In 1946, John F. Dickinson, a resident of Ohio, purchased an island consisting of approximately one acre of rock crowned with pine trees in the middle of Blackwater Lake in Ontario, Canada. The purchase price was fifty dollars, under the Homestead Provision of the Canadian government for unclaimed public lands, with the requirement that a domicile be established on the property within eighteen months.

With the help of friendly farmers on the surrounding lakeshore, Dickinson located an abandoned cabin, deconstructed it nail by nail and board by board, transported the entirety to the island on a flatboat, and put it back together again in a cleared space at the highest point on the island.

For many years, Dickinson, his wife Hazel, and their three (then four) children traveled from Ohio to Ontario every summer during a two-week vacation period, and made improvements. A huge stone fireplace, constructed by hand with rocks collected from around the lake by the children, warms the cottage as the legacy of John Dickinson’s strength, skill, and endurance.

I first met the cottage in the summer of 2008, as the guest of Bill Dickinson, second son of John and Hazel, who subsequently became my husband. Stepping into the cottage is like walking into memory itself. Although those memories are not my own, I am embraced by them anyway.

AT THE COTTAGE

 

Sequestered by the rain, inside all gloom,
I look around to find a metaphor
to play with in this musty, cluttered room.
And there it is, covering the whole floor.
Tattered before they ever came to rest
here at the cottage, patterns vaguely Persian,
assorted carpets are the weariest
of all the stuff that made its last excursion
to this remote and water-bound retreat,
remnants of parlors they once occupied,
the sturdy weaving scruffed by countless feet,
the shreds of past prosperity and pride.
And yet, however beaten down and old,
something in them holds out against the cold.

 

Barbara Loots