In an earlier posting Nonie told us that she had visited Brent, an old logging community, in Algonquin Park. So I went with my wife to see this place. After driving for about forty kilometres over a very winding gravel road we arrived at the town located on a beautiful lake. The houses are now simple cottages but the store is something else. The place is crammed full of "stuff" mainly for the canoeists and campers. So here is a picture which gives you some idea what it looks like.
4 comments:
Mike, I hope your journey was as interesting as promised.
There is an haunting feeling as you move across the old wooden floor boards. Did you note the right hand corner, as you enter, is full of old items, dusty and almost forgotten.A statement in itself. Even the photo's on the walls are dusty and old! There is a corner used for hundreds of paddles/lifejackets--the only area used it seemed. Time stands still in this little shop. Hope you will share the other photos--very hard place to photograph.I am curious how you took to some of the angles there?
Did you meet Forest and his dog?
Nonie.
Yikes!!
I helped build the back end of this store in the summer of 1953 for 35cts. an hour. The owner's name then was Jerry Mcgauhey (spelling??) but he spoke with a brr and charged 7cts for a small thick glass bottle of coca-cola which could be had for a nickel in the city. The original store burnt down a couple of years earlier and Jerry rebuilt over a period of years using the store's profits to pay for the cost of construction. I was 17 yrs. of age then. Next door to the west side was a one room school house which also was a rebuild as the original one also burnt down. Today it is a leasehold cottage occupied rarely. In its heyday, it held over 20 students being taught grades 1 to 8 by a single teacher. The bldg had many uses. On the nights of major holiday week-end Saturdays its walls pulsed from the stomping of square-dancing partners swinging to the blasts of screeching fiddles. A movie was shown on Wednesday nights on an old noisy reel-to-reel projector. And, when a priest or minister visited Brent, the school house accommodated their services. AS a mater of fact, I was baptized in the old school house on Feb. 8, 1938 at the great age of 6 months.
It is actullay spelled Gerry McGaughey, short for Gerald. He was my great uncle.
I first visited Gerry and his wife Mary in 1966 when I was four years old. Still have the pictures including slugging back coke from one of the thick glass bottles while sitting on the old train porter cart.
David
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