Labour Day Weekend at Cordova Lake

I have to apologize for lack of blogs in this last week. Too much on my plate and something has to give.  I am afraid I will probably have another week  of no week day blogs, like the last.   I have been getting my Toronto condo ready for sale (I am moving across the street, if you wonder why ready this blog  and/or this blog which explains all).   I have a move in date now of Nov 24th and I have to get the one I am in now sold. I have been quite the busy beaver painting and getting things in tip top shape. Showings start on Friday! Hopefully I will find more time in the coming weeks, as the demands of my job even out and I get my place sold.

View from the cottage road

Also, I was kindly invited to spend a weekend with some new friends at a cottage in the Kawartha Lakes area of Ontario. It is about 2.5 hours north east of Toronto, maybe half way to Ottawa. The weather was pretty cold and rainy, but we did have a bit of sun and was able to don coats and go for a long walk to the end of the lake which featured a dam and a bit of a waterfall.

The main cottage is hidden a distance from the water, but you can see the dock and the tiny Cove Cottage on the left.

We also did a boat tour of the lake, which is about 3 km long and maybe 1 km wide and dotted with smaller islands.  The photo above shows the dock area of the main cottage and the little cottage at lake's edge where I got to sleep in a bedroom which was  only feet from the water!  If it weren't for the cold nights I could have heard the water lapping onto the shore from an open window, which would have been heavenly.

This is typical Ontario cottage country Canadian shield landscape at it's best - pine, oak and birch trees and fairly rocky and  hilly terrain. Lake Cordova is named for the Cordova Mines which is now an official abandoned site, according to the Ontario Abandoned Places website:

Cordova Mines is a semi-ghost town in Halelock-Belmont-Methuen Township of Peterborough County just at the border with Hastings County, NE of Havelock. It was one of Ontario's goldrush boom towns circa 1892.

According to the Ghost Town Pix web site:

The mines at Cordova remained idle from 1917 to 1938, when another company, COMINCO (Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company of Canada), decided to give it one last run. COMINCO, now Teck Cominco Ltd., operated from 1938 to 1940, producing about 150 tons a day, which yielded a total value of $474,548. Following the company's departure, the mines were closed forever and all the mining buildings were dismantled. The dam and raceway were later used by the Deer Lake Fish Hatchery for many years, until it too shut down.

In our walk to the other end of the lake we went to he top of the dam mentioned in the note above, if I had known that the buildings beyond and the area was actually the remnants of a ghost town, perhaps I would have asked to explore further!

Maybe I will get to go back another time and can go on a bit better exploration of the area - it would be kind of neat to wander the around knowing it's history.

The Cove Cottage on Cordova Lake

Aside from a 3 km walk down the private road which services all the cottages on this part of the lake, we also did a boat tour around the lake, but ended up soaked to the skin when a torrential downpour decided to let go.  The photo above is the tiny lake edge cottage which rocked with music on both nights.

The temperature has sure dropped from last week's high 30+ degrees Celsius.  We had a high of about 16ish on each of the days and last night it dropped to 9 degrees!  As a consequence there was a lovely mist coming off the lake this morning which I was able to capture on a few pictures.

Great friendship, food, drink and music!  The evenings were spent listening to/singing along with Pat and Brian who had a great thing going - Pat on guitar and Brian on harmonica and both contributing vocals.  I was even able to provide a bit of accompanying harmony. I think we covered all of the important songs of our era - Neil Young covers being every one's favourite.  Many thanks to Kathy and Pat for their wonderful hospitality.  And thanks to Brian for being so kind as to invite me along in this extended family gathering.

Today is the last day of the CNE (which I blogged about a few weeks ago). Normally there is an air show on the last 3 days and it is usually fabulous.  Go here to read about the one from last year.  They had to cancel it as the weather was windy and rainy - the tail end of the hurricane which hit our east coast this weekend.  I took this photo as I noticed that the wind was blowing hard enough to make the giant Canada flag to flap in the wind.