Municipal amalgamation brought the end of an era for many long-serving local politicians. None served longer than Thomas Neal, who sat on Frontenac County Council for 34 years and was reeve of the former Barrie Township from 1967 until amalgamation in 1998. He served as warden in 1972, and sat on Barrie Council for two other terms in the 1950s.

According to Neal's son, Thomas Jr., his father's 34 years as county council member is a record and he was also the only county warden to ever come from Barrie Township.

Thomas Sr. was born in 1913 and moved to Harlowe from Kingston as a young child. He ran the general store in Harlowe, and kept the store going for over 50 years. It closed after he died in 2001, as he had wished.

Among the sundry goods that were sold in the store, they sold moccasins that were made in St. Emile, Quebec.

“We sold moccasins to people from all over the world, tourists from everywhere, and Dad loved selling moccasins. We took deliveries sometimes three days a week,” said Thomas Jr., who now lives in Northbrook. “And he ran the township out of the store. It was the kind of place where people would come in and buy groceries and talk to Dad about whatever problems they were having. For him municipal politics was a seven-day a week commitment,” said Thomas.

In those days there were no paved roads in the area, and under Thomas Neal, a tar and chip program was initiated. He was also able to convince the province, with the help of J.R. Simonett, to build the Harlowe Road to join Henderson Road with Highway 41.

Later on, when the Barrie hall and municipal office was built at Highway 41, the township became more centered around the business center of the township at Cloyne.

“Dad had a lot of help from my mother, and us kids, in the store, which was a real going concern, because he loved being there for the people of Barrie Township. He was also the president of the Legion,” Thomas Jr. said.

When some Crown Land opened up there were lots of cottages built in the townships and Thomas Jr. remembers his father working on the committee of adjustment and helping develop new lots and new cottages in the township.

“A lot of business came into the township in those years. He also sat on all the committees of the county, and eventually they called him the Dean of Frontenac County because he had been there for so long.”

Neal also worked very closely with Kaladar township in Lennox and Addington to bring homes and businesses to the area and build roads and a fire department to support that.

“I remember that when amalgamation came on he wasn't in favor of it. He thought that the way things had been operating would be changed. Under him the township never had to borrow money from the bank; it was always taken from reserves. He would say that way the interest was paid to the township instead of the bank. He also was the welfare officer in the township, and if someone was able to work he found them a job instead of giving them welfare.”

According to his son, Neal also favored joining with Kaladar because of the business and service connections between the two townships, but the province insisted otherwise.

Thomas Neal carried out the final negotiations for amalgamation on behalf of Barrie Township and retired from politics at the age of 85. He kept his business going until his death in 2001.

At the regular county council meeting in Sydenham on July 15, former South Frontenac mayor and county warden Gary Davison, and current mayor of Frontenac Islands and county warden Dennis Doyle, presented Maggie Clark with a special one-time 150th anniversary scholarship award on behalf of the county. The $1,000 bursary was open to all senior students residing in the County of Frontenac who are planning to pursue a post-secondary education.

Clark was chosen by members of the 150th Anniversary Planning Committee, who were looking for students, who throughout their school careers, have shown an enthusiasm for celebrating and enhancing life in their community through sustainable means, be they environmental, economic, social or cultural. Students were asked to write a 1000-word essay about these pursuits.

After accepting the award, Clark thanked council and spoke about her various pursuits, many of which are art-related. She has her own up-cycling art business in which she creates unique items from recycled materials. She currently displays and sells her work at the Frontenac Farmers Market in Verona. Clark plans to further her studies and will be pursuing a post-secondary commerce degree at university. Congratulations to Maggie Clark on her well-deserved award.

Harrowsmith's Alice Aiken started her military career in the navy as a ship's navigator in 1984. While in the military she took a degree in Physiotherapy at Dalhousie and served as a physiotherapist until she left the military in 1998. She completed both a Master’s and PhD program at Queen's and then joined the university’s Faculty of Physical Therapy in 2006, a department that she now chairs.

While that aspect of her career is impressive in its own right, it also serves as the basis for her research career.

In 2010, she was approached by former Brigadier General Bill Richard, who was about to retire as board chair of Kingston General Hospital.

“He thought we should do something for the country's veterans and that we should bring academics to the table to have a good look at the health needs of veterans. So, we built this institute and I became the science director,” she said.

The institute is called the Canadian Institute for Military and Veteran Health Research (CIMVHR), and in its first five years it has grown from an idea to being comprised of more than 35 universities (including all major Canadian research universities) and 550 researchers.

What Dr. Aiken and her team were able to do, starting with just the support of Queen's, is put together a database containing health-related information from veterans across Ontario. This database is available to researchers who propose studies to the institute, and the CIMHVR has become a leader in health research among current and former military personnel and their families.

One of the first problems that had to be overcome was to find the health records of veterans in order to study them. Veterans’ Affairs only has records for veterans who have health issues of one kind or another when they leave the military. Other veterans who are discharged are not tracked.

However, when Canadian military personnel are discharged and then approach Service Canada for a health card, they are given one immediately; the three-month waiting period is waived in their case. This practice has created a record that was hidden in the database of the provincial health ministries. It took over a year of work to convince the Ontario Ministry of Health to release this information to the CIMVHR (void of all personal identification) but once that was accomplished, the institute gained valuable information to share with researchers and was able to sponsor an increasingly broad number of research projects.

“Certainly, ever since the Afghanistan war there has been an increased public interest in the health of veterans, and we have been able to sponsor many research projects in a short time to look at these issues,” she said.

CIMVHR has made this research accessible through publications, education opportunities, speaking engagements, media coverage, and an annual forum.

Research projects that have been completed include flight-related neck pain; recovering mobility after brain injuries; resiliency and readiness in military personnel; the impact of adverse childhood experience on mood and anxiety in military personnel; and the list goes on.

“Over the past four years I have been awed by the magnitude and rigor of research already being undertaken, and inspired by the capacity available to pursue new projects. We are eager to learn from the hundreds of CIMVHR researchers we work with across the country, and in turn we are honoured to be given the opportunity to support them as they focus on their work on military personnel, veterans and their families,” said Dr. Aiken in the CIMVHR’s four-year progress report in 2014.

Recently, Dr. Aiken has been honoured twice. In May she was named the Honorary Commander of 33 Canadian Forces Health Services, Kingston, and on July 10, the Honourable Erin O'Toole, Minister of Veterans Affairs, presented her with one of this year's ministry commendations for her contributions to the service of military veterans at a ceremony in Ottawa.

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It might surprising to see a 13-year-old running a successful business at the Saturday farmers’ market in Sharbot Lake. But what's even more surprising is that it is Ellie Larocque's third consecutive summer doing just that.

Ellie started up Cassnelli's Cookies and Lemonade in 2013 with her friend and cousin Cassidy Donaldson (hence the business name) when she was just 11. It was Ellie's mother Donna, who suggested that the two set up shop at the Sharbot Lake Farmers Market, and for her first summer, Ellie used her birthday gift money to invest in the necessary supplies.

While Cassidy, who lives in Lanark, is no longer involved in the business, Ellie has continued on and her friend Annika Putnam has joined her as a co-baker/seller. The two bake all-butter-based cookies, with Ellie offering up huge and reasonably priced cookies that come in chocolate chip, ginger and oatmeal, and Annika adding her own peanut butter and sugar cookies to the mix.

I recently interviewed Ellie and her mother Donna at their home in Sharbot Lake and got a close up look at what makes this young entrepreneur tick. Coming from a family of self-motivated business people, (Donna is an artist and sign maker and father Dennis a mason), it is no wonder that Ellie is herself an enterprising young entrepreneur.

Ellie let me in on a couple of trade secrets, like the fact that some of her recipes come from Evelyn Raab's cookbook, “The Clueless Baker”. She uses only butter, never lard, and the cookies that I was lucky enough to sample are light and chewy but with a definite crispness. It comes as no surprise that one is never enough. They are affordably priced at $1 each, $5 for a half dozen and $10 for a dozen.

Ellie’s longest work days are the day before the market. She mixes up fresh batches of cookie batter throughout the week and always bakes the cookies the day before the market, ensuring their freshness. She bakes over 100 cookies on Friday and often sells out.

While cookies are the girls’ main focus, they also sell ice-cold glasses of real, homemade lemonade as well. Asked what her motivations were for starting up a business, Ellie answered that making her own money to spend as she likes is one of the reasons, but added that she was also looking for experience in running a business, understanding that it will make her more knowledgeable and employable in the future.

This summer she set a personal goal for the season - to sell enough cookies to afford a Macbook since she is also interested in graphic design.

Of course the business could not exist without the help of Donna, who does the driving to local stores to purchase the ingredients. An understandably proud mom, Donna said the business venture has been a project they worked on together and she admitted that though the road was bumpy at the start, things are now running smoothly and efficiently. “I'm very proud of the initiative Ellie has shown and her hard work.”

Ellie herself says that she has learned a lot since she first began three summers ago. “Baking is more difficult that I thought it would be and I am a much better baker now then I was back then. I am also a lot better at handling money and understanding the costs of doing business."

She admitted that balancing school and the market in May and June can also be tough. That being said, Ellie said that she expects to be continuing at the market for another year or two.

For those not in the know, Ellie and Annika's cookies are worth every penny and though the two are not able to attend every single market day, as the saying goes...Get ’em while you can.

Suzanne Clarke has been raising goats for about half a decade, which may not seem like a long time. And yet, from the first pair of Nubian does she acquired in 2009, she has carved out a niche market in the Frontenac region for her breeding stock. With multiple births common for the Nubian breed, a herd can grow quickly, and she currently keeps a couple dozen goats at her farm, called Heron's Pass, near Godfrey.

For a small hobby farm, Clarke's herd is sizable, but small compared with commercial goat operations, which can number into the hundreds. As such, her customer base is comprised mostly of small farms and homesteads, particularly younger people looking for a couple of does to provide a trusted dairy option for themselves.

The goats are classified by the Canadian Goat Society, which means they have been evaluated for characteristics that are associated with good milk production and general good health in comparison with breed standards. They are also raised under organic guidelines, which include a diet of certified organic grains and minerals on top of the nutrition they gain from browsing.

She notes that her interest in high-quality breeding stems from the initial motivation for high-quality milk. “I always have the milk, whatever I'm investing,” she says, stressing that the hobby comes before the commercial enterprise.

Clarke is also an accomplished hobby cheesemaker, and with a cheese making facility on the farm, cheese sales would seem like a natural extension to the breeding stock sales. But this is trickier than it seems at first glance.

Many small farms of Clarke's scope seek creative ways to market their goods outside of traditional supply chains. This can work well for, say, fruit and vegetables, where a farm stand by the roadside can be set up with minimal investment and little or no red tape. Even meats can be sold on farm as long as they have been slaughtered in a government-inspected facility (though this can also cause major logistical headaches – just ask a small-scale chicken farmer in the county), but dairy involves a series of major commitments.

While goat milk is not a supply-managed commodity (and no quota is needed to sell it legally) a prospective venture has to gain a license to sell milk; then invest in a bulk tank and have its facility inspected; and, finally, find a buyer and a licensed shipper. This generally only makes sense for large herds, and means milking year-round to meet continuous market demand.

Clarke points out that a commercial goat dairy takes a certain kind of person. “You need to be really productive, and knowledgeable and manage animals really well.”

Having been raised on a farm where raw milk was a mainstay, she stresses the importance of a healthy, tested goat herd, and awareness of potential diseases associated with raw milk. And while she does not sell the milk and its products, she is a local resource for anyone wanting to enter the steep learning curve of keeping dairy goats of their own.

(Many readers of the Frontenac News will know that for 13 years Wilma Kenny has been covering South Frontenac Council just about each week for us at the Frontenac News. Each week she attends the Tuesday night meetings and then crosses the street to her house and writes them up, often working until after midnight. Wilma has a lifelong history in Sydenham and Loughborough Township and we sat down to talk about the village and some of her experiences)

Wilma Kenny grew up in Sydenham, on a 50-acre farm just outside the village.

“I guess you would call it a subsistence farm. We grew all our own food, anyway. Dad was a beekeeper and he always worked out because the farm couldn't support us. He worked in the mines and then in the mill, until it burned down and after that he did shift work,” she said when interviewed earlier this year in the home that she shares with her husband Cam.

The home, which is attached to the former Mill property, was owned by the Anglin family until the 1970s.

The mill had been used as a grist mill, a sawmill and a veneer mill. The veneer was used to make cheese boxes for Sydenham and surrounding communities which all had cheese factories at one time, serving the small dairy farms that dotted the landscape.

Wilma's grandfather was a cheese maker. She tells one family story about a day when her mother fell into a tank of milk. “Grandfather pulled her out, boots and all, and marched her home to grandmother to dry her off. Then he went right back and turned the milk into cheese. He wasn't going to throw away all that milk.”

She remembers the sight of the mill burning, which she saw from outside the farmhouse where she lived. Someone from down the lake told her later that it completely lit up the sky.

“The wind must have been blowing the other way because this house is right next door to it,” she said.

In the 1950s she attended Sydenham Public School (later renamed Loughborough Public School) and then Sydenham High School. She recalls, in retrospect, that the 1950s and 60s were not kind to the village of Sydenham.

“I think with the changes to the economy, the proximity to Kingston, the end of the mills and cheese industries, Sydenham was hurting in those years. Everyone who had any money was living outside of town and the town suffered.”

In the mid-1960s, Wilma left for Queen's University, and eventually met her future husband, Cam. They made their way to Toronto and Vancouver and back to Kingston and both became trained social workers.

Cam took a job in Inuvik as a manager of social services, and, now a family of four, the Kennys lived up north for four years. When they came back to Sydenham, the old mill house was up for sale and they bought it.

“It had been neglected but it was not in bad shape,” she recalls.

As they restored it, Cam and Wilma took great care to maintain the character of the building and that is evident in the feel of the house to this day. They found it had certain unique properties. There were taps that were no longer attached to anything, which they determined had been attached to a holding tank on the roof. Rather than a cistern, the tank was fed by water that came from the intake to the dam that powered the mill, and then was gravity-fed through the house.

There was also electrical equipment in the basement of the house, because the water also powered a turbine to produce power, which Frank Anglin sold to village residents.

“They used to run it in the evenings and Monday morning to power washing machines, but I think they did not run it during the day. I'm not sure why they did it that way, but that's what I've been told,” said Wilma.

One of the reasons they came back to Sydenham was because a job was available that suited Wilma's skill set and interests. In the late 1970s, St. Lawrence College was hiring someone to do community development in Sydenham.

Wilma took on the job, which included, in part, helping and working at The Triangle, a community newspaper that was already up and running, and served Storrington, Loughborough and Portland Townships. She also worked with groups in Perth Road and in other parts of the township to organize and establish services.

By the time the funding for the job dried up she had taken an interest in seniors' housing.

“I felt very strongly that seniors needed housing in Sydenham. So we did a survey through the township to gauge interest and need. We showed enormous need and we got the funding. Using the township as a flow through, we set up a not-for profit corporation and got one building built, and then a second.

“The first building was called Meadowbrook, and had 25 units. We had property for the second one but could not find the funding. At that time I was back at the School of Urban Planning at Queen's and Chaviva Hosek, who was the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing for Ontario, came to speak at the school. I knew the professors and got myself invited to the reception afterwards. I brought our administrator with me, and we talked to her and presented her a letter. Twenty-four hours later we had the funding for Maple Ridge, which has 30 units.”

There are a certain number of low market rent units and a certain number of subsidized units in the two buildings, which have been a great success over the years.

“There are two things about them that are important for the community. One is they are located within the village so people can walk to anything, and the second is that a lot of the people who moved into them came from large houses in the village, which they did not need anymore. Young families moved in to the houses and instead of making the village older, it made the village younger.”

In June 2011, I shared the stage at Relay For Life with an amazing leader; a lady who had the determination to accomplish anything that came into her mind. It was on that stage that I first thanked her for bringing Relay For Life to our area and for showing our community, participants and volunteers alike, how it’s done. I said at that event, that without Claire Macfarlane, there would be no Relay For Life at the Parham fairgrounds. She is now, and will forever be, the First Lady Of Relay For Life North & Central Frontenac.

Claire was not new to volunteering as I was back then. She played numerous roles with the Canadian Cancer Society dating back to 1994. She was a residential campaign canvasser, community services chair, transportation coordinator, volunteer coordinator, volunteer driver as well as the Chair of Relay for Life from inception in 2007. And these positions overlapped each other. She had a way of knowing how to get things done.

In 2009, a friend said, “I could use your help on the Relay committee” and of course I signed up. My first impression was that Claire must be a self-employed business woman because she led her group in a very organized “time is valuable” way. Everyone was very task oriented and the meeting ran like a well-oiled machine. I was impressed that we were going to pull off this fantastic event in Parham with a budget of exactly $0.

But what an event it was! I had participated on a team the year before but being on the committee had a new set of demands. There were moments I thought I wouldn’t be able to make it, and I was the event MC!!! I had to dig really deep to find the energy to finish. Finally, Claire made the announcement that our efforts had raised over $65,000. She was beaming. No matter what the total, her face said it all. It was the face of someone who had accomplished something to be proud of and she shared that accomplishment with each of us. I felt it then, and I always feel it when I am at Relay For Life. The feeling that a small community of 6500 plus, can come together, walk together, share their stories, share their fears and at the end of the day, feel empowered by giving. This was what Claire wanted. She wanted us all to come together to support each other and empower each other. I have been with the event ever since.

When Claire asked if I would be co-chair with her, I asked what I had to do and she said my most important task was to “pay attention”. I tried my best. As we went through planning the 2011 event I made it my mission to learn everything I needed to in order to continue this event in our area. She taught me the importance of delegation and team work as well as attention to detail. She reinforced my life motto, as in “It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission”. She showed me how to rally people and get them excited about helping. But mostly, she encouraged me when things got stressful. She told me that things will always work out the way they are supposed to. And she was right of course.

In early 2013 I got the news that my friend and fellow cancer fighter had the disease that we had fought so hard against. It didn’t seem possible to me. And even if she did, there was no doubt in my mind that she would beat it. That year, our leadership team attacked our tasks with new found energy and vigor. We invited Claire to be our survivor speaker for 2013 and we also started “Claire’s Caped Cancer Crusaders- A community team” that welcomes any and all members to relay. In her survivor address, Claire spoke of the “Why Me” thoughts that she had through her battle with cancer; and that she never thought that she would attend Relay as a Survivor.

In 2013, Relay For Life North & Central grossed the highest amount of fundraised money -$72,000.

Well Claire, because of you, many people have attended Relay as survivors for a lot longer than they could have without you. Our little Relay For Life community has raised a little better than $406,000 since 2007, when there was a little lady with a plan and a deep-seated love to help others. Claire, I will miss your emails of encouragement especially on the morning of June 20, when I start my last Relay For Life as Chair. My team and I will try our best to do you proud. We will miss your smiling face this year and in the years to come. Thank you for bringing Relay For Life to us and for your dedication to finding a cure. Every ride to treatment in this area, every supportive call that is made and every dollar raised from our community through this event is because of you. You will never be forgotten, my friend.

(Editor’s note: Claire Macfarlane-England sadly passed away at Perth Hospital on May 20, 2015, with her family by her side. The North & Central Frontenac Relay for Life will take place on Saturday June 20 from noon to midnight at the Parham fairgrounds)

Don Lee says that he is not as sharp as he used to be, his memory is not as good, he can't hear that well, can't see out of one eye, and he has been slowed down by a stroke several years ago. At 95 he still remembers a lot of stories from the past, “but I can't really tell you what happened yesterday,” he says.

Since we were interested in the past, that wasn't much of a problem. We also found out after the interview, which took place in midwinter, that Don still operates a chainsaw, and can even use up two full tanks of gas before putting down the saw.

Don was born in 1920, in the house where he still lives, on the Ball Road, on a farm that fronts St. Andrews Lake.

His father bought the next property over in 1879 and lived in a house there, but this property had the advantage of road access, and after purchasing it and extending the farm to 200 acres, he built a house in 1912. Don was the youngest child in the family, and he attended school at Kennedy school near the family home until he graduated grade 8 at the age of 12. In the midst of the depression there was never a thought of him going on to high school, which would have involved boarding in Sydenham throughout the week.

“There was too much to do on the farm and besides money was not easy then,” he recalls.

The land in the vicinity of his farm is still covered in open fields, even though there are few operating farms left.

“Every farm had cattle when I was young. You could look out the window and see cattle across the lake, the place was clean, there was no brush at all. If land could be worked at all, it was cleared and used. Our whole ambition was to get grass for cattle.

Although all the land in the region had been covered in White Pine, which had been cleared for the most part 50 or so years before Don Lee was born, he does remember there were some of the majestic trees left when he was a boy.

Mostly it was hard work on the farm in the 20s and 30s. “We had cattle, and sheep and we always had a few pigs,” but they rarely if ever ate beef or lamb.

“My dad would slaughter a sow in the fall, and we would preserve the meat in brine. We ate salt pork all winter, which I was not really partial to, I can remember that.” They ate potatoes as well, which they grew in a large garden that was overseen by his mother.

“We would put by 25 to 40 bags of potatoes each year, Green Mountains or cobblers, not the small bags but the 100 pound bags, and we grew turnips and carrots and everything else.”

They also grew corn, and in the fall they removed the kernels from the heads onto old sheets or old bags and “mother would set them out near the stove for a day or two until they were good and dry and then we would hang them in bags off the rafters for the winter. We did the same with apples.”

The day always began with milking and delivering the milk to the cheese factory a few miles away on White Lake Road in a horse drawn wagon.

“The milk had to be there by 8, we had to get an early start. But we never got much money for it, just pennies really. My dad used to say that if, when the fall came and he had the money he needed for taxes, and we had four bags of flour for bread and a bag of sugar, he was happy because he knew we would be able to get through the winter all right.”

One thing that Don remembers fondly, beyond all the hard work and hardship, was the way people looked after each other back then.

“People are pretty good now, I can tell you, but back then we were together all the time. If someone was injured, the neighbours showed up with food, we went out to cut wood, we did whatever had to be done and never thought anything of it at all.”

An example of the co-operative economy was the way wood splitting was done.

“There was always someone who had some sort of machine to saw up wood. Everyone would bring in wood all fall and winter and pile it up in lengths. In the spring the guy with the machine would come by and say he could make it for a week at some time. Everyone would get together at one farm and work for 6 or 8 hours. They would haul the logs up on a platform where the saw was set up, and they would throw the pieces off it afterwards. Some of the women would gather in the house and put a meal on at noon for everyone. Then we would move to the next farm, and the next, until everyone had their wood cut up, ready for splitting.”

In 1934, two things happened to Don Lee. He got his first job, and his first glimpse of a curly, dark haired girl.

The job he got was plowing a field for a neighbour, although he had to convince his father that working for someone was a good idea.

“When my father was young, his family went through hard times, and he was sent to work on a farm when he was 8. They fed him, but not too well. He told me he used to get ahold of a clean piece of straw and keep it in this pocket. When he milked the cows in the morning he would pull out the straw and sip some milk from the pail when the farmer wasn't looking. So he wasn't keen on me working, but when I told him I was going to be paid 50 cents a day, he said that was all right.”

As far as that curly haired girl is concerned, families used to ask Don's father if they could come on to the farm to have picnics on St. Andrews Lake, and he always said yes. One day, as he was fishing with another girl from a nearby farm, he saw a family from Bellrock out on the lake having a picnic.

“There was a girl there, she was only 12, but she was a pretty girl, with dark hair just as curly as you can believe.” It took another two years for Don Lee to get to know Gladys Reynolds, but it turned out that she remembered that summer picnic.

“I saw you out there,” she told me, “you had another girl with you. What happened to her?”

(to be continued)  

In the copy of the "County of a Thousand Lakes" at the Sharbot Lake branch of the Kingston Frontenac Public Library, there is a hand-written note underneath the dedication at the front of the book.

The dedication says “This account of the history of Frontenac County is dedicated to the people of the county, to those of past generations who developed a new and empty land ...” and the note says “It wasn't empty – it was invaded by another people searching for wealth, your heritage is theft".

The book, which was put together in the late 1970s as a massive community project the likes of which has not been seen in Frontenac County before or since, is certainly scant in its treatment of the Algonquin heritage of Frontenac County.

There is a section at the beginning by Ron Vastokas of Trent University that talks about the Algonkians, but it includes a proviso that says, “Since very little archaeology has been done in Frontenac County, ... , a brief outline of the larger area will provide the background for a later consideration of a few specific sites within the county.” He then goes on to talk about the Algonkian speakers who inhabited the Canadian Shield, only considering the pictographs at Mazinaw Rock “as one of the most spectacular” examples of paintings that are attributed to Algonkian shamans.

The conclusion that Vastokas draws at the end of his piece is that “at the time of the arrival of European settlers, therefore, the Algonkian hunters and gatherers lived in the harsh environment of the Shield.”

Neither the section of the book that is dedicated to settlement nor the section dedicated to Bedford Township make any reference to Algonquins living in the region or reserve lands being set aside for the use of Algonquin families in the vicinity of Crow and Bobs Lake in 1844.

The section of the book that concerns Oso district starts with a description of the photo that hangs in the Oso Hall to this day. “Tradition supports the words on the back of the picture which say 'Mr and Mrs Francis Sharbot came up from the Fall River and pitched their tepee on the shores in the year 1830 and gave the lake its name.' They were full blooded Indians of the Mohawk tribe and were considered the best family of Indians in the County of Frontenac, honest and reliable,” says the County of 1000 Lakes in the only direct reference to an Aboriginal family in its 572 pages.

In retrospect, it is not a total surprise that a book written at that time would ignore the fact that there were people living in Frontenac County before it was formally 'settled'.

Since the County of 1000 Lakes was published, the profile, certainly of the Algonquin people who have roots in the Rideau and Mississippi Valleys, which take up the northern two-thirds of the county, has risen. Events such as the wild rice dispute in the early 1980s, the establishment of community organisations and later First Nations structures such as the Ardoch and later the Sharbot Lake Algonquins, the Algonquin Land Claim process, as well as court rulings about inherent rights and the duty to consult, have changed the politics of Frontenac County.

Much of Frontenac County, is now recognised as being part of the Algonquin Land claim, which has been slowly progressing since 1994.

The personal history of Doreen Davis, who has been chief of the Shabot Obaadjiwan (formerly Sharbot Lake Algonquins) ever since 1999 and the regional Algonquin Nation Representative at the land claim table, has taken many twists and turns just as her community has. Chief Doreen (no one seems to call her Chief Davis) is a born and raised Frontenac County resident who attended Sydenham High School, lived on Desert Lake Road and raised a family. Hers is also the story of an Algonquin who was born on the shores of Sharbot Lake, a direct descendant of Francis and Mary Sharbot who talks about hunting and fishing all her life just as her ancestors have for centuries and centuries.

“We have archaeological records from Bobs and Sharbot Lakes of a presence going back to 3000 to 1000 BC and 900 to 1500 AD, over 30 sites at Bob's Lake alone, that establish our presence. The only time we scattered was during the Iroquois wars prior to 1701".

While there is little written history of Algonquin presence in the region prior to the settlement era of the mid 19th century, what little there is, including a map of the 3,700 acre Bedford tract, bears out her version of events.

She has records from the Benjamin Tett trading post at Battersea in the 1840s and 1850s with entries about trades for furs with Algonquin trappers from Frontenac County.

“Benjamin Tett had a trading post for the Algonquins. John Antoine, Joe Mitchell, all members of this community took in stuff and traded there. It shows that we were in Battersea; it shows you that we were there. I even have, in storage, some of the slips from the store."

There is reference in records dated as early as 1817 to Peter Shawanapinessi, also known as Peter Stephens, who was identified as a chief who used land in the South Sherbrooke, Oso and Bedford area as winter hunting grounds, and petitioned for and was granted the Bedford tract. Other families included the Michels, Clemos (Clement) Antwins (Antoine), Buckshots and Whiteducks from Cross or Crotch Lake.

A document from Joan Holmes, a genealogist who works with the Algonquins of Ontario – the umbrella group negotiating the Algonquin Land Claim, comes to the following conclusion: “In summary, correspondence, church and census records covering the period from 1842 to 1863 indicate that the ancestors of the Ardoch Algonquins were leading a semi-nomadic life in the townships of Bedford, Oso, South Sherbrooke and Palmerston ... they had license of occupation to a tract of land in Bedford Township where they attempted rudimentary agriculture. However their occupation of that land was made untenable by lumber cutting. Their main source of support was gained from the traditional pursuits of hunting, trapping, fishing and gathering, which they carried out in remote areas north of the Rideau River system.”

According to Doreen Davis, while the records are stronger for the Bedford Algonquins, “there were other families throughout, in Oso, in Ardoch, in Lanark, in Renfrew, all over. We knew about it, but it was never written down. Even though Francis and Mary Sharbot were born at Oka, that is true, she was a Nicik, and there are records of the Niciks in Frontenac going back to the 1700s,” she said.

Doreen Davis lives with her husband on a property that is close to where she was born, perched between Sharbot Lake and the Fall River. She presides over a large extended family of children and grandchildren. She spends a lot of her time in the Shabot Obaadjiwan office at the Snell Complex on Highway 7, when she is not in Pembroke at the Algonquin Nation Office or in meetings throughout the Ottawa Valley.

Her grandmother Margaret, who was Mary and Francis Sharbot's grand-daughter, lived on the farm where Doreen lived when she was a child.

“I grew up knowing that I was Algonquin. My grandmother said to say I was a Blackfoot or to say nothing. The reason was that we did not want to be known as Mohawks, because that was dangerous, and no one knew about the Algoquins, so it was best to keep quiet. We moved to Joyceville and then Harrowsmith, where I went to school. I used to come back each weekend, to spend the weekend back here, where we hunted and fished. We farmed and hunted and fished, just like everyone else in those days.”

If she has a regret about those years it was that she did not pay as much attention as she would have liked to all the knowledge about the use of herbs that her grandmother showed.

“I did what she told, gathered herbs and bottled things and all that but I never paid enough attention.”

The Algonquin connections that have characterized her life were all extended family connections.

“We have always been connected, through marriage and everything else, and when we gathered as family those were Algonquin gatherings. We may not have talked about it, and it was never something that made life easier for us, but that was the way it was,” she said. “The more people knew you were native, and this was true for the Badour's and all of us, the more shit-kicking you took. It wasn't smart to make a big deal about it; it still isn't today. That was the way it was.”

In the 1980s when Algonquin politics started to ramp up she was involved, but not in a leadership role.

That all changed in 1994.

“I had a nervous breakdown, two breakdowns actually in 1992 and 1993, from a lot of things. In 1994 I went to one of the first land claim meetings, and I was very nervous to be there because I had not been out of my house for a very long time. There was a mask, it was of a face made out of leather and it was pulled back like the wind. It was made by a woman I never met before and never saw again, and it was raffled off. I couldn't take my eyes off the mask and I bought one ticket for 25 cents and I won it. She then sat with me and asked me if I had any idea what this mask represents and I said no. She said it's pulling you from your past and you can still see the future. I said okay, not really knowing what that meant either at the time, and she said, now you have a responsibility. She said you have to lead your people. I said I can't get up in the morning by myself; there is no way I can lead people. She said, 'Well you will, you will dear'”.

That fall she was elected to the Sharbot Lake committee for the land claim.

“It totally changed my life. I don't know how and I don't know why but I don't even question it anymore,” she said.

In 1999 she went on to become Chief of the Shabot Obaadjiwan and has remained in that position ever since. She has been twice selected as Algonquin Nation Representative to the land claim.

As the land claim progresses, and Algonquins gain back rights that have been long lost, there are two important issues about those rights that she talks about.

“Rights come with responsibilities. That's the first thing, and there are no individual rights, they are collective rights. To say I have rights to take that deer or take that fish, I don't. I have the right to sustain my life, but I only have Aboriginal rights as part of a community, not for myself. This is what we have to tell ourselves and communicate to everyone else, and this is what the land claim settlement is all about.”

There are a lot of politics connected to the land claim, including opposition from both Algonquins and other groups with an interest in the land. Internal to the claim itself, an appeal has removed a number of Shabot Obaadjiwan members from the land claim approval voting list, but Chief Doreen said that those people have never stopped being members of the Shabot Obaadjiwan.

“That appeal changed nothing in our community, and it does not mean they will not be on the beneficiary list, that has not been determined yet. You can't change who someone is, their identity, because a piece of paper from 200 years ago is unclear. We know who we are, we always have,” she said.

The Shabot Obaadjiwan are moving their office soon to a property they own on Hwy. 7 west of Arden, and are building a community centre on some property on White Lake near the MNR fish hatchery.

Chief Doreen continues to work on the Algonquin Land Claim.

Leslie Myles, managing director of the Limestone Learning Foundation, has for the last four years been connecting local students with the culture and traditions of Nepal, most recently with the help of Pema, a Nepalese citizen and practicing Tibetan Lama.

When I spoke to her by phone on April 26, she said that both she and Pema Lama were “devastated and shocked” after hearing news of the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that hit the Kathmandu valley in Nepal on April 25, killing and injuring thousands and leaving many more homeless and in desperate need of food, water and shelter.

Myles said that Pema Lama was “in shock” after hearing the news, but he has since learned that a number of his family members residing in his home village located in Sanku, Nepal are safe, though he has yet to hear from his father and grandfather and other family members who live in the village of Mugu located near the Tibetan border.

Pema Lama, who has been in Canada as part of the Limestone Learning Foundation and the Limestone District School Board's “Global Connections Project", has visited Harrowsmith and Loughborough Public schools as well as other schools in Kingston since he arrived in Canada in 2013. Since his arrival he and Myles founded the Kingston Nepal Foundation and are currently in the process of finalizing its charitable status. One of the goals of the foundation is to build a medical clinic in the Himalayas in Pema Lama's home village of Sanku, in order to provide health care, education and community outreach to local residents there.

To date Myles and Pema Lama, along with the foundation's core group of committee members, have raised funds for the build through a number of fundraisers, most of them held in Kingston, where Pema Lama has shared his practices and teachings in yoga and meditation with supporters. Myles said that as a result of the recent earthquake, the foundation's focus has changed for the time being.

With the clinic project currently on hold, the foundation is now striving to provide aid to the residents of Sanku where half of the homes have been demolished and the other half are badly in need of repair. “Right now we want to send immediate aid to the local community in Sanku who are in desperate need of it right now," Myles said. “At this time we feel that because Pema is here with us and since Sanku is his home, we should be focusing our energies there right now”.

However, Myles also stressed that immediate help is needed all over the Kathmandu valley and the surrounding areas. Donations can be made at any of the major international aid agencies.

Prior to the earthquake Pema was planning to return home to get started on the clinic building project. He now believes that he will have to delay his return until things in Nepal become a bit more stable. Myles said that after Pema returns to his home country, he plans to return again to Canada to continue the work he has been doing through the Global Connections Project.

For more information about the Kingston Nepal Foundation visit them on facebook.