June 19-21 • Bob Hilke to present Ernest Oberholtzer story and his photographs at festival in Grand Marais; Wooden boat parade on the harbor, and craft workshops, also presented
Rainy Lake resident Bob Hilke will be the featured guest speaker at the coming 12th Annual Wooden Boat Show and Summer Solstice Festival at the North House Folk School On the Harbor, in Grand Marais.
Hilke, Ernest Carl Oberholtzer’s lifelong friend, will present “Ober’s” early 1900s photographs as well as a sketch of his life experiences and achievements, in two separate programs during the festival, which is scheduled June 19-21.
Hilke will make a presentation at 12:30 p.m. on Sunday, June 21, entitled “Toward Magnetic North — Ernest Oberholtzer: My Friend, My Mentor.” Hilke will talk about the accomplishments of Oberholtzer and the 1912 canoe trip to Hudson Bay with his Indian companion Billy Magee.
A book by the name “Toward Magnetic North: The Oberholtzer-Magee 1912 Canoe Journey to Hudson Bay,” has been published by the Oberholtzer Foundation. Hilke is the curator of the Oberholtzer Foundation and Photographic Collection.
“When I was young boy, Ober’s canoe trip to Hudson Bay with Billy Magee fascinated me. It intrigued me even more when as a teenager, I took long canoe trips with Ober through much of the Rainy Lake watershed... ,” said Hilke in the book.
Oberholtzer, who lived the majority of his life after establishing a self-sufficient existence on a group of islands on Rainy Lake, was a central figure in the struggle against industrialist E.W. Backus to preserve the wilderness areas of the Minnesota-Ontario border. He was alo a primary advocate for the Boundary Waters Canoe Area.
The early photographs he took with a 3A Graflex camera (one of the first through-the-lens reflex cameras) of his and Magee’s exploration of the then-uncharted area of Saskatchewan up to Hudson Bay and into Manitoba, are simply astonishing. The book contains the Oberholtzer images and his journal entries that capture the wild places he loved and admired.
The 120 images, preserved on 116-film size negatives, are organized for a traveling exhibition hosted by the Oberholtzer Foundation and will be presented at the Grand Marais festival in a slide show by Hilke at 1 p.m. on Saturday, June 20,
As a young Harvard graduate who came to Rainy Lake to convalesce with what was thought to be a terminal heart ailment, Oberholtzer set out on the 2,000 mile canoe trip and captured for posterity the incredible images of a culture from another time and age.
“Understanding his early work as a photographer shed light on his later career accomplishments such as the founding of the BWCA, membership in the prestigious Explorer’s Club and the founding of the Wilderness Society,” writes the North House Folk School, a learning environment self-described as inspiring the hands, the heart and the mind by teaching traditional northern crafts.
The festival is a family event that also includes several craft workshops and classes by the North House Folk School. A complete listing of the program as well as which presentations require registration or passes is available at www.northhouse.org. The school can be reached at 888-387-9762.
An overview of the festival’s features includes a waterfront wooden boat display, harbor-side barbecue, dance, and wooden boat speaker series on Friday.
On Saturday, the photo exhibit by Hilke, a boat-to-tools auction, wooden boat show film festival, chow down, and summer solstice pageant will be featured.
Sunday will feature Hilke’s presentation at 12:30 p.m., a steam bent brunch, and will close with a wooden boat parade on the harbor.
Grand Marais is on the North Shore of Lake Superior, near Duluth.
