As most of you are aware, one of the many gems in the Parkwood Archives collection is
the family home movies. These home movies catch a glimpse of the McLaughlin
Family at home and abroad, a snippet of time, at parties or relaxing and
sharing each others’ company.
A favoured home movie to watch is the family out on their
yacht at the Belleville Yacht Races throughout the 1920s. This shows groups of
people lounging on the deck, soaking up the sunlight, and sporting the latest
yachting fashions of the “beautiful people” decade, the roaring twenties, with
its wealth and luxury.
Tonights' Parkwood 2012 Benefit Gala, Come Sail Away, is celebrating Sam McLaughlin’s love of boating. He
is quoted, “when in 1924 I decided to "ease off" I found there were
many avenues of new interest. From my bicycling days I had loved speed -
competitive speed. When I grew up I became the proud possessor of a fast motor
boat - fast for those days, because it would speed from the Oshawa waterfront
to the Royal Canadian Yacht Club in Toronto in an hour and a half. Late in 1925
I commissioned an R-class yacht to be built in an attempt to bring the
international Richardson Cup, emblematic of the championship of the Great Lakes
in that class, to the Royal Canadian Yacht Club of which I was a member. She
was designed by Bingley Benson, built at Oakville, and named after my youngest
daughter, Eleanor.” The Eleanor did go on to win the
Richardson Cup, in 1926, for Sam McLaughlin.
Come Sail Away will offer this evenings guests an
opportunity to see Parkwood and the history of this National Historic Site in a
different light, celebrating a snippet of the family history, while raising
funds to preserve the property as it approaches its centennial. The funds
raised this year being applied to the Greenhouse Conservation Project. Like all
things that age, living through a century of seasonal weather changes, hundreds
of thousands of people in and out the doors; changes in technology and modes of
thinking; the walls of Parkwood have marvellous stories to tell, when they speak,
and Come Sail Away is an opportunity
to tell one of those stories.
