring snow melt and rain, and we hit a tree in the middle of the creek. After we got out of the capsized canoe, the canoe was caught on the tree with the tremendous force of the flowing water. It could not be dislodged, and it buckled in two. Fortunately, we were with a larger group that day, and we had help from some others who, using a rope and saw, were able to free the canoe from the tree. When it was finally freed, it popped back into shape, but there were big gouges in the sides where it had buckled and the metal gunwales were twisted. We were able to paddle it downstream to the takeout point, but it was apparent it would need some major repairs.

The next week, I called Ralph, and asked him if he could repair it for me. He told me to bring it in for him to look at. When I arrived at the Chicagoland Canoe Base with the canoe the next Saturday, and Ralph came out and looked at it, he winced. “How did you do that to my canoe?” he asked. I started to explain to him about the tree in the middle of the stream, and he interrupted me. He said “I can see you wrapped it around a tree, but I was asking how you could let that happen.” He proceeded to instruct me on the proper technique for avoiding an obstruction in the middle of a stream in fast moving water. In any event, Ralph said he had replacement gunwales and that he would repair the gouges in the sides, but that it would take at least two months. I felt grateful to him for agreeing to repair it, as I could not have easily replaced it with new Canadiennes no longer being made. Ralph was a true craftsman, and as promised, he repaired the canoe to the point where it performed as well as it always had. And Paul and I decided to forgo any more spring paddles in fast moving water.

In recent years, Ralph, being in his 80s, advertised that he wanted to retire and that his business was for sale. There were no takers, and this did not surprise me. Ralph’s business could not be sold, because the business was Ralph, and could not exist without him. In December 2012, Ralph died at the age of 86. His passing was mourned among canoeists both locally and nationally. A memorial paddle is scheduled for April 2013 on a section of the North Branch of the Chicago River which was designated as the Ralph Frese River Trail by the Cook County Forest Preserve District. One of Ralph’s canoes will be towed down the river empty in his honor.

Back in Skokie in September 2011, while pulling the canoe out of the North Shore Channel and looking backward over the day on the water, I feel fortunate to have spent such a beautiful day paddling. Due to our schedules, that turned out to be the last trip Paul and I took that season, but we were looking forward to the next spring when we would paddle again.