Historical Voyage Down The Lower Spanish River
by Cheryl Kennelly

Captain Bill Blight of Espanola embarked on a historical voyage down the Lower Spanish River with a crew of eight from Southern Ontario.  Blight navigated forty-five kilometres of the lower Spanish in an old-style pointer boat.  The pointer boat was built in 1995 to replicate an original Spanish River pointer boat of 150 years ago.  The crew included Bob Henderson">

Historical Voyage Down The Lower Spanish River by Cheryl Kennelly Captain Bill Blight of Espanola embarked on a historical voyage down the Lower Spanish River with a crew of eight from Southern Ontario.  Blight navigated forty-five kilometres of the lower Spanish in an old-style pointer boat.  The pointer boat was built in 1995 to replicate an original Spanish River pointer boat of 150 years ago.  The crew included Bob Henderson, a Heritage Columnist for The Canadian Recreational Canoe Association, a professional photographer, a biologist, a canoe maker and an archaeologist.  The crew rowed with four of the six oars and clocked speeds of approximately four miles per hour.  The last time a pointer boat ventured down the Spanish River was in the late thirties or early forties.  Bill Blight was an admirable captain. "He gave the crew a real sense of the historical spring logging drives," said Henderson.