EPISODE 312: BURNING OF THE P.E.YOUNG AT SUNNYSIDE IN 1930’S
alan skeoch
April 2021
The P.E. Young was quite a graceful schooner in her prime. She was built on Lake Erie to ferry goods back and forth
to and from the United States and Canadian Great Lakes ports. Grain, lumber, etc. Whisky was a big trade good carried
on schooners. Grain distilled into whisky was easier to handle and more profitable than grain. It is likely that
the P.E. Young made money for its owners. She was motorized with a 16 cylinder engine that could go 50 miles
per Hour. This would seem to place her in the rumrunning trade. With that motor she could outrun some of
the American border patrol boats.
Eventually, however, she was no longer wanted. Everyone knew Her days were numbered when she was sold
to a stonehooker in Port Credit, Ontario. Stonehooking was a rough business. Great slabs of Port Credit blue shale
were hooked with an iron rake, loaded onto small skiffs and reloaded onto old schooners to be sold to builders
as foundations for Toronto buildings. The new owner renamed her ‘Paddy’ and immediately cut her keel lengthwise
to give her a flat bottom. That way she could get in close to shore where the stonehooking was easier.
Her death was fast but not painless. Some citizens protested but most citizens enjoyed the spectacle that sealed her fate.
She was loaded with explosives and sailed to waters offshore of Sunnyside Beach,
Toronto and set afire as entertainment for visitors to the Canadian Natonal Exhibition. She was considered a memorial
to the United States navel ship Maine which was lost in the Spanish American war.
No one seems to have recorded her demise. Assume sometime in the 1930’s when the burning of schooners at
Sunnyside was regular entertainment for as many as 50,000 people.
NOTE: I HAVE ASSUMED THE P.E. YOUNG WAS A FEMALE NAMED SHIP. IT WAS CUSTOMARY TO
USE FEMALE NAMES FOR STONEHOOKERS WHICH WAS NOT REALLY CONSIDERED FLATTERING.