Ghost cottage

The forests of Haliburton County feel like wilderness. No wonder so many people make the three-hour trek here from Toronto to relax at the cottage every summer weekend. But contrary to appearances, most of the land was logged and settled 150 years ago. On Lake Fletcher, a 19th-Century farmhouse and barn stand isolated at the end of Robinson's Bay, and throughout the region there are remnants of an earlier, more arduous existence, if one knows where to look for them.

In 1989 I had the privilege of meeting and interviewing Edna Staebler, a Canadian journalist and non-fiction writer who was already aged at the time, but I find no indication she has passed away. She was noted for creating a news furor years earlier when some food corporation (Nabisco?) took her to court for publishing a cookie recipe she learned from local Mennonites, alleging she had somehow cheated the food industry. The community helped raise her legal costs and the lawsuit failed. I don't remember the details. Someone needs to write a Wikipedia entry about Edna Staebler. I interviewed her at a lakeside home near Waterloo, so we fell to talking about lakes. I mentioned Fletcher and was surprised to discover she had visited it decades ago, in the 1920s if memory serves, while staying at a lodge, which still exists on nearby Livingstone Lake.

The area must have many old stories to tell, and they're rapidly dying. About 20 years ago I saw a ghost town beside Wolf Lake. Saturday afternoon Dad, Marian, Brenna and I returned, but the town has vanished, replaced by new cottages.

We drove further down the road to Crown Lake, which practically lies within two kilometres of the boundary of Algonquin Park, but there are no popular access routes anywhere around. Leaving the car, we wandered along a rolling gravel road without hydro lines.

Dad discovered an overgrown driveway leading to an abandoned cabin that must have included four or five rooms. Outside was a cold storage constructed of logs, styrofoam and an icebox door. Most of the cabin's walls had collapsed, though the kitchen was still covered and contained a few artifacts, practically undisturbed. Brenna salvaged a small glass bottle. Among the rubble on the floor Marian and I found a copy of Starweek dated August 24 to 31, 1985. It was easy to believe no one had touched some of those items or trodden the dead leaves in more than two decades.

Who abandoned the place? Much of this land belongs to the Crown, but does anyone own the land that cabin stands on? I wonder what ghosts we left behind.

More photos are posted in rural_ruin. A closeup of the exterior paint is posted in texture. A complete gallery of 12 images is posted on Flickr.



( Marian and Brenna )

Two new wildflowers

Along the Crown Lake road we also found two wildflowers I don't remember seeing before. Even without a field guide at hand, I guessed the genera of both immediately, which is satisfying in itself. Back home I identified the species with fair certainty, but if anyone knows better let me know. The first one, American knapweed, Centaurea americana, is splendid, its flower larger than the closely related bachelor's-buttons (remember I posted a different Centaurea from Goderich last week). The Indian-tobacco, Lobelia inflata, is less showy than others in its genus, but lovely to my eye.

A load

Despite the previous few posts about the cottage, we are of course back in Guelph, Brenna and I. Today was a cleaning day.

Big cleaning.

Last week the landlord asked us to clean out the basement. Over the weekend he hauled away five truckloads of the neighbours' junk. A few minutes ago he took away my single truckload, mostly empty boxes, some obsolete computer components, a monstrous CD tower, a broken chair, and a few heavy boxes of magazines.

Magazines. I've saved them obsessively for years. I can't afford to carry the weight of them anymore. I need to simplify my life, which partly depends on ejecting the detritus of too many years saving things. To the dump went hundreds of Canadian Geographics, National Geographics, cooking magazines, who knows what else, probably a fortune, but I haven't the patience to sort and figure out how else to dispose of them. A whole box of the Hanover Post from 1989 to 1991 when I worked as a reporter and columnist. I haven't looked at them since. What use are they?

I refused to handle two large boxes of Scientific American that got hit by sewage when the pipes burst two years ago. They're still in the basement, and the landlord can decide what to do with them. That filth is not my problem.

I only saved one box of old National Geographics, and a collection of Harrowsmith. I've reduced my basement storage pile by two-thirds.

Brenna and I also spent two hours cleaning the bedroom. We moved the double futon bunk, cleared all the litter underneath and vacuumed. I bet that's the second time I've vacuumed there in eight years. We sorted through a pile of boxes that filled one corner of the room, throwing out a number of books that were in bad shape. From that room we added four more boxes of junk to the truckload. I left the old TV on the curb, but without hope. People around here don't stop for junk.

The bedroom still needs work, but a lot of clutter, both physical and psychological, has cleared.

I purposely did this when Brenna was around. She made helpful decisions about books, clothing and whatnot. Also, she saw my grandmother's mantle clock destined for the dump and persuaded me to save it. She didn't know who it came from, only that it looked interesting and valuable, even though it doesn't work. One small concession to nostalgia.