Young Girl on Chantry Island.

As a young child, Jean Scott, now Jean Davies of Winnipeg, lived in Southampton and was friends with Ruth Klippert, the daughter of the Chantry Island lighthouse keeper. Because of this friendship, Jean made many trips to the lighthouse during the 1930s. In a interview with John Weichel for fo’c’s’le magazine, she recalled some of the memorable highlights. Excerpts follow:

I hated the snakes. The snakes were bad over there. Lots of water snakes. Big ones. Fat.  One morning it was hot and Ruth said to me (and she was maybe five years older than I—she’d be 13 or 14, I’d be 8)  "Come on, lets get our bathing suits. Let us go down and have a swim off the  dock." In those days there were one piece, down to our knees.  She said "Last one in stinks."  I started to run and she started to run.  We hit this wooden dock and couldn’t stop at this point and shot off the end.  Well, I’ll bet you there were 50 snakes up under the pilings. I nearly swam to the Sauble.  I could see their heads. They were probably just as afraid as we were.  A terrible experience.   The water was full of them. 

Last time I was at the island I was so heart sick. It is such a mess and the house has fallen in.  I wrote to the member of parliament about it after I found myself apologizing to people about the condition.  I got a "smarmy" letter back, asking me if I didn’t realize it was a bird sanctuary.  I remember when it was full of flowers.  Mr. Klippert had beautiful flowers over there.  He would take a wheelbarrow with shingle stone, like river rock on the beach, and would make pathways. He had a nice garden there. People were always welcome. Another thing I remember he used to do once in a while, he would make his own weather forecaster.  He would sit (and it was all lamps at that time) and pare camphor into alcohol—I think it was alcohol. [ See my note below on this] He would pare it into a glass jar.  And when it was going to be a bad storm, it would rile up.  It was a big jar. He would hold it up.  Ruth would say, "Well, Papa, what’s it going to be like today?"  And he’d say, "There’s a storm coming" and you would see this cloud start spiraling up. 

John Klippert was a great guy.  He made boats, too.   There weren’t very fancy, not Nova Scotia dories, but good sturdy boats.   He always had a boat going in his shed.  He was also fixing cupboards or painting.  I’ll tell you what I remember best about that shed:  The smell of tar.  He had all these nets in there. Many mornings he’d say, "Well, good morning girls. We’re going to have fish for breakfast."  We would then go out and set just a little bit of a net just off the island.  He had little corks, and he’d anchor it.  In an hour or so we would go back there, and sure enough, we’d have a perch or herring.  I hate herring, they’re full of bones.   He could make biscuits. There was nothing he couldn’t do.  A remarkable man in his day.

His wife was over here on the mainland with an aged mother she looked after. I have good recollections of happy times, and I had many. Mind you, we had a few scary ones, too.  The weather would be bad and the lake would be choppy and we were afraid to go across that gap. (The Gap, dividing the mainland dock from the Island dock.)  Many times we were over there and couldn’t get home until it calmed down.  He stayed out there all the time.   He would row across. He had several boats. One was a big one, a dory type.  It had rolly bottom on it. It was a government boat, I think. I don’t think it was his. I remember the big gunnells on it.  And when he came across for supplies he would have a list.  My mother always sent butter tarts and pies. The good stuff.

In the winter he was home and we would go and see him.  He was an older man, with white hair and a bad complexion—kind of mottled. Maybe in his youth he might have been a red head.  He had kind of flaky skin.  He was a kind, gentle man. A big man. We never heard him raise his voice. It was a fine, fine family.   We would go down to the far south end of the island and it was just covered with gulls.  The whole area was covered with nests. The gulls hated you and would dive-bomb. We always knew when the wood ducks were on the island.   John would warn us not go near them. We would peek at them.  They would be in hollow logs.  A really wild setting.  And I also remember wild flowers—columbines, and all kinds of wild mushrooms.  We were afraid to eat any of them..

He had the island so neat.  It was wild, but it was organized.  He worked all the time.  He was always building boats, mending nets, or fishing, or painting.  Just a great old guy.  He wasn’t there in the winter.  I often wonder if he got paid in the winter.  Back in the Dirty Thirties? There was a supply boat that would come in once as year, and I was there one time when it came in.  We were really excited.  It wasn’t that big.   It brought drums of fuel, and paint, and some stuff he didn’t even want.  The paint was always grey or white.  He always kept everything painted.  And his windows were always clean.  Cleaner than mine.  I often think of old John Klippert’s windows.  They were just gleaming.

The house has fallen in, and that is what has made me so sad.I slept there many, many times, on weekends, and sometimes a week or two in the summer.   We played cards.  I don’t remember doing much else, but playing cards.   We made taffy, and he would let us cook.  Ruth was older and more knowledgeable. I was just a kid.

Ed. Note:

If any single thing makes me feel we are doing the right thing, it is the recollections of this woman.  What a grand image she paints.  Thanks to John Weichel again for bringing it to us..   Jean, you've made a difference and we'll make sure that you are part of the we in "We Were Here".

I spent hundreds of hours on the Island from summer to early winter in 1999 and I saw only one snake.  Probably the birds and snakes have reached an equilibrium over time with certain species liking the young of the other.  I did not see bats either, but I'm sure they are there.  One creature that lives quite well there is a tiny very furry mouse.  They were hop hoping all over the ruins and we became quite fond of them over time.

Mike Sterling January 2000.

Camphor Weather Indicator:

The storm bottle is a curious device some say was invented by accident more than 200 years ago during an alchemist's experiment with a solution of potassium nitrate, ammonium chloride, camphor and distilled water. Contained in a sealed glass tube, the mixture is a simple visual weather indicator. The particles in the liquid rise and become crystalline or cloudy as the weather deteriorates. The higher they rise, the worse the weather.

The interested reader might try this formula that was tried with great success by a Russian chemist.  This man made extensive experiments.

The composition of ingrediants includes camphor spirit, potash saltpeter (KNH₃), chloride ammonium (NH₄CL) in the ratio 4:1:1 and distilled water.  Put them all in a small bottle and seal it.  Keep records and see how it works.

Here below is  Toby Stier's analysis of our current experiments in the summer of 2000.  Toby is a student intern with us this summer.

The storm glass is a weather instrument which was developed around 1860. It is composed of camphor (C₁₀H₁₆O, a crystalline cycloketone), ammonium chloride (NH₄Cl) and potassium nitrate (KNO₃) in a solution of water and ethyl alcohol. Instructions for construction are not consistent among different sources; however, all sources indicate a 4:1:1 ratio of camphor to NH₄Cl to KNO₃. The camphor is dissolved in ethanol and the other compounds are dissolved in water, then the two clear solutions are mixed. Weather is said to be predicted by the size, shape and location of the solid precipitate formed within the glass. The solutions need not be mixed again to make another forecast; the precipitate constantly changes its shape. Temperature, affecting solubility, is likely the only meteorological parameter to which the system would respond, although rate of temperature change may be equally important to the form of the precipitate crystals.

Solubility of the various compounds was first determined:

The required concentrations of the solutions were unknown, so a number of solutions were prepared and observed.

Weak solutions, when mixed together, were clear and produced no precipitate at any temperature. They became cloudy as more water was added to the mixture.

Solutions near saturation were very cloudy when mixed. Temperature was 23º C. White particles immediately began to separate and settle at the bottom, forming a thick, downy layer with clear solution remaining. After 5 minutes some of the precipitate had floated to the surface. Some remained at the bottom, but it appeared that some of the precipitate had dissolved as well. When heated to 40º C the precipitate began to dissolve and was completely gone after 8 minutes. Cooling the mixture to 0º C did not cause the precipitate to return, but it returned immediately when a few drops of water were added. This suggests a supersaturated condition rather than a chemical change.

It should be noted that if all solutes are to be at saturation point and equal volumes of water and ethanol are used, then a 4:1:1 ratio is indeed required.

It can be concluded that both the alcohol and water solutions must be at or near saturation for the storm glass to produce any useful results. It can also be concluded that temperature has an effect upon the form of the precipitate.

Camphor is insoluble in water and the salts are similarly insoluble in alcohol, which suggests that the addition of the other solvent to one of the clear solutions may cause the compound to precipitate out of solution. This was tested at 23º C with increasing amounts of the other solvent.

Camphor solution: The solution is clear at first. As water is introduced, fuzzy white clusters form at the top. As more water is added, a general cloudiness arises which does not settle out.

NH₄Cl solution: The solution is initially clear. No change is observed when ethanol is added. A few bubbles are released.

KNO₃ solution: The solution is initially clear. When ethanol is added, an inconsistent cloudiness is formed in the top half of the solution, and a few small clusters are formed at the bottom. As more ethanol is added, the mixture becomes cloudy throughout, with a thicker sludge at the bottom.

NH₄Cl and KNO₃ solution: The mixture of the two solutions is initially clear. As ethanol is added, a few bubbles form but the solution remains clear. Only after much ethanol is added does the solution become uniformly cloudy.

These observations suggest that the addition of the incompatible solvent forces the camphor and potassium out of solution. These crystallise either together or independently to form the shapes in the storm glass. The nitrate ion is very soluble and most likely remains dissolved even in the presence of ethanol.

Observations indicated that NH₄Cl does not come out of solution as a result of the addition of alcohol. To determine whether it has any effect in the storm glass, a mixture was prepared without it:

When the camphor and KNO₃ solutions were mixed, a cloudiness formed distinctly in the top half of the glass. The addition of water causes the mixture to become clearer with small, fuzzy precipitate clusters, some at the top but also suspended throughout. These are not the same results as those encountered with NH₄Cl in the solution, therefore it does somehow participate in the system.

Various mixtures were prepared from the proper solutions, in different ratios of alcohol solution to water solution. Each had the same behaviour as described in Part B when initially mixed. After several hours, the forms of the precipitates had changed, but each mixture had a different appearance. This indicates either that the ratio is very important to the proper functioning of a storm glass or that the storm glass system itself is widely variable, and depends more upon the container and other variables than upon the weather. The latter possibility seems more likely, considering the approximate and widely differing instructions for the ratio required.

Over several days, a ratio of 5:6 water to ethanol was found to give the greatest diversity of precipitate forms.

It is possible to create a system in which the shape of the precipitate will change with fluctuations in the ambient temperature. A ratio of approximately 4:1:1 is correct, where solutions are near saturation. However, there is no evidence for consistency of the precipitate appearance under given conditions, and reliable prediction of the weather is even less likely. Observation over a longer time period may show trends which are of some use.