Kashagawigamog Lake, ON

My Watermark is Kashagawigamog Lake, Ontario.

I am a visual artist, I'm a painter, and I'm here on Wolfe Island for the Lit Fest 2016, and I'm going to share my Watermark.

My earliest memory is this particular bay I can't quite locate, to me indicates this bay has been with me my whole life, or I've been with this little body of the water my whole life. But I do remember a teenage memory there and I do remember a young adult memory there. They both involve canoes and they both involve ladies.

The first on from when I was a teenager I can remember was when I got to go paddling with my mom in the canoe, which was really nice because she worked at the camp so day time paddling wasn't really an option. So we got to go for this one paddle one day. And I remember a huge snapping turtle, I remember remarking that it was the size of a garbage can lid. It's a very obscure memory, but that bay of water is central to it.

Years later, maybe 7 or 8 years later, I was canoeing with a dear friend and fishing -- and I hadn't fished in years. I cast my line into the bay and caught one large mouth bass, and I again and I caught another large mouth bass, and I cast again a third time and I caught another! Maybe I caught the same bass three time, I'm not sure. But it was on that third cast I thought that this lake has been so good to me that it just gives me the fish, so I think I'm not going to fish for a little while, I'm just going to paddle on the lake, just swim in it.

That little bay came to mind as a place where I had a timeless memory, a little, young memory, and a young adult memory there.