September 7, 2001 Algonquin Park remembrances

In my series of articles on the CNR line across northern Algonquin Park, I have not mentioned the private camps situated along the way where the train would not stop. 

Today I bring you the story of three fifteen year old North Bay girls who, for three summers starting sixty five years ago, vacationed on their own at one of these camps somewhere between Daventry and Brent. 

The story is written by Bernice (Brown) Cleator of North Bay, one of the participants, as a remembrance of that experience. 

We thank her for permission to publish the story here. The second and final part of the story will appear here next week, along with a report of what later happened to the people in the story.

By Bernice Cleator

"Mileage twelve's comin' up girls. You'd better get ready to jump." 

These were the words of the engineer on the CNR's little local train heading across Algonquin Park. With its two cars and its two-man crew, the train made the trip twice a week as far as the village of Brent. 

"Too bad we can't stop for you," he went on, "but rules is rules, and the best we can do is slow down." We three girls, Aleda and Toby and I, stood poised at the open door, our bags and boxes around our feet and our hearts in our mouths. 

"Okay, here we are," announced the trainman, "Off you go!" 

So we jumped, Toby first and Aleda and I following right behind. We rolled down the steep rail embankment and our possessions, thrown out by the trainman, came tumbling all around us. "Have fun," called the engineer as he picked up speed and rounded the bend. "See you in two weeks!"

Thus began our first adventure in the wilds of Algonquin Park. It was July 1936 and we were all fifteen years old. The little run down log cabin we were to occupy stood a couple of hundred yards through dense forest from the rail embankment. We soon had our possessions carried inside and began to look for the deep hole in the ground where we were to store our food. 

It took all three of us to drag aside the heavy covering over the metal-lined hole, then all three to replace it when we had stowed our supplies. 

"That's for the bears," explained Toby, at that time the most knowledgeable in the ways of the wild. "In fact, Dad says we must never take a step out of doors without carrying an axe," she went on. "You can always fend off a bear if you wave an axe around."

Toby's father and mine were keen outdoorsmen and fishing companions. They had used this old cabin as their headquarters on several occasions while they fished the teeming Algonquin lakes. But they hadn't told Aleda's parents or my mother any details, because they knew, if they did, we girls would be denied the experience. So here we were on our own in this pristine paradise. The canoe we were to use was turned upside down in the cabin, and we eagerly carried it down the path to the shore. For the next two weeks that canoe, our only mode of transport, would take us everywhere.

We were situated on the shore of Upper Couchon Lake, just a few miles within the northern boundary of that immense 3000 square mile tract of wilderness set aside in 1893 as Ontario's first park. Just to stand on the rock where we beached the canoe and look, was a delight. Sunlight dappled the surface of the lake, and towering stands of red and white pine crowded right to the water's edge. There was wilderness all around us, and not a soul to complicate it. Even to three fifteen-year-old girls it was a mystical experience.

We soon learned that nights in the wilds were not for sleeping. First came a stillness that was almost palpable, sometimes broken by the eerie night call of a loon. An hour or two later came the first long howl of a wolf from across the lake. Other wolves replied with high-pitched wails that rose to a great crescendo before echoing away to the far hills. Close to daybreak the squirrels, chipmunks and mice began scurrying over the roof of the cabin, their sharp claws scratching noisily as they chattered away another busy morning. Sometimes the only way to sleep was to bury our heads under the covers, and I for one did that frequently.