Talbot Day and the Teddy Bear Picnic

 

   One of the upshots of the COVID-19 virus and the necessary precautions was the cancellation of all reenacting events in Ontario and just about everywhere else in the western hemisphere.

Except for one...

    On Civic Holiday, the Backus Page House Museum scheduled a "Teddy Bear Picnic." (This was August 3 in Ontario - It really celebrates nothing in particular although some municipalities call it something, like "Simcoe Day" in Toronto; it's really an excuse to have a three-day weekend in August so each month of the summer has a three-day weekend!) St. Peter's Anglican Church is just down the road and had scheduled a day to celebrate or at least remember Colonel Thomas Talbot, a local leader in colonial times who arranged and distributed land to those he deemed worthy. More on that another time. The pandemic crashed the plans and Bishop Thownsend of the Anglican Diocese of Huron closed the churches of the diocese for any public event. Canon Nick Wells, the pastor and a member of our reenacting group, worked with the museum staff and the local health authorities to combine the events... and it was fun.

     Croghan's Company of Reenactors (reenacting Captain Croghan's company of the 17th Infantry, United States Army in the War of 1812) set up a display and did some musketry demonstrations while families ate their lunches amid a mass of teddy bears. They brought their own picnic baskets and their own teddy bears. One family brought a huge laundry basket of bears!

   Here's a gallery of images from the day:

Tyler, our First Sergeant, prepare for drill.

Yellow Jacket of the Unami Lenne Lenape with a new friend.

Kevin, serving as a sergeant of militia

Linda, who makes beautiful hats, in her outdoor millinery shop.

Steve the Frontier Painter, Linda's husband, working on his latest portrait.
That guy looks familiar somehow. Rod Steiger?

     Not a reenactment per se, but it was a display with proper social distancing maintained. We kept 6 feet/2 metres from the public and from each other. (Families excepted) Masks were available for all. We got to wear our funny clothes and fire a few rounds. As hot as it was, it was a good day.

At Linda and Steve's encampment, some explanations

Period firearms - musket, rifles, and a non-working pistol
(a really heavy piece of work)

Edged weapons and a powder horn, including a First Nations' war club.
In the rear, a small display of musket balls.
To the right, the "bottle shaped" item is a grenade discharger
for the British Brown Bess musket.

Parachute games for the families.

Linda with a bear who took proper precautions!

The Tea Party at the picnic

Steve and Linda's area.
Note the rope that enforced proper distance.

At the musket demo, Kevin fires his favorite Jager rifle.

Tyler, Kevin, Kaise/Yellow Jacket, and Marcus prepare the firing line
in the afternoon demo.

Make ready! Take aim! Fire!
(Crown forces use "Present!" rather than "Take aim!")

Nick dreams dreams of glory... or of iced tea.

Your Humble Blogger - now a lieutenant - checks with his First Sergeant.

More firing at the morning demo.

Beth, my wife, in historical finery

She makes the photo memorable, doesn't she?

Al, a member of the museum staff, fires a rifle.
She's fully insured due to a previous employment at another museum.
(She was wearing a lovely dress and we lent her a hunting frock to keep it clean)

A epaulet, a new sword, and a lovely wife.
Can it get better?

Speaking to the crowd just before the reenactor's salute
to the crowd

Yellow Jacket of the Lenne Lenape
aka my Delaware daughter

One last photo of a lucky man...

 

     If all goes well and the health situation remains stable in our area, we'll be part of a Canadian history/heritage time line in later September. More on that later.

Hot Lead Instead

Hot Lead, the premier gaming convention of Southwest Ontario, has been cancelled due to the present COVID-19 situation. It was the right thing to do and I compliment James on his decision, which came before the provincial mandate to suspend most group/crowd activities. Beth and I were going to go so we were disappointed even while fully supporting the decision. NEXT YEAR IN STRATFORD!
With that in mind, my daughter challenged me to a game of Kings of War using our 10mm WarMaster figures. We've done this before, especially since Katie's 25mm Elf army is still in the process of being painted. We used the second version of the rules since we're not yet familiar with the third. For the game, we use centimeters in place of inches. It works for us. So on Sunday, we hit the table.
We rolled for terrain and all the rolls were negative - no hills, no trees, no rivers - so it was some meadow somewhere in the world of fantasy. The Elves fielded lots and lots of bow-armed troops, both horse and foot, and a bunch of spear-armed infantry with one bolt thrower, some chariots, a mage, and a general. My Kings of Men army had two "hordes" of pikes , one of halbreds, a horde of berserkers, a horde of knights, some troops (smallest units) of mounted scouts and arquibusiers, two siege guns (which are really howitzers), a mage, the Captain, and my giant, Tiny.

Elven long spears horde, using GW WarMaster figures

Chariots, bowmen, and horse archers.

 

A regiment of long spears

More chariots and some horse archers.
The horse archers need to be wider than deep, but I don't feel like
unbasing them and chopping up the stands,

The Elven mage, riding a whirlwind. I really like the figure.
The swirly die means that the mage had a battle cat with him.

My horde of human pikes and a troop of arquibusiers
Pendrakon and Old Glory Miniatures from the 30 Years War and
English Civil War offerings.

GW WarMaster Empire halbrediers done up as the Black Company
from Glen Cook's series.
I think Croaker, Silent, and Goblin would be proud.

Tiny the giant pointing out the enemy to two troops of mounted scouts.
I use GW WM pistoliers as the scouts. Tiny is a 25mm Highlander.

The pikes again with the human mage and a howitzer to the rear.

Knights ---- flag stands from four different regiments. GW figures.

Berserkers!
Minifigs 10mm ECW Highlanders used as berserkers.
I didn't feel like digging for Chaos foot or barbarians.

I won the toss and made Katie move first. We were both out of range of each other except for my howitzers, who were not effective in general. I made the mistake - one I almost always make - of not being aggressive against a missile-heavy army. (If you spend less time in the rain, you don't get as wet... as it were.) She hacked up my berserkers early and our smaller units paid the price of being on the field. Tiny fought two units of Elven cavalry, destroying the first and being destroyed by the second. The Black Company and the two pike blocks suffered from missile weapons, but soldiered on. My knights exchanged charge and counter-charge with Katie's long spears until some flanking units hit them.
In the end I conceded the game since all I had left was the knights, the artillery, and some odd-ball stuff. I often loose to Katie and to my son, Robb and his dwarves, as well, but playing the game is fun, no matter what the out-come... although winning once in a while is nice.

Elven Knights vs. Mounted scouts? You can guess the outcome at any distance.

Human knights vs. Elven long spears.
We fought back and forth for a while until Katie's flanking troops entered the fray.

Human pikes vs. Elven chariots and flanking longspears.
Yeah, it was a mess.

Then a guest arrived. Katie's junior cat, Maeve, jumped up on the table at the end of the game and sat down on a unit of Elven bows. I suppose we were not paying enough attention to the death kitty. So she took matters into her own hands. (Paws?)

"So where can I sit?"

Maeve lays hands on the Elven prince.

Maeve HATES bolt throwers. She always attacks the Elven artillery.
None of us knows why.

"Why you clean up? Leave pointy thing for me to sit on, Hooman!"

Maeve and the Elven mage stare each other down.

Katie thought an over-head view was necessary.

Some Elves hide under the cat's coat.

For those interested in playing in 10mm, I recommend the ranges from Pendrakon - ancients, Medievals, SYW, ECW, 30YW, and fantasy. There's more than enough there. Also, Napoleonics, WWI & WWII, moderns, sci-fi. I recommend them almost anything you'd want to do up for a 10mm KoW army... including tanks! (Look under WWI or the Interwar/Spanish Civil War for some weird rolling stock.)

All in all not a bad way to spend a "social distance" Sunday afternoon!