Treasuring Algonquin- Excerpt

Introduction

One of the crown jewels of Ontario’s park system, it was originally called Algonquin National Park. This large tract of land (today over 7,700 square kilometers) that sits about 500 meters above sea level contains the headwaters of five major rivers. Created by statute in 1893, it was “reserved and set apart as a public park and forest reservation, fish and game preserve, health resort and pleasure grounds for the benefit, advantage and enjoyment of the people of the Province of Ontario.”1 Renamed Algonquin Provincial Park in 1913 after the addition of several neighbouring townships, it is today an important member of Ontario’s 800-park system. Yearly, over one million visitors come to experience Algonquin in a wide variety of forms. For some it’s a canoe trip to the interior, and for others it’s a camping experience at one of the public campgrounds along Highway 60. The activities these visitors engage in vary widely, from bicycle trips up the old Minnesing Road or along the Rock/Whitefish Trail, to self-guided day hikes on any one of the 12 trails that lie adjacent to Highway 60. A visit to the Algonquin Logging Museum, the Algonquin Park Visitor Centre, or the new Algonquin Art Centre at Found Lake is always a memorable part of every Park itinerary. Some brave tourists rent canoes on Opeongo Lake or Canoe Lake and spend the day paddling around and exploring on their own.

Along the shores of Canoe, Smoke, Cache, Rock Whitefish, and a handful of other lakes, you will notice a few little cabins tucked away amid the darkness of the local forest. In these cabins live quiet, unobtrusive groups of leaseholders and their extended families whose forebears were invited by the Ontario Government to establish cottages in the Park. Until 1954 cottagers were welcomed with open arms, support and encouragement. For some families it’s the fifth generation who now are learning to appreciate the Park and its beauty. Most of the time, you’d hardly know they were there—until you run into trouble while paddling on one of the lakes, lose your way, need medical attention, or get caught in a storm or a heavy north wind. Then they miraculously appear to provide help and guidance and occasionally save your life. Mostly in residence on weekends from ice-out to ice-in, and for a few weeks in the summer, members of this small but vibrant community of 9,000+ extended family members across 304 leaseholds have been coming to Algonquin for well over 100 years.2

Most of these cabins are quite primitive with unlined walls and uncurtained windows. Most are modest in size and designed to blend in with the forest surroundings to ensure that their environmental impact is kept to a minimum.3 Leaseholders have resisted development, generally preferring to supplement rather than rebuild. These cabins are usually heated by wood stoves and lit by kerosene lamps. Water is usually pumped by hand, and refrigerators and stoves are often fueled by propane. Most leases in the south are on lakes adjacent to the route taken by the old Ottawa, Arnprior and Parry Sound railroad right of way.4 The cottages in the northeast side of the Park follow the rail bed of what was once a CNR line that ran from North Bay to Ottawa.5 One might wonder how and why leaseholders came in the first place and why they continue to stay.

It seems that Alexander Kirkwood, one of Algonquin Park’s original founding fathers, was the first to suggest that private individuals be allowed to ‘lease locations in the Park for summer cottages or tents.’6 According to early Park Superintendent annual reports, though there was some interest in leasing as early as 1896, in the early years after the Park’s founding, not much happened in this regard. Most of the Park was home only to logging and railroad operations and the occasional fishing party in the early spring and late fall. It wasn’t until the arrival of Dr. Alexander Pirie in 1905 that there was much interest in camping or cottaging. Not only was the Park generally inaccessible, but also few in Canada had time or money for recreational tourism. Dr. Pirie, a Canadian who practiced medicine in Costa Rica, wanted a place where he could bring his far-flung family together in the summer. The old abandoned houses on Canoe Lake owned by the Gilmour brothers that were built in the late 1890s provided the perfect place.

At about this same time, the then-Park Superintendent George Bartlett had begun to encourage the Ontario Department of Lands and Forests to develop Algonquin Park as a “tourist resort for an affluent middle class clientele.”7 It began with the construction of the Hotel Algonquin at Joe Lake Station and the Highland Inn on Cache Lake, and the leasing of a few parcels to long-time campers also on the shores of Cache Lake near the Park Headquarters. Over the next few years, the community grew to include more hotels, fishing lodges, outfitting stores, youth camps, and private leases. According to Gerald Killan, who has written extensively about the history of Ontario’s Provincial Park system, Bartlett took a utilitarian approach to park management. His intent was to balance recreational activity with revenue producing commercial interests while still protecting the Park watershed and preserving its essential wildness. He encouraged the trapping of surplus beaver (generating nearly $15,000 in revenue in 1920), and arranged a controlled hunt of deer to supply Toronto meat markets during WWI. He also allowed the select logging of mature trees along certain lake shorelines during a coal shortage. But one of his most important contributions was to establish regulations that protected the interior by making cottage lease sites available only on lakes near the railway line.8 This meant that over the next 30 years, leases were restricted to four key areas:

• Canoe Lake and District, including Rain, McIntosh, Brulé, Joe, South Tea and Smoke Lakes
• The Park Headquarters area at Algonquin Park Station on Cache Lake, including Lake of Two Rivers and Source Lake along Highway 60
• The Rock Lake Station area, including Rock and Whitefish Lakes and part of Galeairy Lake
• The northern section, including those lakes running parallel to the CNR rail line from Lake Traverse to Kisohkokwi Lake and a few remote outposts on Manitou and North Tea Lakes

Though the response to government and railway advertising was slow, the idea of leaseholders as important members of the Algonquin Park community of users was firmly in place and supported by Park Superintendent Frank MacDougall in the 1930s. By 1930, there were only 31 leases on Cache Lake and about half a dozen on both the north end of Canoe Lake and Rock Lake near Rock Lake Station.9 Even as late as 1945 the total number of leaseholds had only grown to just over 200 (including 85 on Cache Lake, 85 in the Canoe Lake and District area, and 31 in the Rock/Whitefish area). There were also a few scattered in the north and a few on Source Lake and Lake of Two Rivers. As can be seen in the chart below, it wasn’t until the post-war recreation boom, during the time of Park Superintendent George Phillips, that the number of leases issued doubled again.

For the first half of its existence, leaseholders, summer youth camps, commercial lodges, and canoe trip outfitters were a welcome addition to Algonquin Park. A few leaseholders came in response to Ontario Government advertising campaigns in Ontario and the northeastern United States. One memorable Ontario Lands and Forest exhibit was featured at the Canadian National Exhibition in 1932. The exhibit advertising cottage lots to lease in Algonquin Park was a large reconstructed slice of the Park complete with a forest of evergreens, a log cabin, a canoe, a tent, camping supplies and uniformed Park Rangers all part of the scene.10 The Reverend Rasey on Tea Lake, for example, saw an advertisement in the Ford (Motor) Times magazine that he’d been reading while waiting at a local photography studio in Illinois in the late 1940s.11 These ads encouraged ordinary Canadians and Americans from all walks of life, especially veterans from WWII, to apply for what at the time was advertised as being an “arrangement in perpetuity.” Even as late as 1939, prospective leaseholders were being advised by the then Park Superintendent:

“The expiry of the lease in 1944 does not mean much. All leases are for 21 years and are renewable for another 21 years and the renewal goes through as a matter of routine. The 21-year period gives the government the opportunity to raise or lower the general rental conditions or otherwise revise its statutes. Most of the Park leases are now in their second term of 21 years and some are in their third period.’”12

As previously mentioned, these “arrangements” were not in perpetuity to the chagrin of the second and third generation, who on a cold winter night sometimes wish that their relatives, like our friend and colleague Roy MacGregor, had settled just a few miles outside of the Park’s boundaries.

In the summer of 1954 the post WWII pressures for more public recreation alternatives in Ontario led to the adoption of a new park policy. The long-term plan was to restore the Park to a more natural state. “In the future, there would be no new leases, licenses of occupation or land use permits granted for public, private or commercial purposes.”13 In addition, existing leases, when renewed, would not contain what had been up until that point standard renewability clauses. Leaseholders interested in selling would need to grant “first right of refusal” of their property to the Crown, which would negotiate an agreeable selling price. Over time, it was expected that the Crown would acquire and manage all of the commercial lodges, and outfitting operations. The youth camps would be shut down and owners were expecting to move their bases of operations out of the Park. At that point, there were 432 holdings, including 420 leases, 12 yearly renewable licenses of occupation and four land-use permits, which together accounted for less than .01% (one one-hundredth of 1 percent) of the Park’s total land area. In addition were four areas of patented land, i.e., land in private hands and not owned by the Crown.

Over the next 25 years, the Crown reacquired approximately 100 cottage leases and all leases of the commercial outfitting operations. The outfitter facilities were in turn put out to management bid and today are managed by private sector “concessionaires.” Cottage leaseholds were either dismantled or burned and the forest reclaimed the land. In 1978, the 1954 leasing policy was amended to permit both commercial leases and children’s camps to stay in private hands and their leases were extended to 2017. At the same time, as a result of extensive lobbying, leaseholders whose leases were to expire prior to 1996 were allowed to extend their leases to 1996 as long as they were willing to pay “market rents.” In 1986, again after extensive lobbying, a new Liberal government agreed to look at the issue of why cottagers were now the only leaseholding group still subject to the 1954 policy. The Provincial Parks Council (a citizens advisory committee that reported directly to the Minister of Natural Resources), chaired by Fred Gray, was asked to conduct public hearings, review the Algonquin Park leasing policy, and make recommendations to the Ontario Cabinet. During the spring of 1986, over 900 people attended the various hearings and town meetings that were held across the province. The committee received over 250 briefs or pieces of correspondence. In April 1986, the Provincial Parks Council released its recommendation that, for those who joined the plan, leases would be extended to 2017.14 In return, the Ministry of Natural Resources acquired the ability to:

• Charge market value rents and adjust them periodically
• Charge additional rents for services such as garbage pickup on some lakes
• Charge leaseholders vehicle permit fees as it did other park users
• Have first right of refusal at the time of any lease transfer
• Approve in writing all building activities, based on a set of regulations designed to minimize evidence of leaseholder presence and impact on the lakes
• Eliminate all year-round residency

The majority of leaseholders agreed to the new plan, such that today there are 304 leaseholds still in existence that have been home to nearly 600 families over the last 100 years. Nearly 40% are in the hands of the same original leaseholder families and 37% have changed hands only once. Across all of these sites, the overall average tenure has been just over 68 years.15 Over 30% have been summer residents for over 30 years. The author estimates that the commnity contributes over 150,000 person days to overall Algonquin visitorship. Many are friends and friends of friends who otherwise may never have experienced the beauty of Algonquin. Some 95% of them are still located within a few kilometers of the Highway 60 corridor. These seasonal residents live and breathe Algonquin, care about its health and its welfare, and know it better, longer, and more intimately than just about any other group of Park users. As indicated previously, my hope is that these stories will shine a small light on a valuable part of the Algonquin Park community, a community of people who prefer to know a small piece of land and lake intimately, as season leads to season and year leads to year. I hope that by reading their stories their contribution to the Park and its welfare will not be forgotten.