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In CAOAC I served in several positions as well as being the KWAS rep. I was chair of the Judges Committee, the Programs Committee, the Steering Committee, the Fish Rescue Program and Newsletter Editor. I have been on the Executive as 2nd Vice-President, then 1st Vice-President and, for eight years in a ten-year span, President. I am currently Treasurer and chair of the Aquatic Horticulturist Directory. I have received a number of awards from both organizations including Hobbyist Of The Year and Service Awards. Besides coming to KWAS meetings I began to go to other club meetings with my friend Frank Buhagiar of Toronto. We would go to aquarium club meetings in Willowdale, Scarborough, St. Catharines, Welland, Oshawa, Orillia, Brantford, Brampton, Hamilton, and London. I also joined the Niagara Frontier Killifish Association which had monthly meetings in member's homes alternating each month between Buffalo and Toronto. I remember a meeting at Dave Franco's house in Rochester. I was blown away by the approximately 100 10-gallon tanks he had for breeding killies. Those meetings were always on Saturday nights and lasted to the wee hours of the morning. I enjoyed them a lot.
Frank and I were at a meeting of the Willowdale Aquarium Society in 1981 or 1982, when we heard a talk on native fishes by Erling Holm of the Royal Ontario Museum. I found it very interesting as I had been purchasing minnows from bait shops to feed Oscars and other large fish I was keeping. Shortly after, I became a volunteer at the ROM and spent every Thursday and Friday morning there. I started by doing things I didn't really care for such as scraping the flesh off of the head of a dead alligator and sorting fish specimens from the Indian Ocean. But once they knew about my interest in native fishes, I began to concentrate almost exclusively on them. Initially, the work was sorting new fish collections into families, then genera and finally to species. I was taught and mentored by one of the best people in the field, Erling Holm, now Assistant Curator, and we became very good friends. Eventually I was asked to go on some collecting trips and readily agreed. Some were one-day trips local to the Toronto area and some were longer and further afield such as spending several days collecting both fish and herptile specimens on Pelee Island. I always found these trips tremendously interesting. My interest in tropical fishes began to wane and I started to keep mostly native fishes, which were available from bait shops. I still keep the occasional topical fish though.
One day when I was at the museum, Dr. E.J. Crossman, the late curator of the department, said that he had been contacted by Ontario Out Of Doors, a hunting and fishing magazine based in Toronto. They were going to have a booth at the Sportsmen's Show that year and were looking for someone who could look after 4 90-gallon aquaria they were going to use to show different species of trout. He wondered if I would be interested in the job. I jumped at the chance and thus began an era where I was involved, one way or another, with the Sportsmen's show for the next 7 or 8 years.
This job was not easy. The Ministry of Natural Resources had 4 large steel tanks with glass fronts, which they allowed us to use for the show. Rolf C. Hagen supplied us with 4 of their largest Fluval filters for the filtration. We also had the use of a chiller from the ROM. When I got to the site to set up, I was dismayed to find the nearest water supply and drainage was several hundred feet away. With other booths all around, there was no way to run hoses so the water had to be trucked in by hand. The tanks each held 90 gallons and stood about 5 and a half feet high. I had to use a dolly and 5-gallon buckets to fill the tanks. Believe me, lifting all those buckets of water (each weighing close to fifty pounds) almost to head height to fill those tanks was no easy feat-even for a younger me. The magazine supplied one fish for each of the tanks, which were bare and painted blue inside. These were big fish! From five to eight pounds I believe. There was a Book Trout, a Brown Trout, a Rainbow Trout and a Lake Trout. It soon became obvious that a single Fluval on each tank was not going to be enough to keep these fish in good condition for the ten days of the show. These fish put out waste like you wouldn't believe. They also required clean, well-oxygenated, cool water and there was no time to cycle up the filters. So it was decided that each day, before and after my day job, I would have to change half the water in each tank. All by hand. By the end of the show I was exhausted but probably in the best shape I have ever been. I learned that on any future such work, I would make sure that proper plumbing was available.
Next year, the Ministry Of Natural Resources asked if I would like to bid on setting up the aquaculture section of their display at the Sportsmen's Show. I bid and won the job. This was a major undertaking. For those who don't remember, the show back then was ten days long. The Ministry's exhibit was about 10,000 square feet, I believe. They would turn the whole exhibit into a nature park with trees, shrubs, live animals and fish. It required me to take the week before the show as holiday time from work because it took that long to set up. They had 3 aquaria in the display; a 180-gallon tank on the left, a 240-gallon tank on the right and a 100-gallon tank in the middle. I usually set up the left one as a warm water lake, the middle one as a stream and the right one as a coldwater lake. Through contacts in the Ministry I was able to procure all manner of species for the display including American eels and Muskellunge. The display was always on the second floor (a wooden floor) with lots of other exhibitor's booths below. Water leaks were definitely frowned on. It was challenging work but great fun.
By this time, I was keeping native fish exclusively in my basement fishroom in Toronto. I had constantly running water going through a Culligan carbon filter supplying the tanks. In the winter I left the basement window ajar to help cool everything. I remember the late Jim Brown once remarking that mine was the only fish room that he ever had to put his coat on to go into. I also recall the time it got so cold in there that the water in clothes washer froze and broke the pump. But it meant that in the spring I had great-looking fish to use in the Ministry's display at the Sportsmen's Show. Back at the museum I started helping with other things in the department. We would have seminars each year where interested people such as MNR staff, teachers, wildlife students, and others would spend several days taking our course on fish identification. I was able to help setting up the course, and working with the students while they took it. At one point, Erling was asked to take the course to Sault Ste. Marie for people up there and he hired me to go along as his assistant. It was a great experience for me as it was held at an aquaculture station and I got to see how the "big boys" do it. Massive tanks, pumps etc.
I began going on more field trips with the museum. The best ones were usually in the southwest area of the province where species diversity was always greatest. We never new what new species we might find and sometimes we did. Or we'd find fish that were very rare. I would often bring back live fish to use in displays for the MNR and others. The department I was involved with at the ROM was Ichthyology and Herpetology and I developed an interest in reptiles and amphibians as well. One year, the MNR had someone set up an area in their display at the Sportmen's Show with snakes. It was an area about 10 feet by 15 feet if memory serves correctly. It was surrounded by Plexiglas and was set up as an area of ground covered with dry grass and rocks. It had lots of different species of Ontario snakes in it including a smaller Plexiglas container with a Massasauga Rattlesnake. Unfortunately, it was the only one visible most of the time as the other snakes would invariably hide under the rocks, brush and grass. Next year they asked if I would be able to do something with snakes so I got a Fox snake and used it in daily demonstrations at the show. They are wonderful snakes, very even-tempered and beautiful. I would stand there for hours with this snake and pass him around to all interested by-standers. Many people came back in subsequent days to handle the snake again. They told me it had helped them get over their fear of snakes. Jane still occasionally recounts the time she was at the show and I snuck up behind her and draped the snake around her neck. She had no idea I was going to do it but she did not panic or scream but smiled and showed the others there was nothing to fear. It is hard to find a good woman like that.
Over the years, I set up native fish displays at several other locations such as the Algonquin Park Visitors Centre, Science North, a Federal Government Display at the CNE, a display at Ontario Place For Northern Ontario and at the Royal Ontario Museum. I also built a 30 foot by 12 foot by 6 foot display tank for the Spring Fishing Show in Toronto. It was constructed of steel, wood, fibreglass and Plexiglas and had to be moved to Toronto by tractor-trailer. They used it to demonstrate fishing techniques and while it was designed to be used just once, they used it for several years.
In 1997, Erling Holm and I did a lot of sampling in the Grand River drainage from around Arthur in the north to almost the mouth of the river. The ROM published a paper, Fish Sampling In The Grand River 1997 by E. Holm & D. Boehm. In 1999, the ROM contracted me to work on Walpole Island with the First Nations people there. This is a large delta at the mouth of the St. Clair River that contains great expanses of marsh area much of it liked by the locals. I had the pleasure of working with two local ladies, Leona Crowe and Jennifer Dodge who spent the whole summer collecting fish, plants and aquatic invertebrates with me. It was dream job, spending every day out in the marsh, sampling and documenting. It was my first real introduction to First Nations people and I learned a lot. I gained a great respect for them and their beliefs. I also received an unexpected gift when a small puppy wandered out of the bush and attached herself to me. Quasance (a Potawatomi word meaning "little girl", I am told) has been with me ever since.
During the 90's, I also did aquarium maintenance for a number of clients and built a few backyard ponds for people. Most of the aquaria were for professional offices such as dentists, some were commercial establishments such as McDonalds and some were private citizens. Of the three groups, the aquaria in private homes were the most enjoyable work. While the others were always very budget conscious (some were downright cheap), the people with an aquarium in their home were more likely to be willing to do things right and to be more adventurous with the species they kept. If I could have found enough private clients, I might still be doing that work today. Alas, it was not to be. Since then I got a 'real' job and haven't done any aquarium maintenance (except my own); I haven't done much collecting and I hardly get to see my friends at the Museum any more. But I still love my native fish and I think I always will. I remember fondly those collecting trips with Erling, the days in the sun sampling at Point Pelee National Park and many other locations. Maybe when I retire (if I retire), I'll be able to get more involved with nature and the ROM again.
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