Come Sail Away- Yachting & the McLaughlins

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.