GLIMPSES of how Canada worked: a writer's memoir.

53. ...continued, then ended

THE ACRE ON WHICH OUR COTTAGE STOOD was the year-round home of uncounted critters, each with its own territory. In 1979 Mom and I did our best to belong. We had budgeted time out from writing for gardening -- especially tending vegetables -- and for shopping trips, but had not imagined how much would be taken up by encounters with permanent residents.

Between Sunday afternoons and Friday evenings, animals and birds were visible and busy. On weekends, only humans were seen. City dwellers especially were heard.

Chipmunks were locals everyone heard daily from dawn 'til dusk because they are (self-proclaimed) lords of the land.

There also were robins, Great Blue Heron, purple martins, humming birds, bats, owls and loons, assorted flies from small Black flies to dragonflies, bees, wasps and hornets, frogs and bullfrogs, Garter and Eastern Milk snakes, porcupines, skunks, muskrat, foxes and fishers, mink, deer, Canada Geese, painted and snapping turtles, raccoons, kangaroo and other types of mice, moles or voles (we couldn't be sure which), a nuclear family of Bank beavers, and one riding horse named Mackenzie. He carried around a middle-aged red-headed man, a photographer building a compound on acreage near the highway, who dropped in for occasional chats over the years.

There were many other humans, in nearby cottages and beyond.

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Peterborough included a year-round parish, St. Paul's in Lakefield, whose pastor traveled in July and August to read Masses in cottage country. In May and September Mom and I drove south to St. Paul's, but in high summer we went north of Buckhorn to a mission chapel, St. Jean de Brebeuf , on Hwy. 507.

Year-round residents of the area maintained the building with winter projects such as a small addition at the back, painting, or indoor-outdoor carpeting. We summer people, and the money we left behind for the next project, were welcomed each year like old friends.

However, a married priest was not. After a pastor of several years died in a highway crash, his handsome, dark-haired 40-something replacement introduced himself in Jean de Brebeuf  as a convert from the Anglican Church of Canada with a wife and four children. He praised Pope John Paul II for approving his move, for recognizing that the range of vocations to priesthood was as unlimited as human nature itself.

The permanent parishioners of St. Jean de Brebeuf objected to their Bishop loudly enough that we never saw the man again, or heard where he was assigned next.

Anglicans could also be unloving. That summer the Church of St. Matthew in Buckhorn was planning a bigger and better parish hall. Monthly suppers were moved from Wednesdays to Saturdays. That excited our cottagers' association because it meant meeting locals and discussing common concerns. Decisions made by various governments were too often not in the interests of rural communities, resident or seasonal. A united lobby was needed.

A three-course meal cost $5 in the old parish hall. It was prepared by parishioners, served by their teenagers at plastic-covered trestle tables. Non-stop dish-washing (by hand) in the kitchen provided every diner with a china plate, stainless steel cutlery, and china cups on saucers. Home-grown flowers stood in containers of all sorts. Two-litre plastic pop bottles with tops cut off held huge bouquets of wild flowers.

Entrees changed from hot to cold and back with summer temperatures. Desserts matched the season from June strawberries to October's pumpkin pies.

Grace, the wife of Mom's handyman Nelson, was very involved in preparing those meals. His driver's licence had been cancelled by Ontario years before -- we never asked why -- so when she drove away he was alone for the day. I offered to pick him up on the way to St. Matthew's, and Mom and I looked forward to meeting people because Nelson and Grace had lived there all their lives.

He led us into the hall, we paid, we ate, he led us out. We had glimpsed Grace in the kitchen at a deep stone sink, up to her elbows in suds. We had seen other members of the cottagers' association. But we hadn't met any new locals.

"Nelson," I said, "we expected to meet new people. Why didn't you talk to anyone?!"

"We'd be here all night!" he exclaimed. "They're all m' cousins. Grace yaks on the phone with 'em ever' day!"

After enough money was raised for materials for the hall, designed and built by volunteer parishioners, the monthly suppers went back to Wednesdays, excluding cottagers again.

 (In one of the humorous articles I offered to editors I repeated the end of a conversation Grace and I had about quitting smoking. Nels had, long ago, but she found it impossible. I asked her why women find it harder to stop than men do. She shouted "Because we have to LIVE WITH MEN!" Her husband of about 50 years had just brought home a lot of Ginseng from a secret place and rinsed it in the washing machine.)

Mom and I ate off the land as much as possible, guided by The Edible Wild by Berglund and Bolsby. They wrote that weeds such as purslane, plantain, and lamb's quarters, which we constantly removed from the vegetable patch, were more nutritious than what we cultivated.

Exploring the lake by canoe I'd found vast wild rice paddies. We had noticed that the weekend after Thanksgiving each year, Ojibway people from Curve Lake Reserve harvested the rice.

We went to Curve Lake a few times each summer to enjoy the Whetung family's gift shop and art gallery, and that summer I asked if anyone would mind if I harvested about half a cup of wild rice. If I wanted to do the work I was welcome to it.

It really was work. I knocked grains into the canoe with a paddle, dried them in the sun, then removed the chaff by hand. From the time I left our dock to when the first half-cup was in a jar took more than 30 hours. We used it in special meals the following summer.

Ontario's large Rice Lake had almost no rice paddies left because of boat traffic -- wakes lifted young reeds, uprooting them. Our lake's many acres of paddies were wiped out the same way during the 1980s. A marina was built 'behind' them and the string of small islands which had protected them. Power boats raced back and forth where they never had before. Three years later there was only open water. Those paddies had been home to countless species of permanent and migratory wildlife.

We both finished our books before Labour Day. I'd kept in touch with Wanda 1 and Monty after they left the agency. She had a full-time job as a communications manager and was waiting for me to write assignments. He was freelancing for various publications, with plans that might eventually include assignments for me.

When Mom and I made a day trip to Toronto in August we learned that our family physician's office had moved temporarily. A fire in January almost destroyed the building he shared with 27 other doctors. What did they and their patients do, I wondered. The editor of Canadian Doctor magazine replied by return mail to a query I sent suggesting a story about the consequences. He asked for a 3,000-word article in January of 1980, for the March issue. He would pay the standard rate of 10 cents a word.

Our final weeks in the woods were quieter than the first, when all the critters had been busy courting and breeding and producing new generations. We spent a lot of time walking through colourful woods, doing favourite things such as gathering huge blackberries on Crown lands. Migratory critters left us while permanent residents went into hibernation, or completed preparations.

Dad joined us for Thanksgiving. On Saturday we all attended Mass at St. Jean de Brebeuf  and made the rounds of neighbours to say Farewell. On Sunday our turkey was stuffed with bread baked by Grace, we had Jerusalem artichokes and weeds from our garden, wild rice, a neighbour's squash, and pumpkin pie bought in Lakefield. Dad left on Monday.

During the next few days Mom and I distributed blocks of salt to places in the neighbourhood for animals to lick during the winter (instead of eating bark from trees). We stripped the beds and packed the linens, emptied the refrigerator, unplugged it and propped the door open, drained the garden hose, water pipes and pumps, loosened fuses, turned off the propane and set the master electrical switch to "off". Finally we locked the kitchen door and headed back to the city. 

CHAPTER 53 of GLIMPSES -- 30