High Living on Highway 41
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High Living on Highway 41By Bill Rowsome
Mankind originally settled where rivers poured into the seas, facilitating construction of commercial ports. Increasing population and natural curiosity forced the pioneers to travel up the river valleys and settle on the usually fertile land. Pursuing commerce exploited these beautiful valleys and unsuccessfully tried to take command of the high land between the valleys, but it was too barren to support superficial life.
Give me the Highland!
I live on the height of land dividing the Mississippi Watershed, the Madawaska Watershed and the Skootamatta/Moira Watershed and wouldn't trade it for the rest of the world. I don't want to become part of your riotous valley living. There is more to life than that. The vistas, the air and unpolluted water of the headwaters, and the loneliness are only some of the reasons.
This is an undefined area. Highway 41 starts at Lake Ontario and ends at the Ottawa River. It is claimed in part by each of the surrounding townships as it snakes in and about hills and vales. There is an advantage to the uncertainty of who lives where. Unfortunately there is no confusion for tax collectors; assessors always arrive.
There is an uncertainty of communication here. Surrounding commercial establishments in their eagerness to accumulate customers have encouraged three 'Give Away' newspapers to be placed in our mailboxes. We are blessed with the Frontenac News from Sharbot Lake, The Land 'O Lakes Sun from Marmora and The Highlander out of Griffith & Matawatchan. Blessed, because the diversity of the newspapers is interesting. The need to communicate between humans is strong...just watch cars entering an empty parking lot pod together. Is there still more danger from the Indians when the wagons don't make a circle? We have few wants strung out along this lonely road but the need of commercial advertising to bombard our peacefulness is a strong incentive for outside business establishments.
One paper, a commercial operation, devotes 2 or 3 inserted pages to local news, mainly the antics of the Addington Highlands Council trying to split itself in half and describing the problems of policing the local marijuana harvest. There is plenty of advertising, particularly from businesses further west.
Another, I suspect a fully volunteer organization and using the editor's kitchen as the workplace, attempts to keep readers up on social life, church news and other events of the area. There are underlying pleas for participation and volunteers in this isolated area. It is a community that will soon expand by forced amalgamation. It will be interesting to see how expansion will affect communication. The back half of the paper contains ads from local businesses, willing to contribute to the cost as a neighbourly gesture.
Volunteers with government grants initially published the third. Two local entrepreneurs recently purchased it when the grants collapsed. A gaggle of volunteer correspondents from each of the township hamlets contributes the social and church events of their areas. A sincere attempt to publish local and political news by the editor is under way. It recently dropped "North" from its masthead in recognition, I speculate, that the advertising money and news is basically from the more densely populated south. It boasts a web site (www.inkingston.com/lolnw) which to date hasn't fulfilled its promise of expanded and late breaking coverage.
Thank you all for letting those of us who live on the great divide peek into your community activities. Your eagerness to bond and socialize is fascinating but let me retain my loneliness in the Highland where I can ignore the distant advertisers' pleas to accumulate more worldly possessions.
