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Canoe Connoisseur
BY JOHN ALLEN
I love to read because I am interested in everything. Today's young people spend too much time with their peers and not enough time reading. They don't learn as much from their peers."
Those are the words of Ralph Frese, environmentalist, crusader, historian, lecturer, writer, blacksmith and canoeist supreme. Known as "Mr. Canoe," he's a man who has lived most of his 73 years within a 15-minute radius of his boyhood home on the northwest side of Chicago, yet has an intimate knowledge of nearly all the rivers and streams of Illinois.
Frese worries that today's young people are missing important life lessons because they pay too much attention to each other and not enough to what their elders are trying to pass on to them. He doesn't fault the youngsters, blaming instead the busy world in which they live. "Between school, sports, video games and computers, they don't have time for things like canoeing," Frese said. "That's too bad because canoeing gets us to slow down and become more intimate with Mother Nature."
Frese's love of nature began at an early age. "I grew up when there were still wetland prairies around here," he said, pointing to the area around his canoe shop at Narragansett Avenue and Irving Park Road "It was native prairie filled with blooming shooting stars and compass plants, all the stuff that we're now trying to restore. In fact, I inadvertently burned prairie as a kid when my little fire to roast a potato got out of hand. Now I find out it's the thing to do." Though he didn't know how to swim, Frese desperately wanted a boat so he could fish at the nearby Riis Park Lagoon. In 1940, a neighbor who had built a canvas kayak in a high school shop class joined the Marines, and his father sold Frese the boat for $15. "I was admiral of my own navy at age 14," Frese deadpaned. He and a fishing buddy who had helped raise the money would July 2000 13
Frese carries a canoe down to the north branch of the Chicago River for a day of paddling. A 12-mile stretch of the river has been designated the Ralph C. Frese Canoe Trail. hand-carry the 35-pound kayak the mile-and-a-half to the park, an effort that provided many hours of bliss until the spring day when they were "politely" informed that boats were not allowed in the lagoon. "I'm out there floating around and hear this stentorian voice like God Himself saying, 'What the hell are you doing in there with that? Get out of there!' I look up and there's an eight-foot-tall policeman," said Frese, chuckling. Loss of their home port led "Admiral" Frese and his pal to search for adventure on the nearby Chicago and DesPlaines rivers. Because he had no car, he built a trailer and hitch for his bicycle in his father's blacksmith shop. "All the traffic would stop to watch this crazy kid with a boat," Frese said. "I'd ride my bike 15 miles to the Skokie Lagoons, carrying the boat, sailing rig, pontoons, my fishing gear, my lunch and the other kid on the handlebars. It took 55 minutes. Boy, the fishing up there was something." Though it was highly polluted at the time, Frese became intimately familiar with the Chicago River— so much so that in later years, a 12-mile stretch of the north branch would be designated as the Ralph C. Frese Canoe Trail. "The basic canoe trip is not about the water quality, but what you discover along the banks," he said. "Every river has a different story to tell."
By the early 1950s Frese had served in the military, dropped out of college, married and joined his father in the blacksmithing business. "My father and I were professional chiselers," said Frese, the fourth generation of his family to work as a smith. "We did all the tool sharpening for stone masons, bricklayers, granite cutters, cut stone workers, marble setters and tile setters. The building boom after World War II kept us busy." Frese still found time for the outdoors, and at age 24 accepted his father-in-law's invitation to help lead a local Boy Scout troop. "I didn't know that much about scouting, but I wanted to get the kids out to share my discoveries in nature," he said. In an empty portion of the Carl Frese & Son Blacksmith Shop at 4019 N. Narragansett, Frese began building canoes for use by his scouts. "We built a few kayaks with nitrate dope," he said. "Then fiber-glass came on the scene. Here was a material to make the boats almost kid-proof, so I started experimenting with that. It finally got to the point where I invested the money and built a fiberglass mold that could crank out little 16-foot traditional canoes. "I built six for our troop," Frese continued. "Then a bunch of the 14 OutdoorIllinois 
Frese, who considers himself a traditionalist, says he runs an unusual canoe shop. In addition to canoes, kayaks and rowing shells; the shop offers paddle sport equipment and clothing, books and videos, repairs and restorations, trips and craft. fathers wanted to build one for their families, so we had about 10 or 12 in our troop. Other troops heard about it, other scouting districts, Girl Scouts. Before I knew it, I had 500 or 600 of these little kit canoes in this area." He also had unwittingly begun a new career: canoe supplier. To offset the cost of building canoes, he began honoring friends' requests to stock and sell those manufactured by such firms as Klepper and Old Town. As the years passed, his Chicagoland Canoe Base expanded its inventory of boats and related gear and now sells 300 to 400 canoes and kayaks per year. Don Schueman, one of four employees, said the shop offers more than 200 different models of canoes, kayaks and rowing shells from more than 30 manufacturers. Canoes sell for $500 to $3,500 each, depending on size, quality and manufacturer. Kayaks sell for $400 to $5,000. "The most unusual canoe shop in the USA," as its promotional literature claims, also offers paddle-sport equipment and clothing, books and videos, boat repairs and restorations, guided canoe trips and a 32-boat rental fleet. In addition to boat sales, Frese and his crew still accept commissions to build up to six canoes each year. These, however, are not the little 16-foot fiberglass models he built for the scouts. They are 20- to 35-foot fiberglass replicas of the birchbark and dugout canoes used by Native Americans and the French fur traders. "I'm very much a traditionalist and I'm a romantic," Frese said. "I got to thinking one day about making a canoe that's different. Why not try making one that looks like the old birchbarks?"
Using a real birchbark he had acquired, Frese took a rubbing of the pattern, had it silk-screened and was able to transfer it onto fiberglass. Wooden ribs, gunnels and
Frese's canoes were used in the television mini-series "Centennial," James Michener's epic about the taming of the American west. He built five for the State of Illinois, including the Voyageur used at Conservation World during the state fair. His boats also were used in 1973 in a three-month recreation of the Jolliet-Marquette Expedition to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the expedition's discovery of Illinois. "In 1673, Louis Jolliet, who happened to be the son of a blacksmith— which accounted for his genius—determined that the Mississippi River did not run to the Pacific, but down to the Gulf of Mexico," Frese said. "Coming back with this information, he and his men turned up the Illinois River and paddled into the richest part of North America, the corn belt. They discovered the Chicago portage. The reason Chicago is located here and not somewhere else is because of an Indian canoe portage. "In 1973 I got this crazy idea to reenact the expedition," Frese continued July 2000 15
"So I built two 21-foot early Algonquin birchbark canoes and reenacted the entire 3,000-mile journey. No one has ever done a 300th anniversary like that. We had authentic clothing of the period and followed the same routes on the same days they traveled, using Father Marquette's writings (as a guide). And we filmed it!" To celebrate the Bicentennial in 1976, Frese provided birchbark canoes to reenact Robert Cavalier de La Salle's 1682 expedition from Montreal to the Gulf of Mexico. "I was with them at the start and at the finish," Frese said. "I set up the encampment in downtown Chicago. Six of my canoes, all of which are in museums now, and 23 people made that 3,500-mile journey during the coldest winter in 100 years." The historical reenactments are just one way Frese promotes canoeing. To get his scouts more involved with the sport he created the DesPlaines River Canoe Marathon, a 19-mile race that annually draws from 850 to 1,000 entrants. The 43rd annual race held this year on May 21. "We limit the entries to the first 1,000 boats," Frese said. "That's 2,000 people. If I were to lead those 2,000 people on a hike through the woods, everything would be trampled underfoot. That's why I'm so passionate about canoeing. It's a way to utilize the little bit of nature we have while barely touching it. The canoe is the only trail through nature that leaves no trace of its passing." A lifetime of canoeing the rivers and streams of Illinois has convinced Frese that more needs to be done to protect them. "Development is the biggest threat," Frese said. "Someone should see we have better plans for our rivers. We need strong people to say this is wrong and not in the best interests of the people." Since 1966 he's been on a crusade to save the lower Fox River between Oswego and the Illinois River. "The lower Fox is the only stretch that's still natural," Frese said. "It's the only place in Illinois you find five different varieties of native evergreens outside of a botanic garden or arboretum. A friend of mine found a 1,000-year-old red cedar growing on the edge of an 85-foot vertical drop. I got the interest of the state, which sent the local forester out. He took a hollow drill and found 87 rings per inch of wood. I publicized it in a beautiful article in the Chicago Tribune Sunday Magazine. A year later the landowner cut it down because he was starting a silica mine behind it. There's story after story like that down there." Another pet project for Frese is creation of a national canoeing museum. He has been collecting rare and unique canoes for years and recently donated more than 100 of them to the Chicago Maritime Society, where he and his wife Rita are members of the board of directors. "What I'm trying to do is get different types of construction or canoes with a history, a story behind them," Frese said. "My dream is a museum of the canoe, to tell the story of the canoe all over the world and especially in our region here." Frese hasn't found a site for his museum as yet, but feels it should be located along Lake Michigan in downtown Chicago. "The fur trade canoes, the big 34-footers like the ones I've built, I've documented in the Chicago River as recently as 1835," Frese said. "Illinois only became a state in 1818. This area wouldn't be what it is today if it weren't for canoes." Whether or not the museum ever comes to be, it's a cinch that Ralph Frese will be out preaching the gospel of canoeing. "I used to give four- or five-hour lectures with my slides on Chicagoland canoeing, never exhausting the subject," Frese said. "Nobody ever fell asleep. We have to sell our state to our own people. That's what I've been doing all the years I've been here." For more information The Chicagoland Canoe Base is located at 4019 N. Narragansett Ave., Chicago. Store hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday. It is closed on Sunday. Canoes rent for $35 per day; kayaks for $40. Call (773) 777-1489 for more information. 16 OutdoorIllinois |
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planking complete the effect. "All these things I've done create the illusion of the way a real bark canoe was built," Frese said.
In addition to building canoes, Frese sells anywhere from 300 to 400 canoes and kayaks each year. The shop offers more than 200 different models of watercraft that range in price from $400 to S5,000.