Nominigan and Other Smoke Lake Jewels
Gaye I. Clemson
Copyright © 2012 Gaye I. Clemson
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2012-04-03
Dedication
In 1996, I started a journey into the human history of Algonquin Park, which included avidly collecting oral history stories in an attempt to understand more about my fellow leaseholders on Canoe Lake. Little did I know that my ventures around the lake with my twin boys, Kristopher and Taylor, in our vintage cedar-strip canoe, would take me from our small cabin to so many corners of Algonquin Park’s human history. What started out as a single summer adventure, took on a life of its own as I spent the next decade visiting residents from across the Park. I learned about their families, their settlement motivations, and lots of wonderful stories about the weather, animals, boats, canoe trips, artistic endeavours, interesting characters, family traditions and weekend adventures. As my collection of stories grew, I realized that the insight that I was gaining might also be of interest to a wider audience. Hence this is my seventh book in a series of Algonquin human history narratives.
Acknowledgements
For this narrative, a very special acknowledgement must go to the late Mary Northway who’s work over 40 years ago in researching the origins of Nominigan and willingness to share her family’s experiences on Smoke lake is here republished with much of it in its original form. Other special thanks must go to Sue Ebbs Hayhurst, without whose help I never would have found Mary; to Mary Sessions Cline who gladly shared family photos and insight into her experiences at Minnesing Lodge and Scott and Bryan Hunt whose lovely photographs of Smoke Lake can be found at www.smokelake.com. As always I am deeply grateful for the deep and ongoing support from Rory MacKay, fellow leaseholder, historian, archeologist and author and Ron Tozer, former park naturalist and archivist whose help in finding the right photos from the Algonquin Park Visitor Centre’s vast collection is deeply appreciated.
Setting the Stage
A Lone Boy Fishing - Hunt Collection
Located off of Highway 60 at the 14-kilometer signpost, Smoke Lake is one of the largest and deepest in Algonquin Park. Measuring about seven kilometres long, with a depth of a little less than 56.5 meters (190 feet) in some spots, it lies close to the height of land that divides the Ottawa Valley from Georgian Bay. This is a fact that is very well known to anyone who has hiked to nearby Kootchie Lake. But to see a Smoke Lake panorama at its best, is to stand atop the high point of land on the nearby Hardwood Lookout hiking trail. From here, the view is spectacular, especially on a bright sunny day in summer, when the blue of the water surrounded on both slides with the deep hardwood forests, makes the lake looks like a brilliant sapphire imbedded in a setting of green. Though majestic, this view is misleading as it represents only about half of the lake which jog legs to the right and extends even further to the south.
One Smoke Lake landmark, no longer visible from shore nor obvious unless you know where to look, can be found on the western shore just past the first major bay as you exit Smoke Creek. Here, just below the tree line are the remains of one of the few magestic white pine trees that at one time graced the area as far as the eye could see. Most were ‘taken’, when loggers first moved through the area in the 1880’s. Those that remained that were considered too small by the loggers and over the next decades grew into their majesty. One became a Smoke Lake landmark due to the fact that in 1925, it became the home to one of Algonquin’s fire tower lookouts. These towers were manned in summer by fire rangers who kept an eye out for fires either man made or induced by lightning. Mounted on steel, eight feet above the top most branches of the trees, these observation platforms were built out of spruce and came complete with railing and a room that could hold three men. Connected by ‘bush phone’ these fire towers were part of a network that criss-crossed the Park. The one on Smoke Lake was unique because it was mounted not on steel, but was built into the top most branches of one of the last remaining original growth pine trees that towered above the others. The platform’s spruce supporting poles had been hauled up to the top of the pine tree by rope, cut there with axes and shaped into a frame that was fastened into place with angle braces. It swayed in even the slightest breeze. When local resident, John Standerwick Jr. was a teenager, in the 1950s, he and two friends climbed it and said that they could see five lakes from the spot. Though not used for fire detection after the 1930s, this tree top lookout stood for a full 50 years until 1975, according to local residents, the top of the ancient tree was knocked off in a summer storm . Though no longer visible from the lake, the remainder of the tree with the ladder still attached was allegedly still there in 2000.
Another jewel of Smoke Lake that you can see in the distance is Molly’s Island. It’s named after Molly Colson, a Canoe Lake institution in the first half of the 20th century, who loved to paddle there for picnics on her infrequent days off. As noted in the author’s Algonquin Voices - Selected Stories of Canoe Lake Women, Molly and her husband Ed, both early arrivals to Algonquin (1900 and 1905 respectively) were the proprietors from 1917 to 1943 of another Algonquin jewel, the Algonquin Hotel and Colson Outfitting Store, which was located near the railway station on Joe Lake. They later built the Portage Store outfitting concession on Canoe Lake across Highway 60 from the Smoke Lake Landing in 1937. Originally trained as a nurse in Ottawa, according to Audrey Saunders in The Algonquin Story, ’Molly did everything for her neighbours but marry them and bury them and her husband could do those two things if needed.’ In July 1946, over 100 people came to pay their respects and unveiled on Molly’s island a plaque that contained the following inscription:
“Her spirit was one with the lakes and forests she loved - Her heart and hands, ever at the service of those who called to her. Canoe Lake resident 1900 - 1945.”
Just south of Molly’s Island, on the eastern shore, is a point of land, which turns out to be about equidistant from one end of the lake to the other. This lunch spot, called Nominigan Point by all of the locals, is all that remains of the once very popular Camp Nominigan that was part of the Grand Trunk Railway’s venture into the newly emerging tourist industry in the early 1900s. Closed in 1926 due to a fire that destroyed many of the guest cabins, the Camp was purchased in 1931 by Garfield Northway, proprietor of a well-known (at the time) Toronto based department store Northway Ltd. Garfield (known as Gar) with his wife Jessie became anchors of the evolving community until their deaths in the early 1960s. Chapters 3 & 4 describe in detail the history of this Smoke Lake jewel, Nominigan, from the time it was built 100 years ago in 1912 to its demise in 1977. This section of the narrative is based mostly on the reminiscences of the Northways’ daughter Mary Northway, who recorded the landmark’s history in two small booklets published in the 1970s.
Still another jewel, who’s origins were on Smoke Lake, has been the contribution of J. R. Dymond to Algonquin’s nature interpretive programs, (now acknowledge to be one of Canada’s finest) that is outlined in Chapter 6. Dymond was a zoology professor from the University of Toronto, who at the behest of Frank MacDougall, Park Superintendent at the time got involved and led the way in the mid 1950s.
Last but not least, though not visible from the Hardwood Lookout, tucked in a little bay way down at the far end of the lake, lies a small cabin. Here, barely visible from the shore, is the summer home of the family of Algonquin’s first female canoe tripping guide, Esther Sessions Keyser. Her canoe