The Bridge Over the Humber River

Does everybody know that the little Creek on the Club property is the source of the Humber River? At the rear of the property there is a wide swath of exposed gravel gouged out of the ground by Hurricane Hazel in October 1954. From reports of the time the Humber River swelled to 107 metres at its narrowest in Woodbridge.

From the Canadian Encyclopedia, “Hurricane Hazel struck the Toronto area on 15-16 October, 1954, with devastating results. It was Canada’s worst hurricane and Toronto’s worst natural disaster.

During the storm, winds reached 124 km/h and over 200 millimetres of rain fell in just 24 hours. This horrific storm left 81 dead, nearly 1900 families homeless, and caused between $25 and $100 million in damages (modern-day cost has been estimated at over $1 billion).”

Wild brook trout and rainbow trout swim and spawn in the river that flows under the bridge at the Club property. Atlantic salmon have also been introduced. The trout like the bridge most times pass out of mind. Once I remember walking over the bridge with my father. He looked at me and walked haltingly for a moment motioning at the steel of the bridge. His few deliberate words in English blew up then as now into something much bigger, “Frank Hutter built the bridge”.

The cost of the bridge probably ranges from $20,000 to $50,000. There is no plaque to commemorate his donation. Just so, there is also no plaque to remember the men who built the clubhouse. Time, materials, and sweat equity erected the original part with the kitchen. Then a sunny dining room was added with washroom facilities.

The club almost had a hockey team abundance of carpenters. Some of them worked at the Science Centre building and taking down displays… Kobetitsch, Kraker, and Kump. At picnics the ineffable Mr Tramposch would wander the picnic tables and the Clubhouse with his Accordion and a smile like I’ve never seen again. For almost a millennium Gottscheers and Slovenes had been neighbours and danced to the same accordions in the southwest corner of lower Carinthia (Unter Krain) now known as Slovenia.

The bridge over the Humber River would carry the visiting buses from New York, Cleveland, Milwaukee at the Treffen hosted by the Club in 1977.