By John Francis, Bruce Peninsula Press
This is the 51st annual Chi-Cheemaun Festival. I don’t know which is more impressive — that the vessel herself continues to perform perfectly in her 51st full summer or that the Festival has been equally long-lived.
But the 2025 Chi-Cheemaun Festival (aka Big Canoe Weekend, aka Cheech Weekend) promises to be as exciting as ever. There will be a three-day JP Johnstone Slow-Pitch Tournament, complete with beer garden and food booth; there will be children’s events Saturday and Sunday and an outdoor movie Friday night; there will be fireworks Saturday night, and lots more — see the ad on page 4 and the centre spread of this newspaper.
Many of this year’s events — the Virtual Reality headset games for example — are recent additions; others — the ball tournament and the children’s events — have been around since year one.
But for the first 25 years, the most popular events were the greased pole and the cross-the-harbour Tug-of-War. Those events fell by the wayside over the years and the Festival dwindled for a while. That all changed in 2010 with the introduction of the Cardboard Boat Races.
The Bruce Peninsula Press coverage from 2010 began: “It’s been at least 20 years since there were 600 people around the head of Tobermory Harbour laughing and cheering and taking thousands of pictures. But it happened at Big Canoe Weekend’s Cardboard Boat Races.”
The story predicted that the next year there would be 30 entries and 2,000 spectators. That prediction wasn’t off by much.
The COVID years were hard on the Festival in general and the Cardboard Boat Races in particular, but they roared back in 2023 and 2024 and organizers are hoping for great things in 2025 for both the Festival and the races.
With construction materials limited to cardboard, glue, duct tape and latex paint, you’d expect most boats to have a useful life of one or two races. But you’d be wrong. Many vessels have been back again and again.
Minions, produced in the Larrivee/Brown cardboard boatworks in Milton, Ontario, raced for the first time in 2015 (see photo). She will be back again this year, accompanied by her sister vessel Chee-ky Man, which was launched in 2017 and came first in the 2023 and 2024 races.
But the Larrivee boatworks is not resting on its laurels; the gnomes (aka Dan Larrivee) have been busy. A new vessel — based on an ocean-going battleship — is scheduled to make her maiden voyage at this year’s Cardboard Boat Races. The as-yet-unnamed vessel is eleven feet long and will hold “three large teenagers”.
The finished stern section of the newest Larrivee cardboard boatworks production is ready to be glued and taped on to the rest of the boat.
The bow and middle sections are glued together in the Larrivee cardboard boatworks in Milton. Dan Larrivee plans to have the vessel finished and ready to carry “three large teenagers” in time for this year’s races.
The Cardboard Boat Races begin at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday the 14th, at the head of Little Tub Harbour in Tobermory. Thrills, chills, spills and excitement are promised.
Plan to make a day of it! There is no admission charge for any of the events (although paid parking fees apply).
