Karen Millyard has provided some information on the next Master and Commander weekend, to be held at Montgomery’s Inn in Toronto from October 14-16, 2016. She can be found at @1812Dance on Twitter, as well as on her website.
There will be historical meals reconstructed from Georgian recipes, hearth-cooking workshops, concerts, dance workshop and ball, sutler’s hall, open fires, cutlass melee, many lectures and hands-on workshops. There will be daily issues of grog, hornpipes, debates and discussion groups, and much general naval merrymaking will prevail throughout! On Sunday there will be divisions after rigging church and readng the Articles of War, followed by more workshops, lectures, music and authentic historical food.
Featured speakers include distinguished scholar, author, consultant, historian and former Director General of the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa Victor Suthren. He was lecturer and crew on replica HM Bark Endeavour on one leg of her circumnavigation of the world in the 1990s, and will be giving a talk about those experiences — a rare opportunity to hear about life aboard a Georgian sailing vessel engaged on a deep-sea voyage. Though an experienced deep-sea sailor (having been among other things crew of the famous Canadian schooner Bluenose II) those were some of the most challenging weeks of his life. He is also a naval re-enactment event designer, and was responsible for the Sailors on the Lakes event at Fort George in Niagara on-the-Lake in 2013, among many others. From 1997-2014 he held the post of Honourary Captain, Royal Canadian Navy and is a recipient of the Canadian Forces Decoration and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal. His numerous publications include a book about James Cook and Cook’s connection with Canada, and he is currently writing a biography of Welsh Atlantic pirate Bartholomew Roberts.
We are also extremely proud to have Peter Twist, historian, consultant, fight choreographer, historical weapons expert and historical event designer, as a featured speaker. He replicated Marines uniforms for USS Constitution and has supplied uniforms and historical clothing to museums far and wide. His work in film and television ranges from the scholarly to the popular, while his event re-enactments are legendary (the bicentennial Battles of York and Stoney Creek among them). He can be found at his website.
