Still More Vacation Nostalgia

Not long after World War II, my family and my Uncle Bill's family started vacationing together for two weeks in Ontario, Canada each August.  At first they stayed at a resort called Britannia, on the Lake of Bays. The photo on the left shows the families at Britannia around the early 1950s, before I was born.  In the back row (from left to right) are my Aunt Elsie, my Uncle Bill (my mother's brother), my mother Mary, and father Nelson.  In the front row are my cousins Linda and Judy, my sister Susan, and my Grandmother and Grandfather Spillard (my mother's parents). Susan and Judy, by the way, couldn't wait to get together on these trips to Britannia. Our family lived in Chicago, and my uncle's family in Cleveland, so it was the only time they got to see each other.  Then they fought with each other for two weeks.  Susan and Judy were the terror of the wait staff.  I think the waitresses drew straws to see who would have to serve them.

It was a beautiful resort, but eventually the prices got too high and the families began vacationing instead at Torpitt Lodge, which was located on Sparrow Lake and featured a nine hole golf course.  In the photograph on the right (from left to right) are my father Nelson, mother Mary, Aunt Elsie, and Uncle Bill, taken at Torpitt Lodge back in the early 1960s. My father and uncle played golf together on that course (in front of which the four of them are posing) for two weeks straight, and had a great time.  However, the cabin we stayed in was pretty rustic, and one year I came down with asthma from staying there, and had to be hospitalized in nearby Orillia, Ontario. I'm afraid that was the last time we saw Torpitt Lodge.  In any case, years later by Uncle Bill and Aunt Elsie retired to a condo complex in Stuart, Florida which featured a nine hole golf course, and my parents soon followed.  And once again my father and uncle were able to play golf to their hearts content, and not just for two weeks, either.  Good for them.