Hi

Me and my buddies for 25 years have always called them an "Out" because it's an outhouse without the house so we called it just an "Out". People don't seem to understand what we are talking about.

I have hear people call them thunderboxes and bush boomers.

I think we should come up with some names and officialy standardize the name so there is no confusion. The winner gets a pack of extra soft 3-ply...lol...

What do you call the interior toilets ???

Gary

We have always known them as "Thunderboxes"!

If its just a straight box with a lid, like most of the AP, thunderbox.
If there is an enclosure around the box, outhouse.

Tenzing

http://tenzingsadventures.blogspot.com/

We've always called them Thunderboxes but I've heard the following terms...

kybo

treasure chest

boom box

privvy



Laurie
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
www.outdooradventurecanada.com
www.wildernesscooking.com

I also use Kybo, but most of the the time refer to as simply "The Box"

Them...refer to them

Yes Thunderbox is the common name for the open aired outdoor toilets placed on interior camp sites in Algonquin Park.

Officially Ontario Parks and publications produced by the Friends of Algonquin Park refer to them as a "Pit Privy" or "Wooden Box Privy". Although outside of printed publications I have never heard anyone use this term.

So Thunderbox it is..!

The deluxe model


The much more common and often better smelling model




Randy Mitson
Algonquin Outfitters
Huntsville, Ontario
mailto:randym@algonquinoutfitters.com

Yeah Thunderbox seems to be the norm amongst anyone I know that does the interior.

I've always called them "thunderboxes".

Now, the really interesting discussion. Why?

Is it because of the "thunderous" reverberation you can hear while sitting on one while delivering a resounding "discharge" into the morning's stillness? Or, is it because when the lid is carelessly allowed to descend, it results in a "thunderous" noise? I've tried to choose my words carefully, so as to not offend the more sensitive amongst us.

Gee, the discussions on this forum can get weird at time, eh?

Barry Bridgeford
http://www.AlgonquinAdventures.com
http://www.ABRweb.ca .. Algonquin Backcountry Recreationalists - Caring for Algonquin's Backcountry

I figured it was called thunderbox cause u sit on it and make thunder(as in the sound)

I think we should all just be thankfully we have them.

Not until I discovered AA last year had I heard the label "thunderbox." Having used an outhouse for the last 38 years, we've always called them "outboxes"--not nearly as poetic, but newcomers knew immediately what we were talking about. There weren't any such conveniences when I started canoeing in the Park in the early 60's, so it was a real treat when on the rare occasion we came across a usable outhouse in a logging camp or behind a ranger cabin, all of them made out of small horizontally laid up poles like a log cabin. Inside there was a long open trench over which you suspended yourself by sitting on one small pole and leaning back against another. In 1980 we were camped on the shore below an old logging camp on Hogan. The outhouse was the only thing standing, and all night we could hear a porcupine chewing on the urine soaked boards to get the salt. Before the Park installed outhouses, they tried outboxes made mostly of plywood. I always assumed the Park switched to the boxes because it was too expensive to keep up with the damage done by porcupines, who liked the salt as well as the glue in the plywood. My only complaint about the boxes is that they are one board too high so that even at 5'11" I usually have to add a piece of firewood or some rocks to support my feet. Most Westerners don't realize that it is healthier to squat to have a bowel movement to get an easier, more complete evacuation.

we've always used "Kybo"

Ron,where does "kybo" come from? Is it a shortened form of kibosh? Kibosh comes from the Irish words that mean "the cap of death." In English slang it means to put an end to something. I like the thought of the outbox lid being the cap of death. Who knows what lurks under it. Sure can smell dead.

I just simply call it a "shit box"!

As I recall the term KYBO stands for:

Keep Your Bowls Open.

I heard that term used for the outhouses well before the introduction of the "modern" thunderboxes.

Andrew G.

I had always heard of them as boom boxes because of the echoing boom they make if you drop the lid, and KYBO is an old scouting term (1940's ?) for "keep your butt off" Apparently the old ones were made on-site from split or rough-sawn lumber that would fill your butt with splinters if you didn't "hover"

My friends and I have always called it a Privy, at least since I started tripping in '97 that is. Sounds like we're the only ones. They get a good laugh the first time you see them but I much prefer them over the wasp and spider infested enclosure of an outhouse.

TT.

either "crapper" or "thunderbox", or occasionally "treasure chest".

Aaron Weber
aka "Trainman"
Take everything as it comes; the wave passes, deal with the next one. -Tom Thomson

The Shitter.

I want to find the nastiest box in the park, and hang a sign on it that reads, "Home of the Detroit Lions 2008 Season"

We have always called it the "shitter" (sorry)

It has just become part of our language and we dont think of it as anything but the word to describe it. However, on one trip we were at a campsite that had a very close neighbouring site that happened to be occupied by what seemed like cub scouts.
A couple of the young boys came over to our site and asked "Do you know where the Thunderbox is?" Well we had not heard that term to describe it yet. WE thought, and one of us quickly said "OH! YOU MEAN THE SHITTER!".
I don't think the adults with the boys were impressed.

Another Thunderbox story involves my new binoculars. I had just been given them and this was their first trip into the Park.
I kept them attached to my belt with a clip. As I was making a visit to the box, I proceeded to start to sit when I heard a plop! even before I "got down to business". Sure enough my new binos were now encased in other campers leavings!
WEll I'll be damned if I was gonna leave em there, so I got hold of two sticks to try had grab them but this just ended up stirring then into the pile even deeper.
What to do?
I first called one of my buddies and then we moved the box away from the hole. The hole was deep by the way! He had to hold my legs (yes hold my legs!)while I REACHED INTO THE **** and fished for treasure! I did get my binoculars back and they required cleaning like never before. So did I!
For the rest of the trip, nobody wanted to borrow my binos!

Oh Tom, some stories are better left untold. That is a textbook example of one.

Old friends of our family, Pat and Bill...
Pat wore contact lenses years ago when they were "new". She had the hard lenses and had taken them out and left them in a glass of water by the sink. Bill came in and grabbed the glass and drank the water down, lenses included. We always said that if Pat ever wore those contacts again it'd be true love. She had better sense then to even try to fetch them.

If I ever meet you remind me not to shake your hand. No offense intended.

How did we get from bowels to eyeballs? Anyhew, another contact lense story. Our teenage nephew Skip was standing with the rest of us on the sand/gravel intersection in Kiosk where one branch heads to the access point and the other to the long gone ice cream parlor perched on the side of the hill. Suddenly he discovered he had just lost a lense. All six of us were down on our hands and knees for what seemed like forever when the lense was found under a golf ball size cobblestone.

That's all we've ever called it. I never heard Thunderbox except as a joke -- didn't know that most people referred to it that way! Upon arriving at a new campsite: "Did you see where the Box is?"

Hah we call them the "Shitter" haha "Off too the Sh***er"

Col. HooT JVFS
www.jvfs.net

The back of the canoe route map has a line that says "Most Interior campsites have simple wooden privies" This would seem to be the "official" name since this is an official publication.

It goes on to say that "These privies are there for your convenience and should be treated with respect" Well said!

I guess you can say a thunderbox over a newly dug hole in the spring is like the Detroit Lions' 2008 Season. At the beginning everything is great but it starts to smell worse as the season progresses until at the end, it need to be moved and the rest buried....lol....

gary

One of the only carvings in Algonquin that I approved of was on the thunderbox at the Tattler Lake Cabin. When the lid is up, if you approach from behind, you'll read:

"Occupied".



Aaron Weber
aka "Trainman"
Take everything as it comes; the wave passes, deal with the next one. -Tom Thomson