Lake Temagami, Ontario, Canada

Alice Kay's pictures of Westree, ON, Canada (and the cabin on the lake) sent me to the map to see where it was -


The Balloon 'A' Marks the Spot

The red arrow points to the location of a Camp Chimo on Lake Temagami.

Ah... Lake Temagami. In Ojibway (native american), it means "deep waters"...


I remember it was also very COLD water! The top foot or so of the lake was slightly warmed up by the sun, but if you dove off the diving board, you plunged into some very icy depths! So you learned how to "swim on the top" there! As you can see from the picture above, the cold water keeps things cool.


Camp Chimo, Lake Temagami

The "camp" was actually a rustic resort, it had a dining hall, a game hall with jigsaw puzzles, books, and a ping pong table. There were about 7 or 8 cabins that I can remember. Out front of the dining hall was a floating dock that had a diving board. There was a place to tie up your boat and they had a bunch of canoe for taking day trips. As far as I know, this place no long exists. The Temagami Lodge may or not be the same place - their website certainly gives you a feel for what Camp Chimo was like.


Picture taken by my dad's father of my brothers and I in 1972
- on our way home, crossing Lake Temagami

My mom and grandmom had a "girls summer out" going to England on a tour, so my dad, grandfather and "us boys" towed my dad's new boat, the Sandpiper III up past Niagra Falls, across the border into Canada and then into the Canadian wilderness in the "great white north" beyond Toronto and Sudbury.

I recall swimming, boating, fishing, playing in a ping pong tournament where one of my brothers won, eating basic but very good food, and ... a couple embarrassing moments for my brothers.

My younger brother was a little umm, awkward shall we say? He had trouble going through a meal at dinner time without some misfortune besetting him, be it spilling his milk all over or dropping his plate on the floor, or what have you - this behavior eventually led us to teasingly calling him "super slop" and the refrain "super slop strikes again" was all too often heard at the dinner table. My grandfather thought up this "contest" - for every meal he went while at Camp Chimo without messing up, his "title" would would become less in magnitude and for every accident, the title would grow in magnitude.

- the scale was very elaborate and I don't remember the exact specifics but it went something like "just a slop", "medium slop", "big slop" "super slop", "mega slop", "ultra slop", "ultra supreme slop" and so on.

So, my younger brother struggled at each meal, so tense he could scarcely move, in an effort to loose his title. He did very well, getting down to "medium slop" (or some such) at the beginning of the last meal at Camp Chimo. Someone decided it was time to take some "corrective action", probably someone he had beaten in ping pong, perhaps it was even me, I claim to no longer remember.

In any event, while young brother was away from the table, salt shakers had their tops unscrewed, ketchup bottles had water stirred into them, napkins had silverware hidden in them, and so forth... When my younger brother started eating, he immediately sent his silverware to the floor - upset, he poured a huge glob of ketchup all over his fries and on to the table... Someone of course, asked him for the salt which he immediately sent spilling all over the table... and so it went... by the time the "carnage" was over, "Ultra Supreme Mega Slop" was a nervous wreak, and the rest of us could not stop our side splitting laughter. I do think this meal scarred him for life.

My other brother had his shining moment too... that good ol' Navigator and Leader of Men, but that will have to wait some other time - for I have to get this huge smirk off my face.