Nominigan and Other Smoke Lake Jewels. Gaye Clemson
to Ragged Lake to catch strings of trout and would stay overnight in an old lumber cabin that was along the way. It was often so cold that our hands would freeze in our mittens and we would return with them completely covered in ice. One year, when I was about 19 years old, I was invited along with neighbours Bill Hayhurst and Mary Northway on a deer hunting trip with my father and a guide named Ed Ryan. The plan was to run the deer through a portage, where Mary and I were to shoot them as they passed by. It was cold that day and after awhile we got tired of waiting and were playing leapfrog to keep warm. Suddenly we heard the howls of the hounds and realized that our guns were way down the portage. We never got to them in time, but did see the deer come bounding down the portage. We of course lost our reputations as hunters and were never invited back again with the men. However I wasn’t all that interested in shooting deer so was never bothered much that I didn’t get asked back.”
There is no easy waterway access from the east, with arrival only possible through a series of lakes and portages that eventually connects one to the Madawaska River. But from the west, the hardy canoeist must make their way through Smoke Creek. For most of its existence, Smoke Creek was little more than a small stream, that connected Smoke Lake to South Tea Lake lying to the west. However in 1893, the Gilmour Lumber Company, who had logging rights in the area, built dams at Joe and South Tea Lakes, which raised the water level by a good two feet. Most of the trees along the shore line died, leaving a ghostly wasteland through which the brave canoeist or boater had to venture. In the spring, when the water was high, logs that had been stockpiled on Smoke Lake shores would be released into the lake and run down Smoke Creek. From there, alligators (flat bottomed scows with side-mounted paddle wheels and a powerful winch to haul logs on water or on land) would corral them across the end of South Tea Lake, then north up through Bonita Narrows to the saw mill that sat on the northwest shore of Canoe Lake. For more details of this adventure check out Gary Long’s chronicle of the period When Giants Fall. Where the Tea Lake Campground is now, massive log jams would occur causing the logs to pile up on the shore. Even today, travel along Smoke Creek is best navigated by canoe as by boat requires keeping an eagle eye out for sunken logs and large rocks that line the creekbed.
Other than loggers and park rangers, the first group of Smoke Lake ‘residents’ was a construction camp No. 2 that clustered originally around, what is today called Hangar Bay, because it is the home of the Ontario Park’s float plane. Camp 2 was so named because it was the second major supply depot established to house men and supplies during the construction of Highway 60 from 1933 to 1935. Later in the decade, a second cluster of private leaseholders formed at the south end of the lake founded by the Sessions clan and a few others who’d had good experiences visiting local lodges. They all took advantage of Ontario Government marketing campaigns that had been launched at that time to encourage greater use of the Park. By the end of the 1940s Smoke Lake had nearly 40 residents and during the post-war decade an additional 58 leases were granted. Many came as a result of connections to nearby childrens’ camps (mostly from Taylor Statten’s Camp Ahmek and Camp Wapomeo on Canoe Lake and Camp Tamakwa on South Tea Lake).
Parcel selection for new residents was an interesting affair and at times a source of confusion for ministry staff. In 1923, the Department had gone to great lengths to lay out parcels in areas that they felt were the most suitable for summer resorts around the lake. Alas those weren’t always the locations where leaseholders chose, which meant describing exactly where they were for the lease records became somewhat difficult. As the Ministry staff wrote at the time to the Park Superintendent concerning the request from one leaseholder Howard Whidden:
“The Surveyor General very reasonably calls attention to the fact that if the Department now disregards this survey and attempts to describe parcels in another manner, it will not only be very unsatisfactory for the applicant but also will be more or less inconsistent with the policy of the Department, which is to the effect that if parcels have been regularly surveyed on the ground the land is usually disposed of according to those descriptions.”
As the Park Superintendent went on to say in his return correspondence:
“The parcels surveyed in 1923 simply represented the opinion of the surveyor of what constitutes a summer resort parcel and while in the main include all the likely spots, there were left unsurveyed tracts that seem to appeal to the tourists. The parcel desired by Mr. Whidden is an area that was not considered by the Surveyors as suitable for a summer resort parcel and therefore had to be described from the stakes on parcels then surveyed. You will recollect that Miss Miller and Miss Jolliffe also selected a parcel that had note been considered fit by the surveyor. Tourists in many cases wish to have their places on a cliff or other height land, which often look to the surveyor to be unsuitable. The tract selected by Whiddon comes in this category and the fact that they so select such areas means that there are still left for sales what we might consider the more desirable sites and the Department will have more area available for disposal. In Whiddon’s case I would recommend he be given the area he selected as it is on a point that was not surveyed and we had to tie it into one of the surveyed parcels.”
Recollections of getting to the Park in those early years are many and varied. George Garland, who took out a lease at the south end near the Ragged Lake portage, shared with Mary Northway his first visit to Algonquin Park in 1931. The smoke was still rising from the remains of the second Mowat Lodge on Canoe Lake that had burned down that spring. He and his parents were going up to visit his brother, who was attending Camp Ahmek, and took the night sleeper train from Toronto to North Bay. The sleeping car they were in was detached from the train at Scotia Junction at 6 a.m. in the morning. The family stepped out to have breakfast at the station platform hotel, which allegedly served the worst food in Canada. The sleeping car was then attached to a mixed train and rolled into Canoe Lake station at about 10 a.m. The express train came in on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, stayed overnight at Cache Lake and went out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. In addition, there was a freight train Monday and Friday, so there was actually a train coming in five days a week.
Kay Graham, remembers her summers in the Park as a teenager:
“In the 1940s, we drove from Toronto to Kearney where our car was left for the summer. After a night in Kearney we caught the train to Cache Lake. The Highland Inn eventually closed but the store remained open and we could get fresh milk and bread. The rest of our supplies for two or three months (mostly canned goods and dried milk) were shipped in. My father was an avid fisherman and provided our only source of fresh protein. Occasionally visitors would bring us fresh meat and vegetables and fruit with them.”
For years, Valerie Young Argue and her first husband would take a train to the Empire Hotel in Huntsville. From there, they would either take a cab to the Smoke Lake landing or hitch a ride with the lumber company trucks that frequently went by. For the first few years the Renwick, Gray, and Harshman families all shared the site, each using it for three weeks. According to Mrs. Gray:
“We didn’t have a car, so we always had to find someone with whom to hitch a ride to Algonquin Park. We couldn’t afford two of everything (one for our house in the city and another for the cottage), so would have to bring blankets and teapot, etc. back and forth from Toronto. Initially there was no real parking lot at the landing so we would follow a path in from the highway. For years we had a canoe that we would cache in the woods. In 1940, Charlie Musclow built us a cabin but we couldn’t afford glass windows and for years we were open to the elements.” [Author’s Note: Charlie Musclow was owner of Musclow Lodge, located near the Smoke Creek Bridge and brother of Gertrude Baskerville whose life in Algonquin is told in Gertrude Baskerville - The Lady of Algonquin Park.]
Gordon Willson describes his first Smoke Lake experience in the 1940s:
“Early the next June, my mother, accompanied by my sisters, drove me to Union Station in Toronto where I was set aboard a train to join my Dad in the Park who had journeyed there some days earlier. At Scotia Junction, the plan was that I would board another train bound for Algonquin Park. I had just turned ten years of age a few weeks before. The train was composed of a steam engine, tender, baggage car and one passenger car in which I was the only passenger.