Low Down Articles
150 Years of History in the Hills
Article 21 of 24
This article first appeared in the "150 Years of History in the Hills" column in the October 18, 2017 issue of the The Low Down to Hull and Back News.
Reprinted with permission. Search complete list of Low Down Articles.
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This is the twenty-first in a continuing series of photo essays celebrating our Gatineau Valley history and heritage during Canada's sesquicentennial year. The series was created by the Gatineau Valley Historical Society (GVHS), in collaboration with The Low Down to Hull and Back News. All images are courtesy of the GVHS.
Knots, badges, and Scout's honour
A British Army officer, Robert Baden-Powell, is credited with co-founding the scouting movement in the early 1900s. But did you know that it was another Brit - one who immigrated to Canada in 1928 - who founded the First Wakefield Scouts in 1953? His name was Patrick ('Pat') Evans, and he was an active resident of Chelsea for many years, until his death 1999. As an employee at the Scout headquarters in Ottawa, he used the Wakefield Scouts as a model for field-testing national policies and procedures during the 1950s and '60s.
Over that period, Pat created a series of six journals, bound with handcrafted wooden covers, which chronicled the First Wakefield Scouts happenings. In addition to hundreds of photographs, the journals illustrate the history of this local scout troop in painstaking detail through captioned, hand-drawn cartoons, news clippings, and programs from national and international jamborees - all supplemented with descriptions added in his meticulous, spidery script. The journals can be viewed at the GVHS archives in the lower level of the Chelsea Library, and are also online at Scouts.
