A GLANCE AT THE PHOTOGRAPH

CREDITS:
Oakville Historical Society Collection,
No. 1041. “Cub Scouts, c[irca] 1925.
Left to right: Larry Cond, Doug Wilkes,
Bud Macrae. Courtesy Bill Macrae.”

QUICK COMMENTS:
Scouting arrived in Canada in 1908, the year after its founding in Britain. As a Commonwealth-wide organization, the Boy Scout Association received a Royal Charter in 1912. In Ottawa, an Act of Parliament incorporated the Canadian General Council of the BSA in 1914.

In this early-spring photo taken about 1925, three boys in Cubs uniforms pose near a house whose yard is rough and unadorned. Larry (left) holds a common garden hoe. Doug (centre) holds a similar hoe and wears a canteeen. Bud (right) holds a garden rake and a box lunch. Another photo taken this same day shows Larry’s bag lunch and a vacant lot in the background.*a, *b click for more details

It is hard to say which scouting duties these Cubs may fulfill with their garden tools; but “duty to others” is probably one of them. They may be here to help someone in need by doing a spring cleanup, preparing a new garden, or getting an existing one ready for planting. They may be working on the yard near the house, in the vacant lot nearby, or both. The influences of the City Beautiful Movement, the vacant-lot campaign, the school-gardening movement, and the war-garden effort still prevail in 1925, although they will wane towards the end of the decade.


A SERIES OF QUESTIONS:
Does anyone remember this scout
outing or others like it?

How will the boys be using their
garden hoes and rake?

Does anyone have photos or other
records of war gardens in Oakville?