We were boat access cottagers. Dozens of families arrived at the landing every Friday night from May until October. Families with kids like myself who had gobbled egg salad sandwiches on the way up in the car. Kids who were stuffed into the back seat with our siblings, feet on coolers, smelling the gas tanks in the trunk. Kids like us who knew how to carry those gas cans and choke motors and dock boats on windy days. Families who slapped our faces and necks numb mashing black flies, arriving at our cottages looking like massacre survivors.

We bailed boats and held the flashlights on the dark, damp ride up the lake, the wake spitting out to either side. We knew how to fold empty beer cases and balance paper grocery bags on our laps. We were ballast for propane tanks that our parents wrestled up from the dock – lining them up under the eaves like people getting in out of the rain. We knew how long the briquettes had to heat before we’d have dinner, when the beaver would make the final sunset glide past the dock and what time the bats would swoop down low over the lake, inhaling hundreds of mosquitoes.

The canoe sometimes meant a quick escape route from guests. Guests were people who caught my frogs, squeezing their silky bellies until they screamed. Guests were people who brought a bag of cookies and two dozen ears of corn from the highway and stayed for the whole weekend. Guests poked at wasps’ nests with sticks. They held paddles like clubs, fingers wrapped around like they were climbing a rope, seating themselves into the canoe facing me. Guests moored strings of floating styrofoam balls to limit how far their children could swim. One family had an old, patient black dog who was trained to softly clamp his huge jaws around our wrists and pull us to shore if we went out too far. We could swim, of course, with or without the bathing caps covered in rubber flowers that our cousin presented us with each summer. Guests saw danger everywhere – bears in shadows, snapping turtles hungry for toes or whole feet. Their kids tried to crush the beautiful neon dragonflies who ate mosquitoes on our behalf. They thought the bats would get tangled in their hair and then suck their blood.

The hum of an engine was an event. It could mean the dreaded arrival of neighbours. A brother and sister who were sent off in the boat every weekend so their parents could sleep in. A brother and sister who couldn’t stand each other. The daughter wore an oversized, padded bikini top that belonged to her mother. She perched at the front of the boat like a figurehead, one knee up, arching her back. The brother drove the boat in dizzying circles crashing into his own wake over and over. They were involved in arguments that lasted all summer. They bickered and poked at each other and told awful lies to whoever would listen:

“SHE started it”

“Wanna know what HE did last night?”

One afternoon their father stumbled into the leaky cedar strip boat, slipping and falling into the oily purple and yellow rainbow water sloshing around the stern. Outraged, the daughter puffed out her barely developed chest and informed us all that her father could have DROWNED!

Or a boat could mean visitors from the city. We all knew the sound and sight of the orange and brown water taxi, piloted by a one and a half-armed woman. We all rented space from her to dock our boats at the landing. She was a source of fascination to generations of morbid, bloodthirsty children. We all imagined the horrible accident that left her without part of an arm. The fact that it was merely a birth defect didn’t convince us. WE knew about bears and snapping turtles. She was always accompanied by one of a succession of yappy black poodles. They all had names like Mimi or Fifi. Skinny little dogs that nipped at everyone’s ankles at the landing. The water taxi woman liked to put up informative signs on the boathouse about the dangers of feeding salted peanuts to chipmunks. Or she would report where the loon family with the new baby was nesting and suggest people stay away. Of course, these signs were guaranteed to bring boatloads of loud people roaring full throttle into our bay to get a close look at the family. To see the baby loon on its mothers back looking myopic and confused, its feathers sticking up like cowlicks. These visits caused my father to drop any tool he happened to be working with and roar off in the boat to chase them off. They didn’t know that loons can drown.

At the cottage we had chipmunk holes so big and deep that we lost several croquet balls each summer. All the chipmunks had names and waited on the deck every Friday for the new shipment of peanuts. June bugs stumbled against the screen and white moths darted all night. In the morning hundreds of them would cling to the screen paralyzed by the light.

Trips in the canoe could mean portaging down the creek barefoot – lugging the canoe, waiting for a rattlesnake to lunge out of the bushes and clamp its fangs into a calf. WE knew they were there. Our across the bay neighbour – briefly a hero to me after he burned a bloodsucker off my leg with a red-hot cigarette – had a rattlesnake skin displayed proudly over his mantel. It took many years and a lot of my parent’s rum to get the true story. He ran it over with his truck – two or three times to be sure. Then he froze it in the freezer and gave it to his brother in law to skin. The crusty skin shrunk yearly along with his hero status.

We swam every day, ducking under the overturned canoe to avoid triangle spotted deer flies and huge horseflies. We swatted ourselves sore until we crushed their armour and drowned them, waiting for sunfish to leave their sandy circle nests and suck them down from the surface.

This was MY Muldrew.

Andrea Anthony-Luke 2004

Summer is coming. Summer is coming. We’ll be back at the cottage soon. It’s an incantation, a mantra, a promise we make to ourselves.

In October, once the last of the stain has been washed from our skin, we’re already thinking of next year at the Lake. OUR Lake.

In November when we finally get the Labour Day pictures developed, we can still hear the water lapping at the dock.

In December it feels as though we’ve been away for a year. We are engrossed in work and school but the cottage is never far from our thoughts. In January and February we imagine the snow capped cottage huddled among the pines waiting for our return.

By March we’re concentrating only on GETTING there. To open the cottage door for the first time in six months and imagine the echoes of last summers card games. To look for buds on the pussy willow branches. To breathe in the smell of the season waking up.

Every year has it’s own unique reference:

The year we learned to swim or water ski.

The year we could paddle the canoe without the long rope attached to the dock.

The year we had our first crush – on a boy in a plaid lumber jacket – or on a long haired girl wearing cut-off jean shorts.

The year we first brought our children to the Lake, dipping their baby toes in the water – a christening of sorts.

The year the raccoons opened all the plastic Easter eggs and ate all the treats inside.

The year it snowed on Thanksgiving.

The year of the best Northern Lights show.

Every winter kitchen table planners make lists. The kids heights must be scratched into the paneling in the cottage hall. We need a new calendar to record the firsts – the first spring flower – the first swim of the season – the first sighting of the loons. We look through flyers for sales on stain. We organize piles of cottage items in the corner of the basement.

A black and white photo on my wall shows me as a bald baby, sitting waist-deep in the dark water, clutching a water lily root in one fat fist –smiling over the photographers shoulder at the summers to come.

As Nelson Mandela said:

“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.”

Andrea Anthony-Luke

March 2005

THE ISLAND

By the mid 1950s city people knew my grandmother was crazy. My patient, quiet grandfather drove for hours North so she could step into a leaky cedarstrip boat, start a crank engine and plow up the lake, surrounded by paper bags full of groceries and musty duffle bags filled with cottage clothes. She traveled at least twenty minutes up the lake to an ISLAND of all places. Not the biggest or even a very pretty island. Just one of many gifts from the glaciers, aptly named Split Rock, because it was – and is – just a rock with scrubby pines and juniper bushes clinging in the crevices. How could a rock be so very special? There was no running water or electricity. The only light at night came from smelly kerosene lanterns which, across the lake looked like flashlights under covers. She went to enjoy days and days of endless peace and tranquility. She certainly was crazy. Crazy like a fox.

It was love at first sight. The cottage was old and abandoned. The dinner table was set waiting for a family that never returned. Fine china, melted candles and a centerpiece of crumbled fall leaves adorned the table. There were window seats, perfect for reading on rainy days and a wooden floor covered in hairy woven rugs. Musty fat cushions squatted on an old couch. The only source of heat was a stone fireplace big enough to hang a pioneer cauldron in.

She had lived in Quebec, Nova Scotia, B.C. and Ontario but she would put the sunset off the back of the Island up against any other. She was a nurse who tended foster children at home and held stern interviews in her living room with prospective parents. And so it was that she loved company – people of all sorts. People could come and stay for the weekend or a week or as long as they liked. Her cousins came from Montreal every summer back when the train still stopped in Kilworthy. They brought cases of Coke, bathing caps, stiff leather sandals and plenty of humour. She had a no nonsense attitude with no time for complaining, needless chatter, or anyone who didn’t try hard enough. If it wasn’t bleeding, it wasn’t serious.

Guests ate what was there – pork chops fried beyond recognition, bread without butter. They drank tea from chipped cups often without milk because if it wasn’t ordered at the store at the landing a week in advance they wouldn’t sell it to you. But the Island was a destination – a constant for so many family and friends – somewhere to dream about during long winter nights.

My grandmother died in 1958 on her way home from the cottage. She’d always had a weak heart. The nurse in her knew that was her last trip to the Lake. During the ride she bequeathed the Island to my uncle and, to my mother a boat and engine to take her to the cottage my parents had recently built on South Lake.

By the 1960s my aunt and uncle decided it was out with the old – in with the new. All the furniture and dishes had to go. They were "deep-sixtied" off the back of the Island. The water is so deep and dark that even the best scuba diver wouldn’t have any success finding relics under dozens of years of silt. The whole cottage was torn down and replaced with a two bedroom box cottage with a metal fireplace. Out with the musty cushions and hairy carpets and in with vinyl couches in yellow and orange that clung to the backs of sweaty legs. In with two little girls and bunk beds. In with hydro, a real toilet and even a phone.

With this new generation of Islanders the fondness only grew. It grew like an August mushroom flourishing overnight. Like the Speirs girls and their Anthony girl cousins. Gap-toothed girls strapped into orange fabric life jackets with frayed ties, matted hair in elastic bands. Swimming around the Island was a rite of passage. The first time for everyone the island seemed the size of Newfoundland. We compared scraped knees and explored the Island every day, tiptoeing around the spot where our grandmothers’ ashes were buried. We played hide and seek with stuffed animals. The sun turned our skin brown as pine cones. The four of us believed that she was watching over us – the granddaughters she never knew.

We drank Coke for breakfast if we felt like it and played jumpsies in the living room. We admired the dead bat in the toy box one cousin was saving for Show and Tell in September. We tried to fix leaky pipes with Band-Aids and knew how many trips we could make in the boat from the Island to my cottage on one tank of gas. We jumped off the highest rock, the number of jumps per summer carefully recorded by my sweet serious cousin.

Our Montreal relatives still arrived every year. We played endless games of bi-lingual Rummoli for pennies. We competed to see who could walk furthest on their knees or kick their height. We learned how to tease our hair and begged to hear the Island stories one more time. About the clumps of water snakes that lived under the too-high boathouse. About being locked in the outhouse and having those same snakes fed through the window. About the year Hurricane Hazel roared through Ontario. Boathouses told their own stories of high and low water years depending on their height.

If anything was dropped off the dock – toothbrushes, duffel bags full of dry clothes, cereal spoons, and countless beach towels – they were gone for good. My aunt was gone, too, leaving her daughters in the care of an annual array of babysitters. But they still had their summers at the cottage and we had two months of freedom and independence. A new season to fall deeper in love with the Island.

A granite ridge lurked under the water past the dock – white like the belly of a whale. We dove for quarters and golf balls. The adults tied plastic bags of beer off the end of the dock to keep it cold. We listened to transistor radios blaring a.m. music.

By the 1980s my uncle remarried and joined a new family. The cottage was torn down and a bigger one put in its place. My cousins both moved to B.C. within months of each other. And so began the first of many Island-less years. There were new people on the dock who didn’t even glance up from their magazines to wave. A rotting rowboat sat on the shore. The canoe never left its place overturned under the Scotch Pine. It was still a landmark to circle in the boat, a destination for a boat ride and there were still stories to tell my children.

My uncle died a few years later, leaving the cottage to his second wife. My cousin made the pilgrimage alone to bury his ashes near his mothers on the Island.

I heard about the fire by email. My cousin could barely type because she was crying so desperately. My stoic cousin. The one who always had the most mosquito bites and the most scabs on her knees. The first one to move away.

When help arrived it was too late. The fire burned furiously straight up in the air on a windless day. The cottage burned to ashes and most of the trees lost all their foliage.

A few weeks later I parked the boat at the dock, defiantly ignoring the No Trespassing sign. My feet remembered the path and I took my final tour. Birch trees were charcoal on one side and white bark on the other. A few flowers sprung up bravely surrounded by scorched moss. Even the rock ridges were separated into layers from the heat.

Then I took the deepest breath and jumped off the big rock for the last time. I jumped for my cousins who live so far away. I jumped for everyone who ever watched an Island sunset. I jumped as a farewell. A tribute. A wordless eulogy.

Andrea Anthony-Luke

March 2006

"The Island" is pictured just below. Another story is below it.

GETAWAY    by Andrea Anthony-Luke        2007

A winter trip to the cottage. Thirty six hours away takes on gargantuan proportions – like preparing to load a pioneer wagon. My family jokes that we must be moving due to the growing pile at the front door. My checklist is crossed off as items are added. Water. A stash of extra socks and mittens. Skates, a shovel and a camera. Marshmallows, hot dogs, bread, jam, eggs, milk and peanuts in the shell. Hats, extra snow pants, neck biters and scarves. Sleds with skipping rope handles. Carrots for the snowmans nose. Newspaper, matches, candles, Kleenex and lip balm. Essentials, too – chocolate bars, popcorn, cookies and wine.

Two hours of travel time passing salt encrusted cars on the highway. Until we reach the familiar winding roads, disguised by snow banks higher than the van roof. The knot between my shoulder blades loosens with the first breath of specialty Northern air. No exhaust fumes, no smell of other peoples dinner. No traffic jams or deadlines.

A getaway. Leaving behind grey frozen snow banks. Deliverance from discount grocery stores, sale flyers and the same four walls of the city. The pioneer spirit with a gas barbecue. Hardship with store made bread and a toaster. Explorers with a roof over their heads. Adventurers with a thermos of hot chocolate.

We load the toboggans and sleds and secure them with bungee cords. We strap on backpacks for the walk in - silent except for the sound of our boots crunching through the diamond-adorned crust and the wind huffing through the evergreens. Our daughter rides on a sled like a princess in a parade, her doll cradled proudly in her lap. Our son yanks the biggest toboggan along doggedly, leaping aboard and riding down the smallest of hills.

The driveway steep and dusty in summer becomes a luge run. We sled down countless times, gripping co-pilots boots around our waists in our laps. The countdown, the shove off, mittens pushing off, the countdown, the point of no return at the brink and the giddy arrival at the bottom Sleds abandoned, we roll down the hill landing in a dizzy shrieking heap.

All that pristine untouched snow. An invitation to cover it in boot prints and snow angels. We follow the insane rabbit tracks circling the trees and see the cottage from a new perspective. Snow is scalloped on roof draping down like an old lace collar. Icicles dangle from the eaves as long as a child’s arm. Ideal for sword fights and launching off our cliff. Winter echoes are different – muffled – as if stored somewhere and then released. Bustling twittering birds arrive in a cloud. An agitated assortment of chickadees, nuthatches and bold blue jays shrieking for peanuts. We sit perfectly still with an outstretched mittened hand waiting for a brave chickadee to land for lunch.

We haul in stacks of wood we chopped last fall to light the fireplace, blowing on newspaper twists and kindling. We feast on burnt marshmallows and lukewarm hot chocolate from a thermos.

There is a competition for the biggest and best snowman. The shed is a treasure trove of props. The life jackets are heaped on the freezer like off-duty soldiers. Our snowmen sentinels sport baseball caps, snorkels, swim fins and brandish badminton racquets.

We enjoy a banquet of steak and potatoes from the barbecue and devour a squashed pie for dessert. We scrape the dishes in the snow and wrap warm rocks in towels for our beds.

Snuggled in under layers of blankets, we sleep in long underwear, socks and hats. Snow pants and jackets are hung from nails on the rafters to dry. In the morning the kids pad down the hallway heading for the fireplace like moths to a flame.

Underneath the snow, spring bulbs are waiting. Beneath the ice, sluggish fish and thousands of insects are biding time for the right temperature to start the next cycle.

In the long shadows of afternoon we pack and begin the journey out, Mom and Dad each pulling a sled containing a curled sleeping child. Back at the cottage in the snow there is an offering of peanuts, bird seed and toast crusts slathered with peanut butter. A tribute.

Andrea Anthony-Luke

February 2007