“I was out for a pensive afternoon on my own. Fishing would be little more than a pretext for laying claim to a moment of solitude. I looked around the tranquil inlet where I found myself. The clouds were high, and the sky was still bright. A few other watercraft were visible far across the..
The setting of Grand-père Évariste’s waterside farmhouse calls to mind this striking evocation of the region from the Georgian Bay Biosphere Reserve website – https://georgianbaybiosphere.com/ – “The Bay is an amazing resource we must share; seasonal cottager, transient tourist and year rounders… and we must all respect the Bay to ensure the next ‘seven generations’..
Here is Providence Point as it looked by the time Rob had grown old enough to begin imagining it might one day be his own. But in fact its surroundings and appearance changed little from the earliest days. “A local couple had first started to build what later became the Point. It would have been..
“Granny’s craft was a nimble dingy twelve feet long. Its enamelled canvas skin was permanently watertight. There was no need to moor it at the dock until it “took up” in the spring. In May, Granny could go straight out for a row without waiting. This was her chance to spread her wings after a..
No peaceful activity rivals fishing for twenty minutes on an isolated bay in a boat of one’s own. Unless of course life gets too hectic, in which case wisdom prescribes at least an hour! And so as soon as Robbie took possession of his first rowboat, he would set out to spend … “… most..
It was agreed by all that Granny had weathered some kind of adventure on the boathouse dock one afternoon long before Robbie’s birth. A rattlesnake had reportedly been involved, but the details of the story were hazy: “In my parents’ version, my grandmother had frantically shooed it away with an oar from her rowboat. In..
Margaret Wheatley (Leadership and the New Science) warned us in the 1990s: “Probably the most visible example of unintended consequences is what happens every time humans try to change the natural ecology of a place.” Her view picks up on Adam Smith’s eighteenth-century concept of an “invisible hand” that may bring about results that bear..
The word gigil (sounds like ghee-gill) is a term from the Philippines’ Tagalog language, recently added to the Oxford English Dictionary. It refers to an intense feeling that makes us clench our hands, grit our teeth, or reach out to touch something that is irresistibly adorable. Gigil seems to be the perfect word to describe Robbie’s..
On p. 87 of Providence Point, Bella tells Robbie about her uncle … “Soon, the Major’s creditors will be able to do as they please… They’ve been after the meadow for ages and he isn’t rich any more.” “But could he live anywhere else?” “Of course not. Still, can you guess what he says?” I..
After decades abroad, I settled near southern Ontario’s Lake Erie to create my own tribute to haunts I had enjoyed in England, Provence, Morocco, and Persia. My goal was to bring together the lushness of a cottage garden, the harmony of a symmetrical parterre, and the mystery of a reflecting pool, all nestled within the..
Young Robbie recalls that on his fifth birthday … “I received a lithesome steel fishing rod of my own. In my hands, it felt robust yet unexpectedly precise. I hastened to test it on the sunfish under the dock. Though nothing I caught that day found its way to the table, I received a different..
“Reading in bed jumpstarts dreams.” – Terri Guillemets was right to include this motto on her ‘Quote Garden’ website. And in that spirit, Providence Point features chapters that are often just several pages long. After an exhausting day, one peek into their magical world is enough to deliver peace of mind ahead of a great..