One of Canada’s best known zoologists in the 1950s and 1960s, and a key figure in the conservation movement in Canada, J. R. Dymond, was for many years a Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto, the Director of the Royal Ontario Museum of Zoology and one of the founding members of the Federation of Ontario Naturalists. In 1936 he took out lease on Smoke Lake and established a long lasting friendship with Frank MacDougall the then Park Superintendent. Within a few years his reputation as a wildlife expert became well known and fellow leaseholder, Jessie Northway (wife of Gar Northway owner of then popular  retailer Nortway and Sons) asked him iif he’d be willing to conduct educational nature hikes for local residents. This he agreed to do and an institution was born. According to another resident, Nancy Martin, whose father James Savage was a good friend of Dymond’s and had worked at the Harkness Lab on Lake Opeongo testing the effect of DDT on birds in Algonquin Park:
 ‘They’d pick different spots each year and often the leaseholders meeting would be held before or after the hike.  Two to three days before each event, they would blaze a trail and mark 20 or so specimens for identification. They would tie a string to the specimen and a number. The cottagers and kids would arrive for the nature hike and like a treasure hunt were each given a small pencil and paper with which to write down what they thought each specimen was (plants and trees etc) that was marked on the trail. Everyone brought a picnic lunch and then we would have the plants identified and a prize awarded (usually a chocolate bar) for the best score for the kids. It was a wonderful social event for all of the children and adults on the lake who participated.’ 

The success of these hikes led to the formation of the ‘Smoke Lake Naturalist Club’, which was very active during the 1940’s and 1950s.  In 1942 Frank MacDougall, became the DLF Deputy Minister and  In 1945 asked Dymond if he would consider developing a similar framework for a public nataure interpretive program. Dymond agreed, and in the summer of 1946 set up a three-pronged program that included conducted nature hikes, public lectures and a wildlife exhibit tent. The exhibit tent was set up at Cache Lake near the Park Headquarters. It included a few mounted specimens of birds and mammals that had been donated from the Royal Ontario Museum. Later, in 1947, living amphibians and reptiles, plants and geological models were added. The program was a success and that first summer over 3,400 people signed the guest register, jumping to nearly 6,000 in 1947.

According to Allan Helmsley, who helped Dymond set up the program, the first conducted nature hikes were pretty basic. Using a mile-long existing portage and railway tracks the hike started at the Highland Inn on Cache Lake. It ran eastward along the old railway bed over one or two of the abandoned railway trestles and then immediately turned south. It then climbed to the top of Skymount ridge, and provided a fabulous lookout over the whole of Cache Lake.2 Later they also used a trail at Canisbay and established what is now the Hardwood Lookout trail.  Hand printed labels containing the names and brief characteristics of trees, ferns and common wild flowers were attached to the plants.  Initial advertising was a bulletin put up at the Lake Of Two Rivers campgrounds and at the various lodges in the Park.  Dymond was a unique hike leader because he liked to lead hikes that resulted in meaningful discourse and questions. He loved to share his ideas about ecology and the complexities of the environment. His objective was ‘to stimulate interest, not give all the answers but create mystery and provoke thought.’ For the first few years, hike leaders would distributed a mimeographed list of common plants and animals. When Dymond led them, he’d start at 9:30 a.m. or 10 a.m. and always included lunch. To him lunch was an important part of the whole hike, because he got to know the people a little better. He had found, over the years, that people were more relaxed and open for conversation while sitting down having a sandwich. It gave him time to talk to people and gave them time to ask questions.
During the programs first year, in 1946, there were 22 conducted hikes with a total attendance of 366 participants and 9 evening lectures at the Highland Inn.  The early success of the program encouraged Dymond to propose that a certificate be provided for those who had obtained a certain knowledge of nature with four grades of naturalist namely; Beginning, Junior, Intermediate and Senior Naturalist. Within each grade there needed to be a target number of trees, birds and other forms of plant and animal life with which naturalists should be familiar. He also felt strong that participants also needed to grasp, what he called, ‘certain principles of behaviour in the forest. These included such things as such not killing any plants or animals without good cause, not destroying the beauty of trails and roads by defacing trees or uprooting plants or throwing paper and other litter about.5 The success of these various programs convinced Dymond that professional-looking, illustrated booklets that visitors could obtain for a small charge, needed to be prepared, so that the reader could become familiar with some of the commoner plants and animals. He also felt that a permanent Park naturalist staff was needed and a proper museum building be built. He lobbied Deputy Minister MacDougall extensively, and in 1952 the Algonquin Park Museum opened at Found Lake. Its first year of operation with completed exhibits was in 1953, during which time,attendance reached 52,000 visitors According to Helmsley:
“The first lecture in the lecture hall that could contain 100 people was standing room only. We then they added an outdoor program at the Cache Lake Rec Hall that took place in July and August. There was no set agenda and the naturalists would talk about whatever interested them.  Lodge owners in the area welcomed the program and would turn over their dining rooms every other week and all the guests would come to the ‘nature’ talk.”

​Today these initial efforts have spawned what is now an integral part of the Algonquin Park experience. The original museum exhibits were expanded and moved to the Algonquin Park Visitor’s Centre. Dymond’s idea for a few Park-related booklets about the natural world in Algonquin Park is now a huge collection of booklets about all aspects of the Park’s ecosystem including trees, plants, birds, insects, butterflies, mammals, mushrooms, reptiles and wildflowers as well as over a dozen technical bulletins about various aspects of Algonquin Park life managed by the Friends of Algonquin Park.   His ideas about how to conduct hikes have led to the production of 17 trail guides that introduce hikers to a different theme about Algonquin's human or natural history. Each guide contains a map of the walking trail, and the text is keyed to numbered posts along the trail. During the summer months are a wide variety of guided hikes, canoe outings and a special daily program for kids at the Visitor’s Centre all of which lead back to J. R. Dymond from Smoke Lake. Dymond was later awarded the “Order of the British Empire” for his role in ‘making Canadians aware of the need to conserve their natural resources, not just the wildlife alone but the whole ecosystem of life, soil and water.

Molly Cox Colson
One anchor for the Canoe Lake community for most of the first half of the 20th century was Molly Cox Colson. She first came to Algonquin Park in May 1900 to visit with her good friends Dr. and Mrs. William Bell at Cache Lake. Dr. Bell had just joined the Algonquin Park ranger staff and was in the process of drafting the first Algonquin Park canoe route map. Molly was a nurse from Ottawa and her doctors said she needed a well-deserved rest. She liked the Park enough that she decided to stay on. Her first job was as the housekeeper at the Park rangers' boarding house at Cache Lake and later she managed a tent city, which housed overflow Highland Inn guests. With a strong personality, Molly soon had everyone under her thumb. As the superintendent of the Park at the time said, "The rangers had never been so well looked after as they were under Miss Cox's direction." 

Molly was a wonderful healer and became the local mid-wife, prenatal counselor, setter of broken bones and even pulled teeth upon occasion. As there wasn't a doctor anywhere around the local area, she would always make house calls when anyone was sick, even in the winter. She gained local fame when she walked more than a mile from the Algonquin Hotel on Joe Lake to the Farley house on Potter Creek using two canes. There she promptly delivered one of the Farley daughters, who arrived prematurely. In another incident, a man at a local lumbering camp had fractured his leg and needed a splint before he could be moved. Molly set the bone and bound the leg using a splint that Ed made out of a piece of board. He was eventually taken off to the doctor at Whitney who said later that he hadn't needed to reset the leg at all. It had been set perfectly.

In 1907, she married Ed Colson who had joined the park ranger staff in 1905. And together they took over the management of the Highland Inn on Cache Lake in 1908. In 1917 they decided to buy the Algonquin Hotel at Joe Lake Station. The Algonquin Hotel was considered by most to be a bit more rustic than the Highland Inn and was a favourite place to launch fishing trips into the interior of the Park.

Her reputation as a lifesaver took on a new aura in the spring of 1918. The ice had gone out early and two of the local handymen and part time guides, George Rowe and Lawrie Dickson were paddling up Joe Creek on a stormy April night. According to Mark Robinson there was 'heavy rain and storm with a high wind from the south'. The canoe hit a deadhead and dumped. Lawrie landed on a stump that had a sharp point on it that pierced his lung. George clung to another and started shouting. The Colsons were a good half-mile away upstream up at the Algonquin Hotel. Whether or not it was intuition, good hearing or just plain luck, Molly was convinced that she had heard someone yelling and cajoled Ed to go out into the storm and investigate. He reached the struggling men just in time and took them both back to the hotel. George recovered but after resting for several days at the hotel Lawrie was rushed down to Toronto General Hospital where he died on May 4, 1918. George was so grateful to Molly for saving his life that he wanted her to have 'power of attorney' over his affairs, so that he couldn't draw any money from his war pension without her signature. He later signed on as a guide at the hotel, leased a cabin near Joe Lake Dam and allegedly never drank again.

In 1935, in anticipation of the completion of Highway 60 through the Park, Molly realized that the days of the railway as the main access point were numbered and that there would likely be demand for services closer to the highway. She applied for a 'license of occupation' to operate a canoe livery and store on a five-acre parcel of land at the south end of Canoe Lake in what was then called Portage Bay. It was given this name due to its easy access to the portage that led to Smoke Lake to the south. It took awhile to sort out the specific dimensions of the parcel and it's use, so that business that first year was likely conducted from a tent. Eventually the license was granted and a small log cabin on stilts was built in late 1937 or early 1938. The Portage Store came into being.

The two continued to run both the Algonquin Hotel and the Portage Store until 1943, when they sold the hotel to George Merrydew, owner of a tavern in Toronto and settled in an empty Omanique Lumber Company office near the northwest side of the trestle bridge at Potter Creek Bridge. In 1945 she took ill and died peacefully in her bed. As a tribute to her, the Canoe Lake and District Leaseholders Association placed a memorial brass plaque on the big island in Smoke Lake, which was her favourite picnicking and camping spot. From then on it became known as Molly's Island. Over 100 people came to pay their respects in July 1946 at the unveiling. Molly had been a major anchor of the local Algonquin Park community for nearly 50 years. The plaque contained the following inscription:
"Her spirit was one with the lakes and forests she loved – her heart and hands, ever at the service of those who called to her." Canoe Lake resident 1900 – 1945

​For more details on the life of Molly and other Canoe Lake women, check out Algonquin Voices: Selected Stories of Canoe Lake Women.

I​n the summer of 1996, on a beautifully calm day, with white puffy clouds floating by, I loaded my twin two-year olds in my old Chestnut cedar-strip canoe and paddled off to visit some neighbours across Canoe Lake in Algonquin Park. Little did I know that this afternoon excursion would lead to a ten-year effort to uncover and capture the human heritage of Ontario’s oldest and well-known provincial park.  What began, as a simple afternoon picnic became a voyage of discover and then a passion. A passion to give voice to the histories and life stories of the 300+ families who have summered since 1905 on a few lakes that hug the route of two long-gone railway lines.

These little cabins are for the most part, modest in size, and are designed to blend in with their forest surroundings, to ensure that their environmental impact is kept to a minimum. Very few have comforts like electricity and generally are quite primitive, with unlined walls, uncurtained windows, wood stoves and kerosene lamps that provide heat and light. Water is pumped by hand with refrigerators and cooking stoves powered by propane.  For some families it’s the fifth generation who are now learning to appreciate the Park and its beauty.
Algonquin residents of course aren’t the only ones who play a custodial role in looking after the Park, but they live and breathe Algonquin, care about its health and its welfare dearly and know it better, longer and more intimately, than just about any other group of Park users. Mostly occupied on weekends from ice-out to ice-in, and for a few weeks in the summer, it is estimated that this small but vibrant community extends to some 9,000+ family members. Most of the time, you’d hardly know they were there. At least that is, 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.

Over the course of the last twenty years, I have interviewed a great majority of resident families, spent hours in the Ontario and Algonquin Park Visitor Center Archives and read just about every book written about the history of Algonquin Park.  This has resulted in an enormous collection of stories, which continue to be the source for my ongoing narratives. I hope you enjoy my perspectives on the human history of Algonquin Park.