Point-au-Baril Station 1959

At the turn of the century my great grandparents John and Margaret MacDiarmid bought a 9 acre island about 2 miles from Point-au-Baril Station, in Georgian Bay. Even then there was a huge pine tree that you could see for miles. My great grandfather named the island "Winnie Lone" He built a wooden cottage on the rocky land with about a six foot height stairs at the front. There was a screened in wrap around porch on 2 sides and with 10 children there would have been lots of cots. The main room had 2 small bedrooms to the left and the kitchen was an add on at the back. The main room had a "Quebec heater" a tall wood stove for those damp nights, a wind up Gramaphone and a large table in the center of the room where we ate, did jigsaws, painted "paint by numbers" and in the evening played cards! No electricity, no plumbing ( the houses of parliament were out back), no tv, a wood stove in the kitchen and an ice box. We would get a block of ice from the store at the "Station" and put it in a zink tub and then go like mad back to the island, on a little motor boat we rented, before it melted too much . Ernie would chip away at it till it could fit into the (what we now call the freezer) ice chamber. Then we had the left over ice chips in our "freshie". Yup that is me! ( The film was processed in Nov of 1959, hence the date. We were there in August.) As you can see it is night time and the kerosene lamps are lit. That ash tray to my left would have been "Ernie's" and that white bowl would have had peanuts in it....sigh. we were playing Canasta and although it would be perceived that I am "flipping the bird" so to say I was just sorting the cards. I was the 12 and get this I didn't even know what flipping the bird was.
Check out the handwriting. I used a fountain pen!..lolol I thought it was so classy to draw little circles to dot the "i". Nana ( the other half of Ernie), tell you more about her later, would bake the most wonderful peach pies in that huge wood stove/oven in the kitchen. She would open the oven door and determine by the heat coming out when it was time to pop the pies in and the add wood to keep the temperature just right. What a science. I love the Island and I can close my eyes and replay those wonderful times on the back of my eyelids. when I find more pictures I will tell you another memory.
Ernie and I used to go out fishing about 5am in the morning . I will have you know that is 2 bass and a pike that I caught. The rocks are all that is left of an original dock. By the way, I cleaned those fish too but Nana did the cooking!