Jananas

My Dad has a copy of the following article from the Land o’ Lakes Summertime Issue from 1979. It is titled “From Wilderness to Provincial Park: A Story of the Mazinaw” by W. Clyde Bell. I’m typing it up here to record it for posterity’s sake (as I couldn’t find mention of it elsewhere online). The first part of the article can be found typed up in this blog post.

“annual spring drives to mills at Carleton Place and Arnprior. Some of the logs were squared at the site by broadaxe, and sent on to become part of rafts that were later towed to the United States and England as a part of what was then called the “Square Timber Trade”.

Special pine logs were selected and sent to shipyards in Montreal, England and Scotland, where they were used as masts for sailing ships.

The timber trade came to an end about 1900, when most of the original stand of forest had been removed.

In 1889 a Dr. Weston A. Price and his wife, bought the Mazinaw Rock and surrounding lands, and built a summer hotel, which they called “Bon Echo”, because of the acoustical properties of the Rcok, which bounces back sounds to the caller with great clarity. They also called the Rock “The Canadian Gibraltar”.

Later, Dr. Price sold the property to a Toronto businesswoman, and writer, Flora MacDonald Denison, a strong advocate of women’s rights, who had helped establish the Canadian-Suffrage Association. Mrs. Denison campaigned for the right of women to own property in their own names and the right of women to vote in elections. She continued to campaign for justice for women until her death in 1921.

Mrs. Denison transformed the Bon Echo resort into a cultural centre. She founded the Bon Echo Walt Whitman Literary Society in honor of the American poet. Today, visitors to Mazinaw Lake and Bon Echo Provincial Park, will see a memorial to the poet carved in the face of the rock and reading -

Old Walt

1819 – 1919

Dedicated to the democratic ideals of

Walt Whitman

by

Horace Traubel and Flora MacDonald

“My foothold is tenon’d and mortised in granite. I laugh at what you call dissolution and I know the amplitude of time.”

After the death of Flora MacDonald Denison, her son the late Merrill Denison assumed ownership of the hotel and property.

I [W. Clyde Bell] came to know Mr. Denison through mutual friends, Mr. and Mrs. Cyril Inderwick of Perth, Ontario. As a result of this acquaintanceship, Mr. Denison paid many visits to us at the office of The Tweed News. When he returned to his home at Bon Echo each summer, one of his first stops was The Tweed News, where he purchased paper and half-a-dozen “Veriblack” pencils, which he called his “thinking pencils”. No other kind of pencil would do.

On one such visit, Mr. Denison presented me with a copy of a booklet “The Sunset of Bon Echo”, edited and published by his mother Flora MacDonald, April-May 1920. It is marked Vol. 1, No. 6 and was one of a series published by the Whitman Club of Bon Echo. [editor's note, we have one of this series at the cottage. I'll take a better look at it next time I'm there.]

“I had an extra copy,” Mr. Denison said, “and I want you to have it.” There are only a few copies left in existence, he continued, so feel free to print from it anytime you wish.

An advertisement for the Bon Echo Summer resort, most picturesque spot in Canada, gave the rates from $15.00 to $21.00 a week. Children half rates. Special rates of large parties and long stays.

Full course dinner in the dining room, Mr. Denison told me, started at 75cents up to approximately $2.00.

The booklet contained an article entitled “Days at Bon Echo”, by J.W. Bengough. It reads in part -

“The swarthy chap who led the way to the Ford, carrying my suitcase, when I left the train at Kaladar, was not a good advertisement for the social promise of Bon Echo. He was true to his Indian blood – mighty economical of words and hopelessly bankrupt in laughter.

There were no other passengers, as it happened, so I talked to John or remained dumb. For the most part it was the latter, while we traveled northward over a road that was crooked both horizontally and perpendicularly; that is, it proceeded over hill and dale in a course that few serpents could imitate.

John had told me, in one of his brief phrases, that it was a bad road, but on the whole I did not find it so. There are many worse in Ontario.

A couple of hours or moderate motoring brought us to landing place at the edge of a pretty lake, beside an Indian farmer’s back door. This farmer was, I believe, John’s father, and if had not been of the aboriginal blood he might have boasted to me that I had had the honor of being driven by a war hero, a lad who had distinguished himself as a sharpshooter in France and Flanders. But I only learned this afterwards from people who were not Indians.

From the hands of the taciturn John, I was passed to those of another young man, who was not silent but cynical. He was a finely formed chap wearing khaki breeches and an air of the educated back woodsman, but his outlook on life was not cheerful. He took me aboard his little gasoline launch for the remaining three miles of the journey to the Inn, and as we churned along through the roughish water, he talked rather pessimistically about things in general, while he kept his hand on the steering wheel.

He landed me safely at the Bon Echo wharf, however, and now I was to see the place I had heard of so often and which I had only mentally pictured, because nobody had ever given me the slightest description.

I had imagined a summer hotel of quite up-to-date pattern; a roomy sort of cottage with broad verandahs around it, something of the bungalow order, with slippery floors of hardwood, the sort I heartily detest, oak finished throughout, with electric lighting, running water, and all the modern fixings. I had seen myself going up to the polished counter and putting my name in a new-looking register as an addition to a small company of guests – for I supposed not many people knew ever as much as I about the remote resort.

Well, I was charmed at the very first glimpse to see the whole pictured anticipation vanish away. As I walked…”

And therein ends page five. The story continues on page eleven tomorrow.

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