Appreciating Ernie Calvert's big impact on northern fishing

I’ve probably had more meaningful conversations with strangers at boat ramps than anywhere else. Usually, it’s with like-minded anglers who are heading out or returning from a day on the water, and sometimes these chats are transformative.

In 2020, I met Danny Calvert at a boat ramp on the south end of Lake of the Woods. We chatted and shared phone numbers. Shortly after, I received text messages from him with photos of his grandfather, Ernie (E.D.) Calvert. These black and white images from the first quarter of the 1900s showed anglers holding big fish and enjoying the fishing lifestyle. He went on to tell me more about his grandfather, who may have been the first famous angler by the 1930s. His many exploits included creating the first fishing camps in northern Ontario and being the first to use a gas-powered outboard in Canada.

Today, hundreds of fishing resorts and camps exist across the north in what is now known as Ontario’s Sunset Country Region. Ernie was the pioneer of operating a fishing camp and his vision to share the excellent fishing in northern Ontario with the rest of the world is still being realized today.

Hooked on Calvert

The first set of photos that Danny sent me were mesmerizing. They included trophy lake trout, walleye, and muskie, often with Ernie holding the fish or standing in the background while a smiling angler held up their catch. One photo that stood out was an advertisement for Johnson Motors, with Ernie’s endorsement of their Seahorse motor in its infancy. There was another of him fishing in a canoe, with a second canoe following them with a person operating a hand-cranked camera to record his catch. He was likely the first angler to be recorded fishing while in motion.

As someone who has made a lifestyle and a career in the fishing community, all of this was really interesting to me. I could relate to the many activities that Ernie pursued to make a living, though I can’t imagine how much work it took to do all of this in a time when they didn’t have power tools or the efficient ways to get around like we do today. Can you imagine the amazing fishing opportunities he got to experience and the adventure of exploring around Lake of the Woods in the early 1900s?

Calvert early days

Ernie Calvert was born in or about 1880 in England, and came to North America around 1900, landing in New Brunswick. He hopped on trains, boats, and walked, eventually ending up at Lake of the Woods. He fell in love with the lake and the fishing, deciding it was a good place to stop.

Ernie was a pharmacist and opened Calvert’s Drug Store in Rainy River on the south end of the lake. His love for fishing eventually won over and he started guiding before building the first fishing camp around 1908 in Whitefish Bay. Being the first guide on the lake, he was known as the Dean of Lake of the Woods. In the early 1900s, land was almost free, especially in remote areas, so Ernie set to finding good sites near the best fishing spots to start building cabins. The government stopped allowing this in 1930s, Danny believes.

Calvert wanted to create fishing camps to share the beauty and excellent fishing. He would eventually go on to create seven camps in the Lake of the Woods area. Cedar Island Camp on Sabaskong Bay became his main camp and home base. By the 1930s, Cedar Island had more than 30 log cabins, with beds that had inner-spring mattresses, white linen sheets, Hudson Bay blankets, and eventually, electric lights and running water. The best cabins even had flushing toilets. Camps were built on Whitefish Bay, Miles Bay, and Obabikon Bay on Lake of the Woods, as well as on Height of Land and Pipestone lakes to the east. Danny did note that none of the cabins had cookstoves because every camp had a dining room for meals.

This was how the American plan lodging option got started.

Drop the bass

Bass are not native to northwestern Ontario. Northern folks say bass fry were brought up from Lake Erie in milk cans, via the railway. The Calvert family says that Ernie was a big part of this distribution of bass, which a lot of us in the northwest are thankful for today. He brought a fishing rod with him from England as a means to feed himself and through his travels, he met people who introduced him to smallies and their feisty attitude. He corresponded with these fishing buddies and they sent cans full of fry to Rat Portage (now Kenora) along the railway.

Starting in about 1912, Ernie would paddle from Rainy River up to Kenora (more than 100 kilometers) each summer to pick up the fry and take a different route back each year, stocking different parts of the Lake of the Woods as well as smaller lakes he would portage into. He did this every summer for 15 or 20 years and it’s estimated he stocked 40 to 50 lakes. Most years, he would end up at Rainy Lake, where he would dump the remaining cans, then float down the river back to Rainy River.

When Danny’s father was a kid, Ernie would tell his wife, Gertrude, that he was taking little Jackie fishing. Her reply was “Okay, Ernie, just have him home in time for school,” meaning, see you in September. Obviously, stocking lakes with fish is not allowed today but his wanting more fishing opportunities back then was well intentioned. The smallmouth fishery on Lake of the Woods and across the northwest is world class.

Calvert Express

Many guests of the Calvert camps came from the Midwest, many from Chicago. As his operation grew, Calvert started arranging for trains from Chicago to Rainy River. The train became known as the Calvert Express and would pick up more guests along the way in Minneapolis or Duluth, Minnesota. Between May and October, these trains would run multiple times per week, bringing guests to and from Calvert’s camps.

Travelling on these trains allowed guests to get to the area when roads were not as easy to travel as they are today. Resorts still organize trips like this with buses from major centres around the Midwest, allowing anglers on a budget to pursue their dream fishing trip to northwest Ontario.

Famous guests

Thousands of guests went through the camps over the years, including famous ones like state governors, senators, presidents of universities and other prominent folks. Chicago mobster Al Capone reportedly came multiple times, favouring the Pipestone Chain east of Lake of the Woods. The story goes that he had a traveling security team with him who carried guns. In that time, alcohol was illegal, so they organized a distillery in the woods north of Devlin, Ontario and for a number of years created AC Rye Whiskey.

Former American President Theodore Roosevelt was known to enjoy the outdoors. He was photographed with Ernie Calvert at a shore lunch on Lake of the Woods.

Notorious lawman Wyatt Earp also used to come by train to Calvert’s Camps. He was once quoted saying, “I’ve hunted elk in the mountains, mule deer in the foothills, antelope in the plains but nothing compares to a Calvert Camp shore lunch.”

Today, shore lunches remain the highlight of the trip for many who visit. Calvert was even known to plant potatoes and onions around his shore lunch sites so they could be picked during the latter part of the season. It would be one less thing they would have to carry.

Evinrude beginnings

By the late 1910s, one of Calvert’s regular guests was a tinkerer named Ole Evinrude. Having been to Lake of the Woods in the past, he had seen how difficult it was to get around paddling the boats. He showed up one year with a contraption that would become an outboard motor that ran on gas. They put it on one of the canoes and Ernie was amazed at how easily they could get around. He sent Evinrude back with cash as start-up money, telling him to build as many motors as he could.

The next year, he showed up with a boxcar full of 1.5-horsepower motors. They cost approximately $130 back then, which would be about $4,100 today. These motors allowed the guides to travel around the lake and fish new areas. Throughout the 1930s, Calvert was the poster boy for Evinrude and then Johnson Motors as they tested and used these motors extensively. Motors were even stamped specifically for Calvert Camps, with the technician’s name and number on them. Evinrude’s son Ralph and Jack Calvert became friends in the 1920s and were close friends for the next 40 years.

Connection to curling

In the 1930s, curling was not so popular in Canada. Its roots were in Scotland and during a trip there, Ernie Calvert tried and fell in love with the sport. He brought back a set of rocks to Rainy River and would go on to build the Rainy River Curling Club, enjoying the sport later in life.

Trout love

Lake trout appear in many Calvert Camp photos. The Whitefish Bay area of Lake of the Woods where Ernie had two camps still has an excellent lake trout population today that attracts anglers from far and wide. In the early 1900s, lakers were called salmon trout and literature promoted fishing for them in May and October, when they could be found in shallow water. Today, the lake trout season closes on October 1 across northwest Ontario to protect these fish while they spawn in the fall.

Judging by all of the photos that showed Ernie with lake trout, he had a special place in his heart for them.

The Clipper

When the operation grew to a significant size, Calvert owned an 87-foot steamship called The Clipper. It was used to ferry guests to Cedar Island from Rainy River, a 30-kilometre trip. On one trip, there were exceptionally strong winds and the boat bottomed out on a sandbar on Big Traverse Bay. They were able to get the boat unstuck and got the load of guests to Cedar Island. They then tried to get the boat to Calvert Island in Whitefish Bay where the better mechanics were, but the boat could not be saved.

It sank near Calvert Island in what is now known as Clipper Bay, a historical site.

The Calvert legacy

Today, Danny Calvert is in his late 60s and still spends a lot of time on the water and in the woods. Over the years, he has run tourist camps and taken thousands of people fishing. Danny’s son Hunter is in his 20s and has grown up in the tourism industry, as a guide and camp manager. The pandemic resulted in a significant loss of clientele, forcing Hunter to reconsider his way to make a living. He is now living in Thunder Bay pursuing a hoisting engineer apprenticeship so he can be a mobile crane operator. He still fishes every chance he gets.

When Hunter thinks about his great grandfather, he is proud of his work ethic and passion for the outdoors. What he accomplished in those times, coming to north-west Ontario with very little, then creating an empire and introducing thousands of people to the amazing fishing around Lake of the Woods. He also acknowledged his efforts for conservation in a time when it really didn’t exist.

When Hunter was a teenager, he worked at Whitefish Bay Camp, where his dad went to visit him one summer.

They met at the dock and Hunter took Danny to his cabin. Danny asked him why he chose that cabin, and it was because it was the same one he had chosen, the same one that his father Jack had chosen, and one that Ernie had built for himself. He showed Hunter three signatures carved on a ceiling log.

E.D. Calvert – 1909, J.E. Calvert – 1926, and Danny Calvert – 1970, the summer that he stayed there. He told Hunter he was the fourth generation of Calverts to guide on Lake of the Woods, while staying in that cabin.

Calvert camps

Chicago was where a good number of wealthy people resided at that time. They could get to northwest Ontario relatively easily. For 35 years, Calvert Camps had a booth at Chicago’s Union Rail Station, advertising their operation. It was also in Chicago where Ernie was honoured with an induction into the Fishing Hall of Fame by the Sportsman’s Club of America. It was noted during the induction that he was a conservationist, fish stocker, and known as the best muskie angler.

Photos of the induction show what was a real gala event back in those days. While most fish during that time were not released, Calvert was known to release muskies to be enjoyed by other anglers.

One of the reasons Ernie became so famous was because he appeared in publications like Field & Stream and Sports Afield — the best outdoor magazines at the time. He would host the writers and photographers throughout the season, providing them with plenty of content for stories.

I’m jealous of the life that Ernie Calvert lived. I can’t even imagine the amazing fishing he experienced, the adventures, the opportunities, and the people he met. He lived into his 70s, a full life. It is an amazing story and I’m glad I ran into Danny at that boat ramp in Whitefish Bay so I could hear all about it.