 to attend public meetings to voice his concerns and to support whomever was representing Stanhope cottagers and the environment in general.
When he wasn’t helping to build his father’s cottage, his own A-frame cottage, two extensions, a boathouse, a garage, a boat, and a privy, he was fishing or helping one of our relatives work on their nearby cottages. We all had cottages in close proximity of Oakview Lodge, in the bay.
In the early days, it was Oakview Lodge, Pinches, Sam Armstrong, Wretham (my aunt/uncle/three cousins), us (Bill, Audrey, Mike and Janie Barber), Jennings/Coopers, Ted Barber (my uncle, aunt, two cousins), Carscallens (my aunt, uncle, one cousin), Barfoots. Further up on the same side were the McLaughlins and then the Cains (my maternal grandparents). The Cain cottage sat on bedrock which was strewn with wild blueberry bushes which all the kids had fun picking (but mostly eating) during blueberry season.
Gladys Cain at Cain Cottage, undated.
The Cain family, left to right: Gladys, Audrey, Molson, Patricia, Evelyn, circa 1939.
Almost directly across from our cottage was Dick Barber’s cottage (my paternal grandparents).
Bill’s father, Dick Barber (my grandfather), became aware of the Haliburton area in the early 1930s from friends who either fished or hunted there. One of those acquaintances was Sam Armstrong who lived in Stouffville during the year and on Little Hawk in the summer.
Richard (Dick) Barber’s company vehicle.
Dick Barber was a wholesale tobacconist and confectioner, which makes one wonder if he met Sam Armstrong on his sales travels to Stouffville.
Bill Barber even remembers his first trip to the “North Country” when he was just 10 years old in 1929. The family had headed up Highway 11 to the Dorset Lookout Tower in their new 1929 Essex car, ‘which propelled them at a breck-neck speed of 35 mph’. Bill remembers the most popular stores at the time in Dorset included Robinson’s General Store and Clayton’s store. He also remembers the road south was ‘cluttered with rocks of all shapes and sizes’ and of course you guessed it, they hit one of those rocks in the centre of the road.
Fishing trip with typical cars of the day, undated.
In the 1930s there was also an enormous amount of driftwood along the shore of Little Hake Lake and out about 50’, which made launching a boat difficult. Beside what is now Oakview Lodge was Warren Pinch’s cottage, with a sign hanging outside, reading “Fisherman’s Paradise”, built in 1931. Next was Sam Armstrong’s cabin, then a cabin belonging to the Boyds (later sold to Fullerton, then to Bill’s brother-in-law, Cec Wretham). Continuing to the East was Willie McLaughlin’s cottage. Farther up the lake, and about opposite The Narrows was John McLaughlin’s place, built in the 1930s. Campbell Moore and his wife Audrey and their children Jim and Rosemary were also on Little Hawk and a handful of other cottagers, at the time.
Dick Barber’s Cottage in the 1960s.
To the best of Bill Barber’s recollection, his father, Dick Barber purchased his property, beside what is now Little Hawk Resort, in 1935 from the government for $500 with the stipulation that a building must be erected within 18 months of purchase. The next year, Dick had a log cottage built by locals recommended by Sam Armstrong. They procured the logs locally and did the exterior construction of the cottage.
Dick and sons, Bill and Ted, chinked between the logs with cedar strips and plaster. Once the cottage was finished in 1936, a wood-burning cook stove and a wood burning heating stove were added. Electricity was installed a year or two later which meant no more coal oil lanterns or carrying water.
Bill Barber and Audrey Cain, 1938.
A 14’ punt was built by Dick Barber with 1.5 hp Johnson outboard motor and the fishing began! Besides fishing in the Hawk lakes, friends and family tried their luck in Cat Lake, Paint Lake and Kennisis Lake. Punts were also built and left at Cat and Kennisis, for portaging.
About the Big Hawk Dam, my father writes: “This dam had a wooden chute or flume that caught the overflow from the dam, and was constructed out of squared timbers, and carried the water down a long decline to the Big Hawk River. Its purpose was to float the logs down the incline and into the Hawk River and eventually into Halls Lake. The logs were taken from the surrounding forest in the winter, pulled by horses one at a time, to the lake and left on the ice until spring. In 1956, I saw logs being towed by horses across Hawk Lake in the winter on the ice, and the horses were so frightened, they leaned together to calm their nerves, and their backs actually touched one another. When the ice melted, the logs were gathered into booms. The booms consisted of making a long enclosure by joining logs end to end and corralling them to be towed to the dam. I saw the remains of the paddle wheel boat that towed the booms across the lakes. It was beached in front of the Government House, the front half well out of water. On each side of the boat was a large paddle wheel. They were connected to each other, then to a one cylinder gasoline engine. The paddle wheel boat was used to tow the log booms to their destination.” The building called the Government House was about 200-300’ from the old dam.
In the summer of 1937, Bill met his future wife, Audrey, swimming at Pinch’s Fishermen’s Paradise. The Cains had rented a cottage from Queenie and Walter Johnson. Her parents were Dr. and Mrs. Cain who, in 1939, bought land adjoining Willie McLaughlin and had a cottage and a one bedroom guest cabin erected. It had 300’ footage and was set high above the high water line.
Audrey Cain on Little Hawk 1937.
Again, Sam Armstrong was hired and oversaw workers (one was Harold Upton). Interestingly, there were no blueprints…just word of mouth. It was constructed of 8” pine siding 1.5” thick, varnished inside and the exterior was painted brown. There was a living room with a vaulted ceiling and floor to ceiling stone fireplace, a full kitchen, a bedroom, and a full length veranda across the front of the cottage with two day beds.
It wasn’t until 1963 that septic was installed and the outhouse became a thing of the past.
L to R Bill Barber, Doug Carscallen and Don Cole, undated.
In 1941, Bill caught small-mouthed bass off the rocks in front of Cain’s cottage, and lake trout in a bay off the East side of Big Hawk, and enjoyed countless fish fries with family members.
In those days, they used a two-man 6’ long crosscut saw to cut wood for the pot-bellied wood burning cook stove and the heating stove. It was around this time that Larry and Mary Reeves built their cottage, which was later bought by Kay and Bill Kimber.
In 1952, Dell and Vera Jennings built a cottage between Carscallen’s and Wretham’s.
In 1954, Bill’s sister and brother-in-law (Carscallens) purchased a cottage on Little Hawk Bay from a woman named Irwin. Around the same time, Bill built a small Vee bottom boat 12’ long, called a Banta. He purchased a 12 hp Viking outboard motor and the family spent many years enjoying that boat.
To the best of Bill Barber’s recollection it was 1959, when Ev Hewitt, owner of Little Hawk Resort, built a floating dock to be used by her patrons for parking their boats. It was about 100’ long and was kept afloat by 40-50 barrels. When they needed replacing, they were sunk in the lake. Bill wrote that it was some 30 years later, when divers appeared and pulled up to 200 barrels out of the lake.
Ivy Cottage, Blagdon Hill built by John Henry Billing and named after his birthplace, near Taunton England. Construction completed in 1885.
These excerpts come from the diaries and journals of Bill Barber, written in the 1930s until 1998.
My dad was interested in wildlife although not partial to most of it. Raccoons, hives full of bees, bears and chipmunks interfered with his building and with his prized garden. His most memorable encounter with an animal on his property was, however, with a moose. He was working on the outhouse and did not hear it approach. He felt someone, or something, looking at him so he glanced behind his shoulder and there it stood….just feet away, eyeing him. He said his eyes must have popped out of his head and that, luckily, there was a clear path down to the cottage so he sprinted to the cottage. Once safely inside, he watched it meander away, just checking things out. He said the size of the moose was unbelievable—especially when he was not expecting company! Encounters with other animals such as bears, pheasants, raccoons, and the odd wild turkey were not uncommon.
Since the sale of the cottage in 1999,