By Michael Bennett
Local Journalism Initiative
The Ridgetown Independent
While researching a historical plaque at Rondeau Park, Mark Van Raay came across some interesting information that led the Bates Drive resident to write a book.
“Your Obedient Servant – The Isaac Gardiner Journal” is the story of Rondeau Park’s first superintendent, covering the first eight years of his tenure from 1896-1904.
Gardiner was 63 when he became the superintendent.
Van Raay transcribed the daily journals compiled by Gardiner, who documented the early days of Rondeau. It was one of only two provincial parks in Ontario at the time. Algonquin Park was the other.
Van Raay wrote the narrative on the Craford Settlement plaque, the third historical marker erected by the Chatham-Kent Heritage Network to highlight significant sites and moments in Chatham-Kent history.
The plaque was unveiled in a ceremony earlier this year just outside the provincial park, on Bates Drive at the Ross Drain, where Margaret and John Craford established their homestead in 1811. They were the first European settlers along Chatham-Kent’s Lake Erie shoreline.
While researching, Van Raay talked to Paul Wiper, Rondeau Park Superintendent in the 1970s and ’80s.
“I asked him for some cool stories about Rondeau, and he said there was a book in the office when he was superintendent,” Van Raay said. “He said he brought it home one day to read at suppertime and put it down at three in the morning, that it was really interesting.”
The 120-year-old book was Gardiner’s handwritten journal.
“He (Wiper) thought it had been destroyed,” Van Raay said.
With his interest piqued, Van Raay went to the park office to talk to Brad Connor, the current park superintendent, to see if he knew anything about the book.
“He said, ‘It’s right here in my desk,’” Van Raay said. “He pulled out this old-looking journal that was falling apart; it’s on onion skin paper, which is what they used to make duplicates back in the day.”
“It was all in cursive writing, old-school handwriting … you can barely read a lot of it,” Van Raay said.
He told Connor, “You have to get this digitized.”
“Someone did a summary in the 1970s, but other than that, no one had transcribed it,” Van Raay said.
After getting permission from park supervisors, Van Raay was allowed to take the journal to the Kent Genealogical Society, which used its specialized equipment to digitize the writings.
Van Raay was then permitted to transcribe the journal into a book he spent the past winter writing.
“It’s basically his day-to-day entries that covered the course of his first eight years in the park,” Van Raay said. “There are no other books that survived; the others are either gone or destroyed.”
Van Raay said the entries are mainly copies of letters to his boss, Thomas Gibson, reporting on the park from 1896 to 1904.
Gardiner’s first entries described his challenges with the Bates and Richardson families while establishing Rondeau as a provincial park.
“They had to deal with people who logged the park and duck hunters who weren’t used to regulations,” Van Raay said. “There was a whole transition trying to preserve the park when that kind of framework wasn’t in place beforehand, so that was bound to ruffle some feathers.”
The book also discusses importing moose and deer into the park and the trade with Washington D.C., as Gardiner sent brown squirrels to the U.S. capitol in exchange for grey squirrels.
There are also references to Gardiner building the first pavilion in Rondeau, mainly because of his own Gardiner Family Band, which included his seven sons, who toured southwestern Ontario.
Believe it or not, the book also touches on Gardiner’s conflicts with the local politicians of the day.
Another interesting connection is George Bartlett, superintendent of Algonquin Park, who eventually retired, married Gardiner’s daughter Mary in Rondeau and moved to Ridgetown.
Bartlett is buried with the Gardiners at Trinity Church, east of Morpeth.
More than 200 copies of the book have already been sold as Van Raay is considering a second printing.
The book is available at the Bayview Market and Visitor Centre in Rondeau and Books Brothers and Turns & Tales in Chatham.
