Dropping in on Newboro, Ontario

I had the privilege of speaking at a church in Syracuse, NY on July 12th.

I booked the gig knowing that Becky and I would be a mere two hours from a childhood vacation spot that’s indelibly written into my consciousness, evidenced by a rush of euphoria whenever I smell fresh, open water.

So I reserved a room for that evening at Stirling Lodge on Newboro Lake for a veritable 24 hour spa experience.

Core memories (you’ll see them in italics) emerged amidst discoveries that were lost on me as a twelve year old punk. The last time my family stayed in the tiny Ontario village was the summer of ‘76.

The lodge had a campground back then on a hill overlooking the waterfront. Mercifully, and for their own sanity, Mom & Dad allowed me to bring my BMX bike so I could thrash around when we weren’t hanging out on my grandparents’ island.

You heard that right. Our very own Golden Pond was a one acre retreat two miles from Newboro, one of many tiny isles owned mostly by Americans. You can read more about Ken’s Yen here:

Read Open Water, Part 1

Becky and I crossed the St. Lawrence River high up on the Thousand Islands bridge but not before a verbal frisk by a Canadian border guard.

We had pulled up too close and too soon to her booth.

Wasn’t that STOP sign back there big enough for ya?

“What STOP sign? Wait…oh, Sorry.”

What’ya doing up here?

“We’re staying a night up at Newboro.”

Admittedly, the notion of entering a foreign land for just one night sure sounds like a drug deal, and I do look extremely suspicious, what with all my neck tatts.

Oh, just one day, then?

“Oh, yeah, we were just up in Syracuse for a day, and I wanted to show her my childhood vacation spot.”

What happened, then, to the front of your car?

“Oh, we live in a city, and it gets banged up….”

But she was already waving us through having done her job to ensure her nation’s security against bad actors with an empty cooler in the back seat. Good thing I left my dance party wig collection in Pennsylvania. That would’ve been too much to explain.

Young Tom gazes down at the many islands, some with castles on them, and he feels the excitement in his gut for a week of water life. His gut is also repulsed by the clear plastic bag of liquid-y cheese curds that his dad insists on purchasing in the quaint village of Gananoque. Worse yet, he witnesses his adult family members ingest them throughout the week. He runs to the cold water color for another Ginger Ale citrus soda to mitigate his horror.

The clapboard boathouses at the edge of the lake have been replaced by aluminum docks, a sort of marina dubbed “Newboro Harbour.”

Dad extends the roof of our red Fiberglas boat with a modest 40 horsepower motor, and we head into a thunderstorm. “It’s only two miles, Jeanne, “ he barks to my mom who is verbalizing her panic. We pull into the receiving boat house on Ken’s Yen, the tiny island he grew up vacationing at with his own parents for decades.

The front door of Stirling Lodge is never locked, and its screen door isn’t flush. The waitresses take down orders with pad and pencil: Three meals a day included with accommodations. It smells exactly as I remember it: Fresh lake air, seasoned wood, and a touch of mustiness. It’s a clean but worn time capsule.

In the summer of ’76 we visit Kenny and Grandma’s island cabin each day or make trips to Westport, the bigger village with an ice cream shop. On my final night in Newboro, I chat with a friendly girl my age in the screened-in porch. She hands me her phone number on a scrap of paper. Her family is staying at the lodge. I keep her number in a tiny cedar box in my bedroom for years. It was a Michigan area code, and she was cute, but I was too scared to call.

Becky and I took our meals in that former porch, surrounded outside by colorful flowers in potted plants. For an up-charge of $6.00 I ordered the steak at dinner. Becky got the salmon. The balcony of our room on the second floor overlooked the pool where I happily dipped for an hour while she read. In the evening I perused the many old photos of Newboro life on the paneled walls outside the bar room. One of them chronicles how the locals mined ice from the lake before the days of refrigeration.

My brother Jim is especially fond of the lake and spends weeks a time with Kenny and Grandma. In 1975 Mom and Dad get a lark of an idea: Let’s go to Canada over New Years Eve. Jim drives his ’73 Jeep CJ, and I ride shotgun wrapped in a parka, the plastic windows flapping all the way up Route 81 and across the border. We stay in the Lodge because Kenny’s cabin is winterized. Our Honda ATC 90 three-wheeler came along in Dad’s truck, and I use it to spin doughnuts on icy and deserted Main Street. Jim and I take the Jeep out onto the frozen lake, throwing rooster tails of snow into the air. I capture all this on Super 8 film. A local guy offers to sled Dad and I out to Ken’s Yen on a snowmobile. Back in town, we tip over on a corner and slide on our sides to a harmless halt.

My grandparents, who homesteaded the island in the late 30’s, were well-acquainted with Mr. Taylor who sold live bait and was on the water often. They said he never learned to swim, and who was I (who am I?) to doubt that heartwarming legend? As a kid I didn’t explore Newboro, but on our 24 hour immersion I mapped the village at night on foot. I read historical markers, nerding out like a dad. Of course I had a bike with me. On Monday morning, on a ride to Westport and back, I spotted a peacefully dead adolescent coyote in the middle of a gravel road.

I toss bread crumbs into the water under the shade of the Ken’s Yen boathouse. Little sunnies gape and swallow. I catch one in a net. I cup my right hand over its head and gently grasp him with a backward motion to avoid getting stuck by his fins. After a few seconds, I toss him back in the sea-weed scented water where the adults bathe discreetly using a bar of Ivory soap (So I’m told. Swimming daily is my idea of a bath).

A major feature of the region near Newboro is the Rideau Canal System. Completed 200 years ago, it opened up travel and commerce from Kingston to Ottawa, snaking 126 miles through 24 locks.

There’s no lock at Westport, but there is an inlet for parking boats. Becky and I watched a yacht pull in while two teenaged girls, in the best summer job a kid could want, assisted a French-speaking couple with their ropes while an excited labradoodle bounced around on deck. I showed Becky the Westport Spring where chilly fresh water descends in the grass and into a small lagoon. Sun fish troll around in the seaweed near the docks.

We slide the boat into the boat house at Newboro, find our car, and drive four miles into Westport. “Go ahead, Tom, pick one out.” I select a Matchbox or Hot Wheels car from a spinning tower of mini-automotive wonder. Each year a taxidermy brown bear greets me in a dry good store that smells of leather moccasins and cedar paneling. My parents buy me an Aero chocolate bar, unheard of in Pennsylvania. At Christmas we Becker boys each receive a pair of suede Adidas from our grandparents, another commodity, as far we could tell, only seen in Canada. At the time we don’t call it “privilege,” but one day we’ll come to see it that way.

In 2001, in celebration of our parents’ 50th, Mom and Dad invited us three boys and our wives to join them on a cruise up the Rideau Canal system. It was our first time in Newboro together since 1976. We floated through all the locks, stopping at quaint villages like Smith Falls and Merrickville. At each port I took a walk or jumped in the canal. A bus conveyed us from Ottawa back to Kingston where a street festival received us.

Kenny & Grandma sell the family retreat abruptly in 1976. We’re told it was because the Canadian government is squeezing out the homesteading Americans who developed the pristine lake properties for next to nothing.

We grieved. In a way, we still do. Our privileged lake life distilled into core memories. But the lakes are still there, and returning only makes Ontario more treasured, at least by this kid.

I’ll be back. Next time I promise to heed the STOP sign at the border.