ALGONQUIN DEFINING MOMENTS

Episode 20: Living Alone in Algonquin - Gertrude Baskerville‘s Experience In the spring of 1941, Gertrude Baskerville set out from the Kitchener area with her ailing husband Ted and 16-year old son Ed to join her brother Charles and his family in establishing a new life on the shores of  South Tea Lake in Algonquin. Within a  year her husband had died from his injuries received in the trenches dur...

Episode 19: Tom Thomson as a Myth and Legend This is the last of a three-part series on the life, the body, and the legend of Canada’s artist icon Tom Thomson.  In this episode, I will focus on the mythology that that evolved around Thomson from the 1940s to today. Then, I’ll try to address the legend by assembling the thoughts on the subject by three great writers Roy MacGregor, Sherrill Grace, a...

Episode 18: Artist Tom Thomson's Mysterious Death in Algonquin Park On Tuesday, July 16th a little over 104 years ago, after almost a week of fruitless searches, the body of Tom Thomson was found on Canoe Lake just east offshore from Little Wapomeo Island.  Over the next few days, chaos and confusion seemed to have reined on Canoe  Lake. This is the second of a three-part series on the life, the b...

Episode  17: Tom Thomson's Art and his Introduction to Algonquin Park On Sunday July 8th a little over 104 years ago, Tom Thomson was wearing 'khaki trousers, white canvas shoes, a lumberman’s grey woolen shirt and no hat' as he headed off south down Canoe Lake in Algonquin Park. According to the Algonquin Park weather station, the average temperature that day was 16.4 degrees Celsius and about a...

Episode 16: A Chat with Sven Miglin from Canoe Lake's Portage Store in Algonquin Park The Portage Store has always had a special place in my heart. This is because for many years my family had a lease on Canoe Lake, and as a kid, it was often the local hangout for ice cream and people watching. I’m delighted that in this episode to be joined by Sven Miglin, whom with many members of his family, ha...

Episode 15: The Origins of Canoe Lake's Portage Store (1935-1975) In this episode with the help of an old memoir from my Canoe Lake neighbour, Isabel Cowie who with 3 friends once ran it in the 1950s, I’m going to share all that I have researched and can remember about the origins of the Portage Store from 1935 to 1975 and its role as the social centre of Canoe Lake. For those unaware, on a typica...

Episode 14: Shanty Life Wrap Up and 2008's Last Squared-Timber Crib Run I had originally thought that three episodes would cover just about all there was to say about the history of logging in Algonquin Park. But when going back over my notes, I realized that I wasn’t quite done. There were a few more amusing shanty life stories that I still wanted to share and a few more shanty songs that needed...

Episode 13: The Merry but Risky Lives of Skidders, Teamsters and River Drivers This third of three episodes on the history of logging  in Algonquin Park and the Ottawa Valley shares details as to how the cut logs and square-timber were hauled out of the bush, driven down the rivers that led to the Otttawa River and eventually  conveyed to saw mills or floated by the raft to Quebec City. It include...

Episode 12: A Chat with Roderick MacKay on Life in a 19th Century Camboose Shanty This second of three episodes on logging in Algonquin Park shares anecdotes as to what life in the logging camboose shanties of the 19th Century was all about.  I decided to go directly to the source and is an interview with Roderick MacKay (known as Rory) a subject matter expert on the camboose shanty both as a hist...

Episode 11: Logging in Algonquin Park - The 19th C Experience Controversy over logging in Algonquin Park is almost as old as the Park itself, though truth be known, public attention on the issue didn’t really start until the 1930’s and major antagonism didn’t happen until the late 1960s early 1970s. The funny thing is that when Algonquin Park was created in 1893, the conventional wisdom was that l...

Episode 10:  Back Country Canoe Tripping Part II As noted in Episode 9 backcountry canoe tripping has been an integral part of the Algonquin Park, Ontario Canada experience since well before the Park’s beginnings in 1893.  This follow-on episode focuses on what the landscape was like that our three canoe trip parties paddled through including majestic waterways, beaver dam filled rivers, and muddy...

Episode 9: Turn of the Century Backcountry Canoe Tripping Experiences - Part 1 So backcountry canoe tripping is one of those past times that you either love or you absolutely hate or, as the mother of a childhood friend said, you do it so that you can talk about it afterwards. Have you ever wondered though, what it must have been like venturing into the ‘wilderness’ or the bush as it was called ba...

Episode 8: The Grand Trunk's Long Lost Algonquin Railway Hotels In the late 1800s, outdoor recreation in Ontario was just starting to become a ‘thing.’   Folks who lived in cities were anxious to escape their urban and industrial woes and reconnect with the wilderness. In 1905 the Grand Trunk Railway had just acquired J. R. Booth’s Canada Atlantic Railway, which in turn had merged with his Ottawa,...

Episode 7: A late 19th Century Bear Hunt Just outside the park boundary on the east side, on Victoria Lake, is a large hunting lodge owned for over 50 years by a former Governor of Vermont, Edward Curtis Smith and his family. Whilst researching the history of the lodge and its connection to the town of Madawaska, (to be published Feb 2021) I came across a short story about a family bear hunting ex...

Episode 6:  Algonquin Park Poaching Stories As shared in Episode 5, one of the downsides to the creation of Algonquin Park in 1893 was the fact that a significant number of folks in the local communities around Algonquin Park were now considered outlaws because they were running trap lines in what was now a protected area. They went overnight from being fine outstanding citizens trapping to supple...

Episode 5: A History of Poaching and Trapping in Early Algonquin Park One of the downsides to the creation of Algonquin Park in 1893 was the fact that a significant number of folks in the local communities around Algonquin Park were now considered outlaws because they were running trap lines in what was now a protected area. They went overnight from being fine outstanding citizens trapping to supp...

Episode 4: The Brent Run Challenge Though perhaps hard to believe by some, since the 1930s there has been a hidden challenge by locals primarily from Camp Ahmek and the Portage Store staffs on Canoe Lake in Algonquin Park to see if it’s possible to complete the entire 160-kilometer trip in less than 24 hours. The trip includes just about every possible terrain that it’s possible to experience in A...

Episode 3: A Walking History Tour of Rock Lake Station in Algonquin Park This episode takes the visitor on a walking tour of what was once a bustling community of railwaymen, loggers, tourists and leaseholders and their families at Rock Lake in Algonquin Park. Today Rock Lake Campground is one of the largest campgrounds in Algonquin Park and unless one realizes that the road through it was once th...

Episode 2: A Paddler's Guide to the Lost History of Canoe Lake's Algonquin Park Located about 14 km in from the West Gate and unbeknown to most, Canoe Lake has a deep and colourful history well beyond the Tom Thomson Memorial Cairn and Totem Pole and the Canoe Lake Cemetery, where according to some, the spirit of Tom Thomson once rested for a while. This podcast shares the highlights of about a do...

Episode 1: Life on Algonquin Park's Canoe Lake in the Pandemic Year 1918 It was 1918, the first year of the Spanish Flu pandemic and a year after the artist Tom Thomson had died under mysterious circumstances on Algonquin Park's Canoe Lake. This episode focuses on what life was like at Canoe Lake at the time including challenges getting there, the landscape, community economics, insight into the l...