A trip down memory lane: an island.

AuthorAtkins, Michael
PositionNEWS - Column

It's been a long time since I took a little time out waiting for the old swing bridge at Little Current, Manitoulin Island to grant me access to this fantastic "largest freshwater lake island in the world."

Where else do you line up for a one-way bridge and get to bet on how many cars are going across in your direction before you get to use the bridge yourself. Better than counting train cars at a railway crossing. This game is best played with impressionable young kids who do not own a cell phone. or adults who have never grown up, although it is open to anyone.

I not only drove across this trestle years ago, but also sailed underneath it. Some of my favourite memories are dropping sail east of the bridge just past Strawberry Island with the sun setting and a strong westerly driving the current tinder that bridge at speeds that were not little at all. Made it hard for a fellow to hold a cigar and a rye and coke and the wheel at the same time. (Do not try this at home children: times and customs have changed.) Good training for the tides that would come years later in Nova Scotia.

Although I only lived in Little Current for a year as editor of the Manitoulin Expositor (1972), I kept a boat at Boyle Marine for more than a decade. It was like a second home. One year my boat became the second home to a beaver, which seemed impossible if I had not seen it with my own eyes. The sailboat that fit my budget back then was called an Atlanta--a yellow, 32-foot laminated plywood vessel that had twin centreboards that allowed you to bring them up and enter shallow water. The boat had been designed by Ferry Marine to be dropped to downed pilots in the Second World War. It needed to be versatile. In any event, the centreboards left enough space in the floorboards for this beaver to make it in and make a home. He filled the cabin with an elegant twig-and-branch condominium.

The purpose of my return to the Island was to attend a planning session of the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, which was held in the spanking new Manitoulin Hotel and Conference Centre. This kind of facility was unimaginable when I lived in Little Current: even less probable that it would be owned by five Manitoulin area First Nation communities. It is all part of First Nation communities reclaiming their economic space in Northern Ontario.

The hotel was built to support the growing success of the Great...

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