#2749 "February Cold Front at Jim Day Rapids"

#2749 "February Cold Front at Jim Day Rapids"
8x10 oils on canvas

I watched the prefrontal band of rain move east of Singleton. It was a classic split cold front with the weather ahead of the surface feature. I decided I had better head outside to paint before the surface cold front arrived. The rest of the week was full of winter weather so I had better not miss this opportunity. 

I stood in the same place where I had spent Valentine's Day, #2745 "Valentines Day at Jim Day Rapids" and quickly got to work. I did not have the time to clean my messy palette so instead, I put on a cotton glove in order to keep my left hand clean. I always hold the palette in my left hand leaving my right hand to do the brushwork. I used my 11x14 board as a support so I would keep all of the paint off my hands while the paint dried. 

As I painted, I thought of a friend who I never met but wish I had. Tom Thomson would have loved the Thoreau-type existence which we had created at Singleton Lake. I was surrounded by nature. A pair of geese rounded the corner and immediately started honking at me. They like to sit on the same point from which I was painting. A beaver slapped its tail at me. I heard a lot of sounds that I had probably been missing for some time. Hearing aids can be a good thing. The sounds of spring were certainly in the air although it was barely mid-February. Everything including the maple syrup was two to three weeks premature. I keep records of the comings and goings of nature. 

I felt the surface cold front arrive around 11 am. The gusty wind shift threatened to blow over my field easel but I was there to catch it. 

I spend a lot of time at the edge of Jim Day Rapids all year long. From our local historian: "We don't know who Jim Day was or how his name got attached to the rapids. There was a James Day and Caleb Day enumerated in the 1810 census of Rear of Leeds & Lansdowne, but I don't know where they were located, or if that is the Jim Day that the rapids is named after. In many cases there were squatters and tenants who lived on other people's property, so they never appear in the land records. So a Jim Day may have lived there, but there is no record." 

A 1795 survey crew camped at Singleton Lake and produced a very accurate map Number 4 for the Gananoque Canal Plan referring to the waterway as "Jem Dey's Rapids". That alternative to the Rideau Canal never got built. A channel was blasted through the rock in 1910 for small motorboats to navigate the rapids. It must have been quite the series of explosions as rock was scattered everywhere. 

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Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick