Remembering Our Annual Vacations In Ontario

Every August our family used to drive up to Ontario to spend two weeks at a lakeside resort.  We would drive from Chicago, and my Uncle Bill (my mother's brother) and his family would drive up from Cleveland. My father Nelson and Uncle Bill would play golf every day, and the rest of us would enjoy whatever the resort had to offer.  For many years, the families stayed at a place called Britannia, located on the Lake of Bays, about 100 miles or so north of Toronto.  This was before I was born, but I am told it was a very nice place.  In the photograph on the left everyone is posing for the camera.  In the front row, from left to right, are my cousin Linda and cousin Judy (my Uncle Bill and Aunt Elsie's children), my sister Susan, my Grandmother Louise, and Grandfather Bill (my mother's parents).  In the back row , again from left to right, are my Aunt Elsie, Uncle Bill, mother Mary, and father Nelson.

Eventually the son took over Britannia, and raised the prices to the point where the families could no longer afford the place.  A few years later, however, we started going to a resort called Torpitt Lodge, so named because most of the guests came from Toronto and Pittsburgh.  This place I remember, and will forever remember the smell of the woods at night walking back to our cabin from the main lodge.  I have never smelled anything like it before or since, and when I retire I want to go back there to see if it is the same as I remember.  The cabin we stayed at, by the way, is the one where my Uncle Bill famously fell asleep after eating peanuts, and woke up to find a chipmunk looking in his mouth, trying to get at those peanuts.  In the photo on the left are, from left to right, my father Nelson, mother Mary, Aunt Elsie, and Uncle Bill.  And the photograph was taken by me, appropriately enough by the first hole of the golf course, with Sparrow Lake in the background.

And here I am, in the photograph on the left (standing on the left), with two of my pals, a brother and sister from Toronto.  All was not sugar and cream at Torpitt Lodge, however.  The cabin we stayed at was very damp and probably filled with mold.  I wound up developing asthma in that cabin, and was hospitalized in the town of Orilla, Ontario for a number of days.  I was definitely not a happy camper, and found myself in a large ward with a lot of other people.  Everyone there was very friendly and tried to cheer me up, but being in the hospital when you are a kid is always a drag. Sadly, that was the last year we spent our vacations up in Canada. In any case, my asthma is long gone, and I am ready to head back to the great northland.  Of course, those type of resorts have gone out of fashion these days, and have been torn down in favor of condos and timeshares.  And why am I not surprised?