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What’s New In Kemp’s World!!!
Just Released In Canadian Woodworking & Home Improvement
When I picked up the mail this morning I was delighted to see fresh copies of Canadian Woodworking and Home Improvement magazine with my latest story in it. A dozen years ago I was privileged to travel to Haida Gwaii on the BC coast to interview and photograph Haida canoe carvers and artists. John Bennett and Christian White opened their workshops and homes to me and the Haida Heritage Centre let me run around the place annoying people with my camera and questions. They could not have been any more gracious and welcoming. The result was this story and a lifelong bond with the islands and people.
People often ask me where I would like to go back to in the world and my immediate answer is Haida Gwaii. Having worked in more than forty countries, I am pretty picky.
The response of editor Rob Brown to the story in his front-of-the-book comments knocked me off my feet. I worked with Rob a couple of years ago on the Rideau Gates story and he was effusive in his praise. This time he outdid himself… “Projects are great, but my favourite article in this issue is by Bruce Kemp. Bruce wrote a piece about rebuilding the gates in the Rideau Canal lock system in Ontario a couple of years ago, which I received more letters about (almost all positive too!) than for any other article in recent memory. He’s hit another home run here. The “Canoes of Haida Gwaii” take you deep into British Columbia’s Queen Charlotte Islands, where the Haida people have been building and using canoes for centuries. It’s an area of our great country I have never visited, but after reading his story I feel like I’ve explored those impressive forests and have met incredible craftspeople from the distant past.”
Take a minute to visit Canadian Woodworking & Home Improvement Magazine’s website to read the full story:
New Work In Wooden Boat
My latest work with Wooden Boat Magazine, https://www.woodenboat.com, hit the newsstands just before Christmas I it arrived in the mail today. I was pleased to be asked to review Gordon Miller’s “Pacific Voyages: The Story of Sail in the Great Ocean” for this edition. Published by Douglas & McIntyre, it begins with the Polynesians and carries through to modern European explorations. For the historically inclined, this is a terrific timeline spanning multiple eras and cultures. Well-written and beautifully illustrated, it was easy to write the review and I am keeping my review copy on my bookshelf for both the aesthetic pleasure it gives and the information I can mine from it.
Also in this issue is a short piece in the “Currents” section on the restoration of the 5.5 Metre – Jill – by Jason Williams of Thornbury, ON. Lovely little boats – the smallest currently recognized under the International Rule (Metre Rule). I encountered Jill at the 5.5 North Americans last August and was immediately swept up in their magic.
Lots of other great stuff in this edition and even if you only sail a Wooden Boat from your armchair, it is worth a read.
Rideau Gates Go Global
The highly esteemed Wooden Boat Magazine from Maine just ran a new version of the Rideau Lock Gates story in its opening column, Currents. Senior Editor Tom Jackson liked the piece enough to give it a global reach. The full story is visible in the editorial section of my website.
New and Meaningful Work
Just as the pandemic was starting to collect steam, I was privileged to be allowed to photograph the construction of the huge lock gates that control the waters of the Rideau Canal. These gates represent a piece of working history preservation and heritage carpentry techniques. Not everyone’s cup of tea, I know, but vastly important in terms of the Canadian landscape. After nearly four months of working with the Parks Canada Gate Shop carpenters who build and install these gates, I ended up with a collection of historic documentary photographs – the first time (to the best of my knowledge) that this has been done. But it wasn’t enough just to document the building process. Documentary work is like the tree falling in the forest – there has to be someone who hears it. After a bit of a search for an outlet, I came across Rob Brown and Canadian Woodworking and Home Improvement Magazine. CWHI was gracious enough to take the complete story (not all the pictures, however, as that would require at least a full book) and has just published a nine-page story in the April 2023 edition. I am including four pages from the story here and to see the full story, go to CWHI’s website at:
Canadian Woodworking Magazine
Legacy Books
Waypoint Kicks Off New Custom Publishing
We are pleased to announce that Waypoint Press Custom Publishing has just completed its first custom project – a 258 page book entitled, “The Love of God” It was printed in both hard cover (w/dust jacket) and paperback versions. “The Love of God” has been published as a short print-run for private distribution. Waypoint is actively seeking other custom publishing projects. For more on the Custom Publishing Service click on the picture.
Catalogue Imagery
Earlier this spring I was privileged to work with Ann and Nancy from the Merrickville and District Historical Society. Our task was to create a new inventory catalogue of the Society’s collection of artifacts. These treasures are housed in the Blockhouse Museum in the lovely village of Merrickville. We photographed several hundred items ranging from a very cunning, homemade rat trap to an elegant rapier along with hundreds of agricultural implements and tools used in various trades. There was even a nicely boxed collection of tools used in the building of the original Rideau Canal in the 1830s. (Click on the image to see a small gallery)
I was pleased with the results and would encourage you to stop by the Blockhouse to see the real thing. If you operate a business anywhere between Ottawa and Kingston, my services are always available to you – you can contact me through this website or by calling 613-285-7311,
One of the most human and informative travel books of the year. It’s a voyage everyone wants to undertake, but few get to make. Journalist Bruce Kemp sailed aboard a Laker from the heart of the continent to its eastern edge and back. Funny, uplifting and revealing. Mix a little Bill Bryson in with some imaginative whales and you’ll laugh your ass off. The Whales of Lake Erie is a must read for anyone fascinated with our Great Lakes. (Click on the image for more info)
Whales of Lake Erie Now In Print
The Whales of Lake Erie Now Available on Amazon.com and iBook
We were surprised at the interest and response to our eBook, The Whales of Lake Erie. We had so many requests for a print version that it made sense to put it on paper for those who like the feel of a book in hand. Whales, as we refer to it around the shop, will be available from The Nautical Mind in Toronto, The Sarnia Book Keeper, FIncher’s Books and Gifts in Goderich and Kincardine along with other select bookstores throughout Ontario and Michigan.
For more information click here for the Waypoint Press pageWaypoint Press
New Story About Bruce In Toronto Star…
I was delighted and extremely flattered when this appeared in the Toronto Star’s Weekend Edition on Thursday, Jan.7. Many thanks to Heddy Sorour, a good journalist. It is a terrific 70th birthday present.
| www.thestar.com/news/canada/2021/01/07/award-winning-journalists-passion-turns-to-publishing.html?rf |
Visual History Tells Your Story
Only one thing tells your corporate story so potential and existing clients will think of all that your company can do for them, and that is a complete visual history of the projects you undertake. Project documentation is a necessity in today’s corporate world when just saying you can do something is not good enough. Great photos show what you have accomplished and will sway the decisions of people considering you as a builder or supplier. (Clink on the picture to link you to our new gallery)
Bubble Cruising Along The Lazy River
The Covid 19 lock down doesn’t mean you have to give up having fun – you just have to be smart about it and take precautions. One of the coolest ways to dodge the lock down is to form your own bubble and the best way to do that is on your own boat (or at least a well-maintained and cleansed charter yacht). We recently formed our bubble to make a safety-first cruise aboard aa LeBoat 42 on the Rideau Canal and enjoyed every minute of it. Click on the picture to see the full gallery of images from that trip.
Artist in the Ascent
We are pleased to present the work of our colleague, Meighen Jackson, in a new mini-gallery on our photojournalism page. Meighen is an established American artist with a growing following throughout the United States. Her work appears in Canada at art fairs in Toronto. She’s worth checking out. The paintings and 3-D paper sculptures in this show are both joyful and whimsical. More of her work can be seen on her website at: www.meighenjacksonart.com
The Fugitive’s Son Is Now Available…
The Fugitive’s Son is now available from Amazon.ca and a select, independent bookstore near you.
Weather Bomb 1913 Still Being Praised 3 Years After Launch…
Nearly two years after its launch (November, 2017), our Great Lakes history offering, Weather Bomb 1913: Life and Death on the Great Lakes, is still getting great reviews from highly regarded publications. This morning, Mr. Rideau – Ken Watson – sent me this review that just appeared in the August edition of the Ontario Historical Society’s Bulletin. It speaks volumes for the work…Waypoint Press
Now In Wooden Boat Magazine
After more than eighty years underwater, Roald Amundsen’s last Arctic exploration vessel has been raised and brought home to Norway. Read about this epic endeavour in my latest feature for Wooden Boat Magazine on my editorial page https://brucekempphotography.net/editorial/
Check out this month’s issue (August 2019) of Lakeland Boating where my story on Lake-of-the-Woods’ legendary lady, Grace Anne II is a major feature.
Praise For Weather Bomb 1913 from Reviewers
“Weather Bomb is especially fine when Kemp describes the real scene of desperate sailors and the near shore. After this book, I am not sure that there is much left to tell about the Storm of 1913. But there is much left to say about subsequent blows on the Great Lakes, stories left to tell.”
Andrew Armitage, Read This – Owen Sound Sun Times, 16/06/19
Read the full review on our Waypoint Press Page
And A Reader Writes…
“Weather Bomb 1913” by Bruce Kemp was the first book I had picked up in 5 years and I was barely able to put it down. Read it cover-to-cover in 2 days and have re-read it again since.” – Blake Pite, Sarnia, Ontario
New Work
Laurie Carter: Author’s Bio Pic
Author bio pic for Laurie Carter who has just launched the third book: Emily Carr’s BC – South Coast to the Interior — in her Emily Carr’s travel series. It was shot with a Nikon D750, Nikkor 70-300mm, on Auto White Balance and Centre-weighted Metering. The ISO was 1250 and the exposure was 1/50 @ F8. The lighting was natural light in a small room.
Jalapeno Season
Fresh jalapeños from the garden. Taken with a Nikon D750, 90 mm Tamron Macro, natural light on Auto White Balance with an ISO of 1,250 and an exposure of 1/50 @ 3.5. At this time of year you don’t have to go very far to get good photographs. A walk in the garden will suffice. This one was shot in our kitchen on a dollar store backdrop with a handmade cutting board for the base — simple, simple, simple!
Fox Snake
Last fall while hiking across the Merrickville over the Rideau River I ran into this snake. It was about a meter long and was sunning itself on the wooden planks of the pedestrian decking. I know the planks were warm because I got down for an eye-to-eye. My best guess is that it was a rare Ontario Fox snake. I shot this image with a Nikon D750, Tamron 90mm macro and a small ring light. The exposure was 1/60 @ f11, ISO 320, Meter mode: Centre Weighted and white balance set on Manual/flash. Only light processing in Photoshop (contrast, sharpening and cropping). Lovely snake (although my wife screams when she even sees a snake picture). If you ever run into one of these beautiful creatures, please don’t harm it. They are rare and excellent at controlling mice, rats and other vermin. You might also report any sighting to the Ontario Federation of Naturalists.
SweetWater Lives Seeking Other Venues
After a highly successful showing at Vistek Ottawa, my show is now available to other galleries and museums around Ontario. It is comprised of 14 – 16 X 20″ prints portraying life in the merchants fleets of the Great Lakes. The above shot, called “Deck Work” is the lead photo in the show. It was taken in Thunder Bay at the grain terminal in December of 2012. Originally shot in colour, I found the action in the image so compelling that I dropped it into black and white. The shot was taken with a Nikon D700, 24-120mm Nikkor lens at 800 ISO. Camera was on manual mode and the exposure was 1/60 @ f8 producing a 16 bit NEF (Raw) image. Despite my chattering teeth the camera was hand held. For more information on how to host the show, please contact [email protected] or call 613-269-3810
Purcell Mountains, above Golden B.C.
Reaching back into my salad days of Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, I recently reworked a not very old image from BC for part of my contribution to the Merrickville Artist Guild’s annual Studio Tour. The image was taken with a Nikon D200 and a 24-120mm lens set at 1/500, f8 with an ISO rating of 200. The white balance was handed over to Auto, but the image was taken as a full colour 16bit shot then reduced in Photoshop with the desaturation slider. I played with the contrast until I was happy with the sharpness of the mountains and quality of the sky. The long and short of all this is “never be afraid to go back and revisit historic images from your files.”
Re-Enactor Project Continued…
I was privileged to photograph my friend Vic Suthren for a project I am doing about historic re-enactors. Vic is an historian and writer. His most recent book Black Flag of the North, the story of the great Atlantic pirate Roberts, was just released by Dundurn Press and Vic’s account makes Johnny Depp’s pirate character look like a rank amateur. Worth the read. Vic is one of those guys who is a true keeper of our history.
Photo data: Taken with a Nikon D750 and a 50mm Nikkor lens. Manual exposure, at 800 ISO, Auto White Balance, shutter speed 1/50 sec and aperture F14. The lighting was natural daylight with gold and white reflectors (not apparent here) with a plain white fabric (custom made) backdrop. The finished image was minimally processed with Photoshop. We took nearly 125 images during the session resulting in a selection of 65 portraits.
Harbour Sunset
This image was taken on a visit to my hometown of Sarnia, Ontario. As I often do, I took a drive down by the government docks and spotted a freighter loading grain at the elevators. The image was taken on a D750 with a 70-300mm Nikkor zoom at 1/1000 secs. F11, ISO 500 on manual exposure and centre-weighted metering. No filtration or extreme saturation. This is exactly what my eye saw. I love the beauty that even industrial landscapes can offer, and do not condemn or promote them. For me, they’re just there – a part of the modern world we live in, like the mountains and forests.
Breaking News!!!
Waypoint Press was honoured this week with an invitation from the Michigan State Library to submit Weather Bomb 1913: Life and Death on the Great Lakes to their Notable Books competition. We believe this is the first time a Canadian work has been recognized.
Organizations We Support
Save Ontario Shipwrecks [email protected]
Merrickville Artists’ Guild http://www.magartists.ca
Friends of the Rideau http://www.rideaufriends.com
Merrickville & District Historical Society http://www.merrickvillehistory.org
Rideau Valley Archaeological Society http://facebook.com/rideauvalleyarchaeologicalsociety
Toronto Brigantine http://www.torontobrigantine.org
Shellbacks http://www.shellbacks.weebly.com
On The Newsstands
Power Whenever You Need It
Cruising is best when you can pick your spot to linger in. After a long passage it’s great just to throw the hook out and sit back with a sundowner and a book and not worry about anything.
The problem comes when you need to use your battery power for all the little things like lights, windlasses and nav gear.
In my Great Lakes Scuttlebutt article “Power When You Need It” I go over some options for making sure your boat’s system can generate enough power, so you don’t have to ration it or fret over battery levels.
I touch on wind generators, solar panels and the newly re-engineered hydro generators that are becoming more and more popular with offshore cruisers and weekenders.
To read the full story, go to https://digitaledition.greatlakesscuttlebutt.com/winter-issue-2025/page-64
What Writers Read…
One of the Greatest Minds of Any Age
A lot of folks think Ken Burns discovered Leon-ardo Da Vinci because of his recent PBS docu-mentary. Don’t get me wrong, I love Ken Burns’ work, and the doc was as beautiful as you’ve come to expect from him. The truth is Da Vinci has been discovered by every succeeding gen-eration since his death in 1519. Still, the problem I’ve had with most biographies of Da Vinci is that many are, in a word, boring! They read like an undergraduate paper crank-ed out in a caffeine-fueled, all-nighter. Not so Walter Isaacson’s epic bio.
“Leonardo Da Vinci” is a book for thinkers and knowledge seekers with-out boiler plate or hyperbole.
Isaacson can write. He brings the reader into the story quickly. The writing style is elegant and a pleasure to read and the research pro-ducing this tome is impeccable. Couple this with beautifully re-produced images of paintings, drawings and architecture and you’ve got a book to leave to your grandkids.
Da Vinci was illegitimate. The son of Caterina Lippi, an orphaned peasant girl, and Floren-tine notary, Piero Da Vinci, Leonardo entered the world in the village of Vinci, on April 15, 1452. As Isaacson points out, it was the “golden age of bastards.”
Being born out of wed-lock was not as detrimental as it has been in the recent past. Fathers siring bastards often took them under their wing providing financial and educational support – being true fathers in all but name only. This appears to be the case of Piero and Leonardo.
Leonardo spent his first years, not with his mother, but with his grandparents. It was only after his step-mother and grandfather died that the young artist moved to Florence to be with his father.
Having some rudi-mentary mathematics, Da Vinci might be considered to have been ill-prepared for his future calling as an artist, engineer and inventor, but that’s not the case. At the age of fourteen, he was apprenticed to the sculp-tor Andrea del Verro-cchio. This was an era when art was treated more as science and craft than emotional evocation.
Growing up in Florence must have been wonder-ful. It was arguably one of the greatest cities in the western world. Soaring domes, rule-making architecture, a stable political structure with a self-serving in-fluence from the church. What more could an artistically bent kid want?
Isaacson covers all of this and more with his detailed research. But he points out the thing that made Da Vinci different, empirical observation.
“I see therefore I am,” could have been the mantra which guided Leonardo throughout his life. His physical observ-ations led him to break-throughs in painting, anatomy, industrial metal casting, hydro-dynamics, architecture, civil-ian and military machinery, even crude attempts at flying mach-ines.
The guy had his nose in everything.
“Leonardo Da Vinci” follows the man from Florence to Milan to France. Isaacson takes the time to place Da Vinci’s output in the context of his travels and historical event horizons. This approach rounds the story and brings it to a smooth finish for the reader.
Life was not without turmoil and competition. Michelangelo Buonarr-oti of “David” fame was one of his major competitors. While Mic-helangelo produced a vast amount of work during his working life, Leonardo left a lot of stuff undone or, like the Mona Lisa, stretched its completion on for de-cades.
His private life had its ups and downs too. Openly gay, Leonardo’s ward and lover, Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno – more commonly known as Andrea Salai, was capricious and self-centred taking much from the maestro and giving only enough in return to keep his position as servant and lover.
The artist/engineer also suffered from fickle-pat-ron-syndrome. Bouncing from Cesare Borgia to Milan’s Ludovico Sforza and Charles d’Amboise, to King Francis I of France, da Vinci supped at many tables in many different disguises.
In Milan he became a set and production designer for Sforza. He also began work on and immense equestrian statue, il cavallo (the horse), to commemorate the Duke of Milan. The exigencies of war demanded the vast amount of bronze casting the statue would have taken, for a few small canons that did the Milanese royals little good in the end.
Not all his projects were ever finished. Many were left only as drawings in his phenomenal collect-ion of notebooks. He did succeed in painting one of the most remarkable images in the history of the western world – The Last Supper.”
Although in a delicate state today, the painter’s approach to perspective, subject placement and the obvious conflicting emotions of the Apostles and Jesus were new and radical.
Leonardo’s accomplish-ments and unrealized ideas fill manuscripts and minds even today. By the end of Isaacson’s book, I found myself wondering why we didn’t have a global celebration to commemorate this genius’ birth. I’d be happy with a Leonardo Day on April 15 every year.
If you’re going to read one biography this year, read Walter Isaacson’s “Leonardo Da Vinci” and don’t forget to watch the Burns doc on it as well.
Leonardo Da Vinci Author: Walter Isaacson 599 pages Publisher: Simon & Shuster ©2017
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Weather Bomb 1913: Life and Death on the Great Lakes is Waypoint Press’ first publication.Visit this page often to check out our latest offerings.