Thanks to Lake Huron cottager Frank Gardiner for letting us know about this year’s Dash for Diabetes. All proceeds to go to University of Western Ontario/Robarts Research for diabetes and local area kids with diabetes.
Posted in Community issues,Events in cottage country
This year the bear went through the screen of the kitchen porch rather than the wall of the cottage.
Using lumber from the cedar deck we replaced this summer, DH boarded up the entryway, then added a "bear board" as further discouragement. It's not pretty, but it's effective.
Sunday is takeout night for the bears - that’s what DH called it after two consecutive Sunday bear break-ins at our island cottage and the neighbouring cabin.
The first happened at the cabin, where our friends had left homemade chicken soup cooling on the screened back porch while they ferried guests in the boat back to the mainland. They returned to find claw marks in the screen door, which was open, the soup pot overturned, and broken dishes strewn about the floor.
Immediately, we suspected our dog and the one belonging to neighbours on our other side. Over the years they have become as inseparable as adventuresome cottage boys, not to mention partners in retriever crime. Later that day, however, the bear itself returned to the scene. It was about the size of a large St. Bernard, small as far as bears go, but big enough that our friends stayed inside and watched through the window as it sniffed around and finally ambled off.
The following Sunday, in the middle of the night, a bear came to check out our place. There’s no telling how big it was because both DH and our half of the canine duo slept soundly through the event. Meanwhile, the ursine tore through the screen on the back kitchen porch, opened a cooler, and helped himself to a steak and milk.
Apart from the torn screens, fortunately, there wasn’t much damage, unlike last year’s bear break-ins. DH nailed 10 old six-inch cedar boards, from the deck we replaced this year, over the opening.
We drove up from the city last night, and I wondered if the bear would go for a hat trick. This morning, though, there was no sign of intrusion. I can only hope our ursine saw the boarded-up porch and concluded the takeout window was closed for the season.
Original wall cloth in Belle Isle.
A cottage burned to the ground last week, and my heart broke for the owners.
A few weeks earlier, seated in an old rocker on the massive front porch that ran across the front of the big house, I took in the expansive view over Lake Muskoka. Belle Isle was a grand old dame, had stood watch high on the island for more than 100 years, her grey siding and red roof a landmark. Since they bought it, Leslie and Tony Sinclair had poured themselves into bringing the lustre back to this historic summer home that had been in Tony’s family since 1964, and was a brief haven for Mikhail Barishnikov when he defected to Canada.
The couple did much of the work themselves. A woodworker, Leslie updated one of the kitchens (there were two, plus the butler’s pantry). She built some of the furniture for the bedrooms and replica chairs for the porch.
I took photos and shared them with the rest of Cottage Life’s editorial team back at the office. We marvelled at the original fabric cloth on the walls, the massive centre staircase that was the heart of the house, the many lovingly restored rooms and what was left of the original wicker and leather furniture.
The owners loved to share the cottage with friends, but, the night of the fire, Leslie and her dog were spending time there alone, as she also liked to do. She woke up to the sound of flames crackling and was able to get out. The dog has not been found.
Eventually we may learn what caused the fire, but those of us who have old wood-frame cottages on islands already know a stark truth: Once the fire started, the cottage would have burned quickly, and its water-access location would have challenged the local fire department.
Our thoughts are with Leslie and her family.
Posted in Cottage Life magazine,Fire,History
Preparing for takeoff.
If you’ve never capsized, you’re not trying hard enough. Words to live by, I say, but I also used to tell this to my students when I was a sailing instructor. And so the thought flashed through my mind when the gusty wind, that had my cousin Helen and I hiking far out over the windward side of the Laser, suddenly died as we passed the lee of an island.
If you’ve ever been in this situation, you know what happens next—how hard it is to get one’s bottom (never mind two bottoms) back into the boat in a timely fashion when gravity is holding you back. And so I knew, seconds before it happened, that we were going to dump the boat—to windward.
I can’t recall the last time I capsized a boat. However my cousin, on a cottage holiday with us while visiting from Scotland, had never capsized, though she is taking dinghy sailing lessons at home. There was no stopping it: Like some kind of badly rehearsed acrobatic team, we tumbled backwards into the water.
Seconds later, having determined that both we and our sunglasses were still intact, we disentangled ourselves from the mainsheet and swam out from under the boom around the back of the boat, which of course was now lying on its side. The centreboard stuck out the bottom of the hull like a mini diving board. I reached up and pulled down on the end, and the boat bobbed back upright. Then we hauled our soaking selves back into the cockpit. Thanks to the Laser’s self-draining cockpit and the return of the gusty wind, we were back in business.
You can imagine how strong the wind was that day to have us almost on a plane with two people in this little singlehander, but we had a blast. Having finally experienced a capsize, Helen was not the least bit afraid and became a better sailor for it.
Like I said, everyone needs to capsize once in a while.
Posted in Boating,Cottage activities
Copyright © 2010 Cottage Life Blog – From the dock of Penny Caldwell, Quarto Communications Ltd, All Right Reserved
PHOTO OF PENNY CALDWELL BY LAURA ARSIÈ
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