Page 12 - SLPOA Spring 2014 Newsletter

SPRING 2014 NEWSLETTER SHARBOT LAKE PROPERTY OWNERS’ ASSOCIATION

MEMORIES: MEMORIES:

A Story from 100 Years Ago Sharbot Lake in the 60’s
Ann McJanet Natalie Charlton

I have been told of our McJanet family’s summer MY STORY: I remember when I was a small
lifestyle when my father-in-law was a young man and girl (1965 or so) at our cottage on Buell Lane,
still unmarried. His father was a teacher in Ottawa, and I Burney Point Rd when my Dad would literally
believe he and his family (wife plus four children born dress up in his Sunday best and slalom ski
1889, 1893, 1898 and 1904) were in the habit of renting a around Cheese Island. He wore a suit, dress
place at Burney’s Point for the whole summer, which shirt and tie on Sundays and he was an expert
place my husband’s grandmother later purchased. water skier. He would return and sink into the
The family travelled to and from the lake by train, and water in the bay and finally get wet.
hired someone from the village to row them across.
(History does not relate how they coped when wind and Our yellow labrador retriever would belly flop
waves were high, or in pouring rain....). off the end of the dock into the water and swim
way out past the point and chase after her
Supplies of flour, sugar, salt etc were laid in on their "master". My sisters and I would jump in the
arrival, and supplemented through the season by trips to dingy and row out and fetch the dog. Usually
the village in their own boat, produce sometimes brought arriving back at the dock in our bay, at the
around by an enterprising boatman, and by fish caught same time as my dad returned from his ski
daily by the two boys and their father. Photographs around the Upper Lake.
record the landing of a 21 1/2 lb. salmon by Mr. Thomas
McJanet in the summer of 1912!

The ‘cottage’ had one room which could
be curtained off for privacy. Cooking
was done on a wood stove in an open-
on-3-sides porch. The porch - also used
for meals - survived wind and rain by
having canvas blinds, which could be
rolled up under the eaves in good
weather.

That simple shelter, called ‘Halcyon
Lodge’, was finally taken down in the
summer of 1951 and replaced by a
‘Sunnibilt’ prefab, brought to the site
via the ‘new’ road in from Highway #7.
The new place is still called‘Halcyon
Lodge’, and our sign reads ‘McJanet -
since 1911’.

Saturdays 9am - 1pm
at the Sharbot Lake Beach.
Come and enjoy locally grown food.

New website at:
SharbotLakeFarmersMarket.ca

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