Uncle Bill and Uncle Wes

Thousands of days go by as a person grows up. Most are forgotten. A few occupy a prominent place in a person’s mind forever. What is it that makes one day so much more important than the others?

One of those memorable days happened in 1959 when my Uncle Bill and his brother, Uncle Wes took me with them to catch minnows at a beaver pond.

The radio in their pick-up was playing The Battle of New Orleans by Johnny Horton. My uncles sang along, “… we fought the bloody British….” They asked me if I liked the song. I somehow knew that the bad guys in the song, those Bloody British, were our side in that war. My uncles didn’t care and kept singing. They were really enjoying themselves. “We like it anyway,” they said.

We drove from Waubaushene, through the village of Cold Water, down some lanes that weren’t really roads, through forest and past small bodies of water. We parked on a high outcrop of rocks overlooking a beaver dam and the large pond that the dam had created. We saw water snakes, found a deer antler that had been bleached by the sun, and talked about nature.

Uncle Bill talked about conservation, the beauty of nature and the value of the wilderness -- all new ideas for this kid from the city. My uncles caught minnows in a long net, each of them wading into the pond holding an end of the net. The minnows were dumped them in a tank on the truck. Anything else living went back into the pond.

The minnows would be taken back to be sold as fishing bait at the Bridge Grill: a gas station, bait and tackle shop, and restaurant on the old highway that passed through Waubaushene on the way to Honey Harbour, Parry Sound and all places north.

I could see that the Supertest gas station part of the Grill had been a BP and a White Rose because the old signs were leaning on a shed out back. My Grama made pies for the restaurant and waited on customers. Grampa cooked. Bill and Wes looked after the worms and minnows, and service station part. The Bridge Grill was on the corner of what is now Duck Bay Road and Coldwater Road. I see on Google maps that Marsh’s Marina is still across the street. I remember Marsh as a big happy French Canadian with a fluffy moustache. When Hwy 11 was built to by-pass Waubaushene, the Bridge Grill lost all its business and my grandparents and uncles had to move and find jobs elsewhere.

In those day, I lived in the city of Windsor. Our countryside was all farms – no hills, no forests, no beaver dams, no rocks. So, when our family took the trip to Waubaushene to see my grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins, I was visiting a place unlike anything I was used to. On our annual vacation to Waubaushene, Uncle Bill might take us out to fish on Georgian Bay in his boat. I caught sunfish off a dock with my Grampa. We walked the streets with my cousins and my grandparents’ giant bullmastiff, Tuffy. I remember some dogs came out of a house barking at us; Tuffy appeared and those dogs turned around and ran. All great memories, but the day my uncles took me in their truck to the beaver pond remains a special day in my life.

When I wonder why – was it the ride through the woods in a pick-up truck, the remoteness of the beaver pond, the introduction to nature? – I realize these were part of it but, most important, it was a day when my uncles made me feel special. I may only see them once a year but I was one of the family. These tough and carefree young men shared their own happy time with an 11 year old kid. That’s what will always be special to me.