Ghost cottage

[vaneramos]

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.