A few weeks ago I read an intriguing 92 year old notice in an old bungalow register. It talked about Canning Benevolent Fund. Who was Canning? What was this fund? Following is a fascinating story buried in the pages of time that has much relevance today.

https://round.glass/sustain/people/insuring-frontline-forest-staff-idea-whose-time-come/

Old forest bungalow registers have always fascinated me. I have tried tracing as many of them as I can over the years while documenting the heritage forest rest houses they used to be housed in.

In these old forest registers every bungalow occupant once left behind a bit of himself, in ink.

(In this pic you can see entries made by the Champion brothers - the much more widely known F.W. Champion, then DFO, and his elder brother, Sir HG Champion, then CF & FW's superior)

Quirky remarks, funny one liners, gossipy quips, records of “game bagged” (when hunting was legal), stories of ghostly encounters, and more, were the standard fare of most bungalow registers.

(Entries on tigers; a man-eater prowling in '43, a follow up remark saying it was shot)

On lonely jungle nights, poring over these registers under a dim lantern would be an endless source of amusement for the bungalow’s occupants. I chanced upon one such old register dating back to 1928 in the 117 year old Mundiyapani bungalow in Uttarakhand's Kalagarh Division.

The first of the many yellowing pages of this register had a notice, signed by F.W. Champion whose writings & pioneering tripwire photography technique convinced many hunters (incl. Corbett) to give up the gun for a camera. It was in this notice I first read of the Canning Fund.

I knew I had to find out more about this fund and the man after whom it was named. And thus came about this article.

(Captioned 'Forest-guards in the tiger and bear haunted jungles in which they work..', this photo taken by FW Champion in the forests of Kalagarh in the 1920s)