Rock Lake Station

Before we venture out onto the lake, Rob has decided that we need to first investigate Rock Lake Station. I look at him with a blank look on my face, which he takes to be an open invitation to begin his tale. I take out my notebook and begin to write furiously as we back track down the dirt track and park the car next to the Rock Lake Campground Office. As I look around me all I see is a shower/washroom complex to my right, a hill to my left, a long and very straight paved road ahead and nearby an open field covered with a mix of grass and scrub bushes that blocks the path down to the lake. Rob begins his narrative.

It turns out that over a hundred years ago there used to be a railway line that ran right through here. In fact, I am standing on what was once the main line. This explains why the road ahead is so straight, as the main entrance road to the campground goes right down the rail bed for most of its length. Rob's grandfather, William J. McCourt, was one of the first residents of Rock Lake way back in 1896. John Rudolphus Booth, the noted lumberman, had hired him to help manage a gravel pit whose contents were used to fill the rail beds. Later, once the railroad was completed, McCourt stayed on and became the first Rock Lake station agent and dispatcher, working out of a little hut located right next to the track just south of Rock Creek.

Rob stomps around waving his hands emphatically. For a few minutes I am concerned that the Park officials are going to think us insane and call for the OPP to cart us away to the closest medical centre for observation. But gradually I begin to see what Rob can see. The remains of the foundations for various buildings including his family home start to emerge in my imagination out of the grass and shrubs. To my left I see the lilac and rose bushes now fiercely overgrown, and when looking carefully can see the remains of his grandmother's telephone box imbedded in the bushes and the edges of what must have been a back garden. He describes to me in great detail and shows me the locations of Rock Lake Station No. 1 & No. 2, the water tower, the pump house and Guilland waterstand, Charlie Burns cabin, the Rock Lake grocery store, the boathouse, Aunt Eva’s cabin, the double section house and the old rangers shelter hut. Farther down the road, at Rock Lake Campsite No. 2, he shows me the location of the Baulke cottages at Baulke's Point where many a Rock Lake leasehold family first experienced and grew to love Algonquin Park. According to Rob, at one time there was even a Rock Lake school (S.S. Nightingale) that was part of the Haliburton School Board.

We retrace our steps to the Taylor cottage, jump into the boat and head south down the river towards Rock Lake. Just past the landing, Rob points out Rock Creek where one of the local residents in the 1940s decided that he wanted a deeper channel. He brought in some explosives and blasted himself a little harbour, to the absolute horror of the local Park Ranger. Out in the lake the beautiful beach, which is now part of the campground, becomes clearly visible, but what is more vivid is the old rail bed that runs as straight as a die along the east shore of the lake, several feet above the water line in spots. The rail bed is overgrown now with shrubs and small spruce trees covering most of its length. As we get closer to the eastern shore, out of the morning mist appears this huge rock and cement edifice that stands at least four feet high off of the water. It apparently is the remains of a three-slip two-story boathouse that once graced the shore. It's part of what was originally the Fleck and later the Barclay Estate. Andrew W. Fleck was an engineer, a key J. R. Booth business associate, Secretary Treasurer of the Ottawa Arnprior and Parry Sound Railway and later a Booth son-in-law due to his marriage to Booth's only surviving daughter, Helen Gertrude Booth.

We tie up the boat and walk around land that is now overgrown with 30 foot high scrub spruce on what I am told was originally the front lawn. Further back we can see traces of the foundations of what must have been a massive house. A short half-a-mile bushwhack in the woods brings us to the remains of a tennis court on which net postholes and pavement markers are still visible. In the middle of the surface is a huge hole full of small pebbles. It was the site of a huge fire that the Ministry of Natural Resources, then called, Department of Lands and Forests set to burn leftover debris after the estate buildings had been burned in 1956. Rob tells me that nearby are the remains of a stable, the family's private railway siding, and a train station. All I can see is bush, so I need to use my imagination to speculate on what must have once been here over 50 years ago.

Returning to the boat we do a quick tour of the rest of the lake, as time is running short. We motor past a big high bluff called Cathedral Rock by some and Perley Rock by others, from which the ashes of many a resident's loved one have been thrown. It's named after W. G. Perley an Ottawa lumberman and partner of J.R. Booth in building the Canadian Atlantic Railway that connected Ottawa with Boston and opened in 1882. Rob reminisces that, when he was a young whippersnapper, one of the adventures for all of the youth of the lake was to jump off a ledge part was up the rock face. I am horrified as I immediately picture my twin sons doing just that.

As we head back up the lake we motor past the two islands Jean and Rose, named after Fleck's two daughters. Nearby the high rock face called Booth's Rock, and called by some as Booth's nose, named after J. R. Booth, dominates the horizon. Rob tells me that there is now a hiking trail that winds its way up to a lookout site at the top. I make myself a mental note that next summer I should take my twin boys on The Booth Rock Trail hike to see the view. He goes on to say that in 1996 a forest fire destroyed all of the trees on the ridge for several acres. Luckily Rock Lake leaseholders saw the smoke, were the first to notify the park officials, and rushed to start a bucket brigade to fight it in its earliest stage.

Next we go past Chamberlain Rock, another massive rock bluff, that apparently one can crawl up inside if one is wiry and skinny enough. Local armchair geologists suspect that at one time it might have been connected to Perley Rock. It must have also had some spiritual significance, as near the water line, barely visible, are the red ochre markings of native Indian pictographs. Not recognizable now, Rob comments that to him the images looked like a slain deer stretched out and some carved lines. Once again we retrace our steps, but this time we head north up the Madawaska River, under the iron railway bridge and head out into Whitefish Lake. Rob continues his narrative with the soft drone of the boat engine in the background. Whitefish Lake is today a shadow of its former self. There are only a few cottages left dotting the landscape here and there, mostly at the south end. The rest are long gone, noticeable only because the forest hasn't yet reclaimed the land upon which they sat.

Instead of heading straight to the meeting place, Rob takes a small detour to show me Tillie's pasture, where his Aunt Tillie lived in a tarpaper shack at the turn of the century. Just north across the lake a little way are the remains of what was once a tourist fishing camp called Whitefish Lodge. Just south are the remains of what was Camp Douglas a boy's camp that had a short life on the lake in the 1950s. We turn around and head to the meeting where the local residents warmly welcome me. As I gaze at the crowd, I wonder what other tales lie beneath the surface of their smiling faces. I am determined to find out.