Here in the boreal forest of Canada, winter is a-coming.  I got a taste of it last Monday, when Clarence and I were scouting a trail into the Kamuck River.

It was bitterly cold – no snow, just cold.  We were tramping around the bush in a remote location.  I knew I had issues with my truck, a '97 Nissan Pathfinder, for there was a leak at the top of the gas tank which I was prepared to live with.  You can sink only so much money into an old truck.  That meant I had to carry extra gas.  And in the past few months, I'd had problems with the battery discharging.  I'd brought along a power pack to address that issue.  Still, we were miles from nowhere, on a road no one would travel until next summer, and if the truck failed us, we might be camping out till spring.

Well, we finished our scout and climbed into the truck.  The gas gauge indicated close to empty, and the needle sank rapidly.  We stopped and poured in 20 litres.  That got us to the main road, the Goldfield.  The needle was still sinking, very rapidly indeed.  There was no traffic on the Goldfield, and we were still 50 klicks from the highway.  In another 10 klicks, the gauge read dead empty.

Clarence crawled under the truck and found the problem – a leaking gas line.  The fuel was pouring out . . .

ORIGINAL POST 13 November 2011
Read the full post with colour photo on E.J. Lavoie's Blog > http://bit.ly/2dKs8lJ

1  ̶  BLUE MOUNTAIN
   Just the other day, I reached Collingwood by traveling on a paved road all the way from Greenstone.  Collingwood is a community of 19,500 on the shore of Georgian Bay, Lake Huron.  Then I took a paved road to The Big Stink, also spelled T-O-R-O-N-T-O. 
   One hundred forty-six years ago, Colonel Garnet Wolseley left Toronto to quell the Métis Resistance in Red River, North-West Territories.  He and 1,200 armed men travelled by rail to Collingwood to embark on steamers bound for Prince Arthur's Landing on the west shore of Lake Superior.  They wanted to arrest one man, or hang him, whichever came first.
  My sister, Grace, lives in Collingwood.  She has retired there.  She doesn't remember Col. Wolsely, but she has never forgotten the magnificent ski runs that attracted her to Collingwood many decades ago.  The historical record shows that Wolseley was not interested in the skiing.
  I, on the other hand, have long been interested in Col. Wolseley.  And when I saw those ski runs, well . . . wow.  But, a country boy like me is easily impressed.
  Going to and from T.O. (The Big Stink), I spent a few hours in the Georgian Triangle, not to be confused with the Bermuda Triangle.  In the G.T., people mysteriously disappear for just a few hours.  Because.  There is just so much to see and do.  Bear with me as I roam through orchards of country, culture, and history.
  By the way, the G.T. offers orchards for over 30 different species of apple, including its signature Honeycrisp.  And I never got to taste one.  So much to see and do.
  When I arrived on Sunday, September 18, Grace whisked me away to The Spit (more on that later), the interminable shoreline of Georgian Bay, and the Wasaga Blues Festival (more on that later).
  Monday morning, she introduced me to Blue Mountain.  The mountain, as it happens, is green, not blue.  It is a section of the Niagara Escarpment, probably the predominant geological feature of all of Eastern Ontario, let alone of the Collingwood country.  The Escarpment begins in the east in New York State, allows five of the six Great Lakes to cascade over its lip at Niagara Falls, and extends westward to the Illinois-Wisconsin border.  And there it sat on Monday morning, smiling greenly on the city, and gazing out fondly over the great inland sea. 
  When we zipped along the foot of the mountain, I fairly gasped . . .
 
Read the full post with photos on E.J. Lavoie's Blog > http://bit.ly/2eiPj7V

What possesses a couple of writers to venture into wave-swept waters in a tiny canoe in November?
            Well, why don't you ask me?  That's what I did yesterday, with my companion Clarence.
            Yesterday might have been the last day of summer.  The first snowfall had melted.  The temperature had risen above zero.  No ice on the lake yet.  And the wind gusts reached velocities of less than a hundred klicks an hour.
            You see, I am preparing Muskeg Tours 2012 for publication.  In 1987, I published the original text about the historic sites of the LIttle Long Lac Gold Camp.  In that year I visited all the sites, took pictures, described the scenes.  Soon I will publish a completely updated version.  For the past year I've had only one more site to visit – well, re-visit.  The Elmos mine.
            Tom Johnson, prospector, was the father of this mining camp.  It was Johnson who, in 1932, discovered the Little Long Lac mine on the south shore of Barton Bay, the west arm of Kenogamisis Lake.  A railway ran about a mile-and-a-half north of the bay, and that was the only link to civilized Canada.  There wasn't a single road in the region closer than a hundred miles.  While he was waiting for a big-shot investor to arrive by plane, he explored a little further west down the bay.  That's when he made the strike that would become the Elmos mine.
            Okay, you have a question.  Why has it taken me a year to get to the site?  Well, it is out of the way.  It never had a road to it.  It was served by a wooden trestle that bridged a smaller bay back in the '30s.  That trestle rotted away long ago.  It is accessible now only by water.  And I did try once last year – lined up a boat, and just as we were about to launch, my partner and I chickened out.  The waves were formidable. 
            And then, you know how it is.  One thing after another that claimed my attention, including writing my debut novel and getting it launched.  So that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
            A few days ago I put my canoe in the water and made another attempt by myself.  Again, driven back by the west wind and waves.
            So yesterday, I enlisted another partner, and though it was still windy, we bucked the waves successfully.  Only swamped once . . .
ORIGINAL  POST 6 NOVEMBER 2011
Read the full post with photos on E.J. Lavoie's Blog > http://bit.ly/2dlCqvn