Lake of Bays, ON

My Watermark is Lake of Bays, Ontario.

My fondest memories of Canadian water bodies involve fishing in the presence of loons and morning fog, my dad carefully carving our canoe through the glass-like water. This was a first and last ritual, it is how we would open, and close each visit to a Muskokan cottage in northern Ontario every summer.

I will forever remember the very first time I was able to cast a line by myself! I remember I asked for the rod to fish so quickly after parking that the dust from the gravel our car kicked up was still looming in the air around us. Grudgingly, my dad gave me the rod and I ran down to the first dock I could see, only to hurl the line into the water with only a small metal hook.

I never could have imagined it would have landed in the mouth of a very, very big large-mouth bass that almost pulled me from the dock and into the water! Years and years went by, one week here, one week there, and I never felt more at ease and in my element that in fishing under the orange and red skies of many dawns and dusks. We visited countless lakes from those in Parry Sound, to Muskoka, to Peterborough. The beauty of these waterbodies is that they all had the same lasting effect on me.

My parents recently purchased a small bedroom cottage on the Lake of Bays. The cottage hugs the nooks of crooked shoreline and sits sheltered in a cosy little bay above a glass-like sheet of water. On my first visit there, over 15 years after the first time I cast a rod, the first thing I did was drop by bags off, and rush down the wooden dock, only to later haul in a nice-sized smallmouth bass!

On summer nights, we often paddle around the rocky outcrops and submerged and decomposing logs and into the marshes to listen to calls of amphibian mating season. Protecting this particular lake, and others like it is critical for these species and for me to continue to relive my early memories.