The “spring check” in 2019 will be the last of the regular formal checks at this location; hereafter, we will visit only when we are informed in a log or personal e-mail that maintenance is needed - so please keep us informed!
The Background
Visits to GC12N8A (at the beautiful location where Stephen Leacock spent his summers) and GCD327 (at the scenic site where he is buried) reminded us of the joy of reading Stephen Leacock’s works and we felt the need ourselves to create a cache commemorating him and his humour. This is it - in a different area entirely!
Annually, the “Leacock Medal for Humour” is awarded in Canada to the author considered to have written the best humorous volume of the year. It is named in honour of Stephen Butler Leacock, considered by many to be Canada’s pre-eminent writer of humour. At the age of six, he came from England with his family to Canada to settle on a farm near Egypt, Ontario south of Lake Simcoe. Surviving a difficult youth, he went on to be educated at Upper Canada College (where he later taught for some time), the University of Toronto and the University of Chicago where, in 1903, he earned a PhD in Economics and Political Science. For the rest of his working life - he retired in 1936 - he split his time between Montreal, where he came to be head of the Department of Economics and Political Science at McGill University, and his summer home in Orillia, Ontario. He died in 1944 and was buried near Sibbald Point at the south end of Lake Simcoe.
Dr. Leacock’s first book was a serious best-seller - Elements of Political Science (1906) - but he is remembered chiefly for his books of humorous essays and stories - Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (1912), Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich (1914) and many more. How well this writer remembers evenings in his late teens spent with peers listening as members of the group took turns reading aloud from these works! We literally laughed until we cried!
One piece in Literary Lapses (1911) is entitled “A, B and C - the Human Element in Mathematics” in which Leacock gently pokes fun at the foibles of A, B and C who participated in so many activities at the dictates of the creators of high school mathematics problems. As Leacock puts it near the beginning of the essay:
The occupations of A, B, and C are many and varied. In the older arithmetics they contented themselves with doing ‘a certain piece of work.’ This statement of the case however, was found too sly and mysterious, or possibly lacking in romantic charm. It became the fashion to define the job more clearly and to set them at walking matches, ditch-digging, regattas, and piling cord wood. At times, they became commercial and entered into partnership, . . . . Now they race on locomotives; now they row; or again they become historical and engage stage-coaches; or at times they are aquatic and swim. If their occupation is actual work they prefer to pump water into cisterns, two of which leak through holes in the bottom and one of which is water-tight. A, of course, has the good one; he also takes the bicycle, and the best locomotive, and the right of swimming with the current. Whatever they do they put money on it, being all three sports. A always wins.
So, here are some problems from a mathematics text of that era, slightly edited and up-dated (pounds to dollars, miles to kilometres, etc.) to be solved in order to find the co-ordinates of this cache. Think algebra, intuition and/or trial and error. Enjoy the problems and the cache. And, for your further enjoyment, we hope you’ll pick up a volume of Stephen Leacock’s work the next time you visit your library . . . and don’t miss those caches cited earlier!
The Problems
1. A, B and C were given $864 to share. C got 5/11 of what B received and A got an amount equal to the total received by B and C. How much did each of A and B receive?
A received $_____ (DEF);
B received $_____ (GHJ).
2. A is 9 times as old as B but in 35 years from now, she will be only twice as old as B. What is the age of each now?
A is ___ (KL) years old;
B is ___ (M) years old.
3. A, B and C together drink a barrel of apple cider in 24 days. A and B together drink 4/3 of what C does and B drinks twice as much as A. In what time period would each separately empty the cask?
A:____ (NPQ) days;
B:____ (RS) days;
C:____ (TU) days.
4. B and C start bicycle rides towards each other along the old Ontario #2 highway from Belleville to Cobourg, a distance of 70 kilometres. B starts in Belleville and C in Cobourg, travelling at average speeds of 18 km/h and 12 km/h respectively. Assuming no interruptions nor breaks, at what distance from Belleville will they meet? At the same time that B and C start, A leaves Cobourg on a motorcycle travelling at 48 km/h. He travels until he meets B, then reverses and travels until he meets C, reverses again and travels until he meets B again and so on. Assuming that no time, speed or distance are lost in these reversals, how far will A travel before B and C meet?
(In the name of simplicity and accuracy, keep any fractions you encounter in fractional form - i.e. avoid decimals!)
B and C meet ____ (VW) kilometres from Belleville;
A travels a total of ____ (XYZ) kilometres.
The Co-ordinates of the Cache
The co-ordinates of the cache are: N 44° ab.cde' and W 078° fg.hjk'. (The lower case letters used here have no relationship to the upper case letters used above.)
a = D - W:____; b = M + N - U:____; c = R - (E + Z):____;
d = J - S:____; e = L + D:____; f = K - Y:____;
g = G + X:____; h = J - Q:____; j = P + V:____;
k = (K + U) - T:____.
The cache is at: N 44° __________' and W 078° __________ '.
You are welcome to check your answer on GeoChecker.com.
The Cache
There is an excellent parking area which will be obvious as one approaches the area. The cache is a thoroughly cleaned, camouflaged peanut butter jar in an obvious spot not far from the trail. Please replace as found. At its creation, the cache contained a trackable geocoin, a selection of ordinary tradeables, but no writing instrument. The FTF earns the honour only. If there were no puzzle involved, we would rate the hide as a 2.0.