The SoCal diver who taught the Canadaians how to DIVE !

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As Jim Dugan introduced JYC & SCUBA to the US this gentleman from SoCal introduced diving to Canada--A long time before Dugan

The Southern California diver who taught the Canadaians how to dive-- a long time ago

ORIGINAL Vintage skin diving photo FRANK RODECKER Frankie the Frogman SCUBA RARE | eBay

When? Where? and Why?

I suspect not one of you were alive or if you were you were crawling on the floor when all of this transpired but Frank was certainly "The Father of Canadian diving." way back in the early 1940s...

Phil? Dale? (any of Gods frozen people???)

sdm

[DaleC]

Excellent play on words Dr Sam. Frozen indeed.

(as a side note. I am doing a dive in a Titan II missile silo later this month with 60 F water temps. The warmest dive I will have done to date - excluding pools). I'm not even sure I'll need exposure protection!

Back to the task at hand. I'm still on the look out for "Frogmen of Burma" but haven't come across it yet. My current understanding of Canadian diving pioneers centers around the work Dr. MacInnis was involved in, along with Phil N. and the rising up of our local west coast scene (again involving Phil) that has been wonderfully recorded by John Cuthill in his Masters thesis entitled "Learning Strategies of Early British Columbia Divers". Why he decided to write on this subject is a mystery but somehow he managed to interview many of the original skin, SCUBA and rebreather divers in our region. In the interviews they recall many accounts of how they learned to dive when no formal instruction existed.

I'd be very interested in learning more about Frank Rodecker's role in the Canadian scene.

Right now I am reading a book about Lionel "Buster" Crabbe. Very interesting as he worked for the British on Malta during the war. Opposing them were the Italians of the Tenth Light Flotilla which I have also already read about so it's like seeing both sides of the story.

Cheers!

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Dale
I just checked the book sellers, the Frogmen has become a very rare and expensive book--For many years the book was known but never found on the American book shelves, only found in Canada--keep looking it documents the very begining and the introduction of awarness of the underwater world in Canada.
sdm

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Picture had three bids..

Began at $24.99 sold for $38.99...Some one really wanted that picture of Frank Roedecker...more on the man and his exploits later

sdm

[Phil]

Hi, Sam
Apparently the SoCal diver didn't teach us canucks how to spell properly - we still insist on spelling Canadian with three 'eh's, instead of four.
The earliest sport diving club here on the west coast was the Vancouver Skin Divers Club, whose roots go back to 1948/49 and this was the club I belonged to . .The Vancouver Blue Sharks were formed a couple of years later. On the east coast, I'm told it was the Verdun Skin Divers first and in central Canada, the Underwater Club of Canada.

Diving was a very popular sport here in B.C. - at one time there was more than 40 dive clubs under the banner of the 'Pacific Underwater Council' in this province alone . Of course, when 'Sea Hunt' came on TV, diving literally exploded!From two clubs in the early 50's to the 40 plus a half decade later!
We (the Historical Diving Society - Canada) recently put a call out through the Historical Diving Society - US's magazine and our own Canadian 'DIVER' magazine to try to locate early Canadian dive clubs and document/record as much about them as possible while some of the long-toothers are still vertical.

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Subject: CA-NA-DA clubs

Skin Diver Magazine (SDM)published two rather comprehensive lists of dive clubs in the May 1958 issue

On page 18 there is a list five dive clubs for British Columbia. They are as follows:
* Ogopogo Sub -Aquatic club
* Nanaimo Devil Fish
* Alberni Valley Aquateers
* Aqua -Soc
* Vancouver Sub Aquatic Club
Could the Vancouver Sub Aquatic Club and the Vancouver Skin Divers Club be one and the same? If so what is the correct name for the club?
I wonder why the The Vancouver Blue Sharks were not listed?
Perhaps you can shed some light on their absence

The very same year,1958, California had over a full page and the US 4 plus pages

You may recall the cover of that issue; It was picture of dive club patches that the club sent in to SDM which were in turn atatched to a large piece of fabric which was displayed in the SDM office in Lynwood California.

The next edition of SDM to list dive clubs was the January 1963 issue which contained a head line "world wide UNDERWATER CLUB ROSTER" and both the front and back cover were pictures of dive club patches from all over the world.

Chuck Blakeslee and I discussed this "banner" some years ago. He indicated when he sold to Bob Petersen the banner and all the many boxes of the Compleat Goggler which were stacked along the wall were tossed in the trash-Gone forever.

< A side Bar- What ever happened to Peter Vasapoplous (Spelling) the founder of your DIVE! magazine? For a number of years I was in contact with him via mail and several occasions with him in Kalifornia--I have all of the original DIVE! magazines except one or two, which he was preparing to send me to complete my collection-- then the big fire and they were destroyed!
I donot recall seeing early issues of DIVE! for sale on E bay- Are they considered rare and valuable?-A suntanned Kalifornia would like to know? >

sdm

[Phil]

Just checking back thru' old posts and realized I'd missed this one. You could say that the Vancouver sub aquatic club came from the Vancover Skin Divers club . . The VSDC stuck to its old breath-hold diving roots and became a spearfishing competition-only club. Compy spearfishing members were Norm Stavenes, Sandy Martel, Larry Stasuk, Gary Leslie and myself, Phil Nuytten. The other scuba-oriented members left the VSDC and formed themselves into the Vancouver sub aquatic club.
The VSDC was never the same after the death of it's president, Jim Willis, on July 1st, 1956. {Jim suffered a massive embolism while diving with a Draeger rebreather} Most of us had switched to air lungs from rebreathers - Pat Molony, Jack Logan, Cam Porteous and I had given up our home-made rebreathers and converted MSA rebreathers in favor of aqua-lungs a couple of years previously. With the advent of the TV series 'Sea Hunt' and the opening of the first Vancouver dive shop (Vancouver Divers Supply) in 1957,the club got very much larger very quickly and the 'old guard' either drifted away to other diving pursuits such as underwater photography/wreck diving, quit diving, or became competitive spearfishermen. VSDC team members competed in the U.S. Nationals and a World meet before the club quietly disbanded.
When I was the youngest member,I believed that the Vancouver Skin Divers Club was a great club -and I still do. For me, it was the start of a diving career that has brought a lot of joy. I still go to work thinking "what a wonderful way to make a living!".

[DaleC]

Thanks for the background Phil

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Interesting history of Vancover diving

But you were a pioneer and now a historian and not publisher
~~~~ so ~~~~~
Who was this fellow named Frank Roedecker?
What part did he play in Canadian Diving?
What part did he play in American Diving?

What was he know as after WW 11?
He was associated with Pops Romano.

He was all over the early Skin Diver Magazines --but not using his birth name

What Southern California Skin Diving club did he belong? They won a national meet.

E mail Bev for some of the answers ...He also knew him and his associates

SDM

[eskimo3883]

Hope this is not changing the subject but I have had good luck using this book seller. They cuurrently have several copies of Frogmen of Burma for a reasonable price. Paste this into your address bar.

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchR ... a&x=37&y=5

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I haven't used ABE for some time nor have I checked on the "Frogmen"
Note there are about 16 for sale...I for sale in US and 15 for sale in Canada or UK many are reasonable priced.

At one time prior to e bay etc the Frogmen was impossible to find in the US for a reasonable price..I recall mine cost about $30-35.00 over 20 years ago in a local used book store and I thought it was a bargin...At that time it was...

But for what else was Frank Roedecker famous? He was a life guard and a Frogman...(a very good hint!- especiallyn those who began diving in the 40s 50s and even 60s)

sdm