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The Rotary Hub (1949 to Present)
Up • Camp Hospital/Bayview Lodge • Dobson Centre • Health Centre • Kennabi Lodge • Kennabi Lodge - Some History • Mill Valley Manor • Programme Centre • QM Shed • The Rotary Hub • The Trapper's Cabin • Restoring The Trapper's Cabin • Pow Wow Lodge
What has now become the centre of life
for HSR camp staff, the Rotary Hub was originally built as a kitchen and
dining facility for the composite camp program.
 
With
funding from the Rotary
Club of Toronto, a kitchen was built in 1949 by Mr. Gordon Keeber and named
the appropriately, Rotary Hub. This building still serves as the staff kitchen
today!
In
1951, a gasoline
operated water pump system and triple sinks were installed in the Hub and a
large veranda on which the composite troop ate it's meals, was built across the
complete face of the building.
The same year, a large
look-out tower, about 50 ft high was built adjacent to the Rotary Hub with three
observation platforms and ladders. It was equipped with a large 400lb bell
donated by the 101st Toronto Troop (from the old Swansea Fire Hall tower) in
memory of a Scout who died as a result of an epileptic seizure while canoeing.
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July 23, 1954
This plaque is unveiled today as a tribute
to the
Rotary Club of Toronto
The Atkinson Charitable Foundation
and
Other Generous Friends of Scouting
Interested in the Development of the Boy
In Character and True Citizenship
Through the Composite Camp
If we work upon marble it will perish,
If we work upon brass, time will efface it.
If we rear temples, they will crumble to dust but,
If we work upon man's immortal minds,
If we imbue them with high principles, with a just fear of God and love
of their fellow man,
We engrave upon those tablets something which no time can efface
and which will brighten and brighten to eternity.
Daniel Webster
(From the wall plaque above dedicating the Rotary Hub)
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1953 saw the dining hall
area of the Hub built with financial support from the
Atkinson Charitable
Foundation under the supervision of Cec Elliott, Rover Scout Leader of the
86th Toronto.
The first stairs from
the bottom of the Hub Hill to the top were built in 1961.
In 1963
the bell tower at the Hub
was pulled over by Ernie Tidy (61-63) and Harry Hutchings (62-63)
and the bell was cracked. The current bell mounted at the west end of the Hub
roof, was later secured from a local school house in Haliburton.
In 1969 a wall was built dividing the
dining hall and
the new Country Store was started in the east half by Bruce Quinn (63-70,80). However
in 1991, when the store moved to the Dobson Centre,
the wall was removed and the dining hall once again filled the whole floor.
In 2007 the floor in the dining hall
was replace and the following year the red shingle roof was replaced with a
green steel roof.
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