You cannot live in Northern Ontario without
developing a love for the outdoors.
We
were very fortunate that our first posting on entry into Canada in 1967 was to
the French River District. Some would
suggest that we lived out in the sticks but we were heartened by the fact that
many tourists in the summer and winter paid a fortune to spend time in this
idyllic part of the country.
Some would say that the winters were long,
cold, hard and harsh but that is only if you chose to lock yourself indoors for
the entire duration of the winter. When
I arrived at the French River I had youth on my side. Somehow I gathered that old age and winters
just did not agree. I also located in a
town that was built around scenic rivers and lakes. Having lived close to the
Indian Ocean most of my life I had already developed a love for anything that resembled
the ocean or was close to water.
I soon invested in a fourteen-foot aluminium
boat which I could accommodate on top of my eight-cylinder sky-blue Chevrolet
Malibu. The two-and-a-half horse power
outboard motor could be safely tucked away in the trunk of my car. As a result I was able to access most of the
rivers and lakes in the area thanks to the friendship I developed with a French
Canadian senior who was a guide in what can only be described as pioneering
days and therefore knew the rivers and lakes as though he had created them
himself. As you can well imagine, our
fishing trips were always a great success.
The French River itself was a treasure of all kinds of marine life and
this made it very interesting. My French
guide showed me the way to get to the “five fingers” where fishing was at its
premium. The “five fingers” was a land
formation in the centre of the swift flowing river of the French River that
allowed water to rush through rocks that resembled a giant hand as though it
was clawing at the river bed. You quickly learned, however, that venturing into
this complicated river with no knowledge of it was suicidal. One could easily get lost in the maze of
inlets that somehow looked the same to a novice.
A less complicated river was the Murdock
River where fish were plentiful, but one had to know the spots or fishing
became totally unproductive. Mercer Lake
was just around the corner and was an excellent lake to introduce my son to the
wonders of fishing. You almost got the
impression that fish in this lake were trained to commit suicide. Every cast of the line brought in a fish of
varying sizes. A few miles from us were
two small lakes. It would seem that the
locals had run out of names for they came to be known simply as Lake One and
Lake Two. Lakes One and Two were full of
Northern pike of various sizes. Some of them were regular monsters.
In the spring, the Magnatawan River became
the main attraction. It was the “smelt
run” that attracted hundreds of people to the river. The river became a hive of activity on both
sides of the river. This also became a
family event. The smelt run took place a
little before midnight. The only
equipment that one needed was a scoop net.
When the run was in real earnest, a couple of scoops were enough to fill
an entire garbage bag with these sardine-like fish. Many families would start fires along the
river and while some members scooped up the fish, the others were involved in a
fish fry.
In the winter ice fishing was a popular
sport. Investing in an ice drill made
drilling holes in the ice an easy task.
Because it could get to fifty below zero, building a huge fire on the
ice was always a welcome task. It was
always very cold but if one wore layers of clothing it just did not seem to
matter. With the introduction of Ski-do suits there did not seem to be any need
to wear a whole lot of clothing. The suit kept one snug and warm all the
time. Quite often you were perhaps the only person
on the lake but it was frozen hard and there was no chance that you could slip
in. I was informed that when the ice
froze to six inches in thickness, it could support a truck. My car always remained ashore.
I was introduced to the technique of ice
fishing. Using the ice drill it was easy
to make a hole in the ice, ten inches in diameter, until you hit water. Sometimes the ice was up to five feet thick. You
then let down a baited line through the hole making sure that that the bait was
about a foot above the bottom. You then tied
the line to a stick and using the ice shavings that collected as you dug the
hole in the ice you anchored the stick by pressing hard on the shavings that
now held the stick firmly. You then
proceeded to make a couple of holes in different other spots using the same
technique. Parking yourself next to the fire which always preceded the digging
of holes in the ice, you kept an eye on the sticks that held the lines. Before long you notice that the sticks begin
to bend as the fish try to move away with the bait. This is a time of real excitement. You tug on the line hard enough to set the
hook and depending on the size of the fish you play with the fish until it gets
real tired. You then yank it out of the
hole. Left out in the open it takes ten
minutes for the fish to get frozen solid.
My French guide introduced me to the skill
(learned from the native Indians) on how to get a fire going. It was not difficult to find dead and dry
branches that could be easily harvested.
In addition I was advised to collect some small twigs under which were
placed a handful of birch bark that could readily be peeled off the bark of the
tree. The birch bark was the catalyst in
starting a fire for when a match was applied it burst out into a flame as
though one was lighting gas. Once the
flame started the little twigs were added with much patience until the flame
started growing. It was only then that
larger logs were added to the growing flames and before long you had a raging
fire going.
Hunting was also a popular sport in the
French River District. Some hunters
showed a preference to hunt for large game like moose. This was going to be their only source of meat
throughout the winter. With my .22 my interest was in shooting
partridge. This had to be done very
early in the morning. I did not venture
into the thick forests all around us. I
took the easy way out. I drove my car
very slowly on the roads that skirted the area and invariably I would come
across a partridge feeding on the gravel in the various lanes. I then proceeded to open the door to the car
very carefully so as not to disturb the bird.
Fortunately I was a good shot and would land the target without any
difficulty. An hour’s hunting was
sufficient to bag at least half a dozen of these birds.
Shooting rabbits in the winter was also a
popular sport. I shot a whole lot of
rabbits but since my wife was not inclined to cook them, I would clean them and
keep them in our giant freezer in waiting for our friends from Sudbury who
waited for my invitation to take what they wanted from the freezer. This included a whole lot of fish that I had
caught but never got around to eating.
The High School where I taught had a table
tennis table which was used by both Staff and students. Many hours were spent there, particularly on
weekends challenging the many students to games that soon became very
competitive.
We bought our first house in a place called
Noelville. It was an old broken-down
house right in the centre of town. We
paid $10,000 for it. In those days that
was big money. We were able to obtain a
mortgage from the Caisse Populaire which was the only credit union in town. With two salaries coming in, and a deliberate
tightening of our purse strings, we were able to pay off the mortgage in a
year’s time. The teachers where I worked
volunteered to help me renovate the house.
We started from the outside. The
brick siding was ripped away, and so were the shingles on the roof. The wooden
structure underneath was fully exposed and it was a sorry sight. In a day’s time the shingles were replaced,
and the outside walls were dressed up with white and light blue aluminum siding
after the walls were appropriately insulated.
The team then moved into the inside of the house. They dropped a wall to
make the living room much larger; installed ready-made wooden panelling for the
walls instead of dry-wall and covered the floor with plush carpeting. They then tackled the kitchen and made it
look modern. The only bathroom in the house
needed a tub which was conspicuously absent. The original owners had their
showers in the basement and the waste water was piped out through a drain. A contractor was brought in to move the walls
of the bathroom back a bit in order to make the bathroom accept the tub. When the house was finally completed it was
not only the best looking house in town but it also became very livable and
very comfortable. The Pereiras became the talk of the town for their
resourcefulness. The neighbours were
thrilled to have such a good looking house next to theirs. I guess the value of their property went up
too.
I was not a handyman but I was able to
learn a whole lot from the teachers who worked so industriously and happily as
long as I kept the beer coming. When the
house was completed, we threw a big party for all the helpers and their
wives. I think that the whole town must
have known that something was going on in the Pereira house that night. We made sure that our next door neighbours
were invited too so that there would be no complaints from them.
Once the house was fit for human
habitation, I spent some time on the large lot next to us attempting to grow a
garden. Nobody in town built fences
around their property and I had fully intended to conform to this
practice. I asked a farmer close by
whether he could give me a hand to plow the garden with his large plow and to
use his spreader to spread dead manure which also came from his farm. He willingly agreed to do this for me at a
very small fee, so one Saturday he came in with all his equipment and got to
work. Since there were large trees
belonging to the neighbours next to what was going to be my garden, the roots
of these trees ran right across my lot.
The farmer attached special equipment to his tractor to lift all these
roots some of them quite massive and then proceeded to chop them off. He then did a great job of spreading the
manure and working it into the soil.
Once this was done, I planned the garden in
such a way that corn was to be grown close to the road and I had at least two
rows of them. I then had three rows of
potatoes; two rows of tomatoes; two rows of beans; and in between I had planted
cucumbers and pumpkins. The garden was a
real hit. We would spend our mornings
weeding the garden and that provided us with much needed exercise.
When harvest time came we would dig up at
least a hundred pounds of potatoes. We
stored the small ones for seeding the following year. The basement was cool enough to keep the
potatoes from rooting right through the winter. We had more than we needed of most of what
we grew so we gave much away to friends who visited us from Sudbury. The vegetables were organically grown and
because of the manure enriching the soil they grew very luscious and good to
eat.
About the most beautiful time of the year
was the Fall. The trees were a thing of
beauty to behold. The splash of colour wherever one looked filled ones heart
with happiness. The only sad thing about
the Fall colours was that they were short lived and before you knew it the
first big flakes of snow were to be seen reminding us that warm clothes better
come out from storage and that the house was to be prepared to face the winter
all over again.
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