Articles: 2001

Submitted by George Hallday
Ontario Out of Doors. Toronto
Mar 2001. Vol. 33, Iss. 2; pg. 47 hunting Wolfe Island
Green-winged teal by the hundreds were circling, landing, splashing, and flying bat-like over a small pothole where our blind and decoys were set. They dropped like falling leaves scattered by a violent north wind. In one instant, they were silhouetted against a surreal, rose-coloured sky, and then, as they descended, rendered invisible by the deep shadows of early morning against the rushes. Everywhere you looked, teal raced by in veering squadrons, clusive ghosts of dawn's first light. In the background, mallards and pintails circled, occasionally pitching in. Flights of geese danced across the horizon, black marionettes strung from the heavens.
My jaw hung slack. In a quarter-century of waterfowling across Ontario, I had never witnessed such a bounty of birds. We sat and watched from the most comfortable and spacious blind I've ever had the pleasure of spilling coffee in. And, for a moment, the birds made me forget that we were there to hunt them.
Our guide, Ron Otto, owner of Brown's Bay Inn on Wolfe Island, reminded us otherwise. Soon those small feathered rockets gave OOD's Art Director Richie Tripp and me a humbling lesson in wing shooting. For a duck hunter who has never mastered the art of flock-shooting, it was something akin to a nightmare. But, oh, what a nightmare!
As the sun rose and shell hulls piled up, six ducks fell to our guns, including two nice mallards. And not because our shooting had improved. It was more like the law of averages had finally caught up to us. The fact that we didn't shoot a limit each was a minor miracle that gave us something to talk about at breakfast.
Our companions on this trip, Robert Cove, President of Kent-Gamebore Corporation, and his associate Paul Beedham fared better, bringing back limits, mostly green-heads with a pintail or two for added flair. They gunned a pond similar to ours where mallards dropped in steadily.
We were invited to Wolfe Island, first and largest of the St. Lawrence River's Thousand Islands, at the end of September for three days of the good life at Brown's Bay Inn and to field test Kent Cartridge shotshells on duck and pheasant. I'd always dreamed of shoots like this, but expected to find them in western Canada, not in eastern Ontario. Wolfe Island can stand with the best the west has to offer. That's a big statement, but consider that the Canadian Wildlife Service estimates more than 35,000 waterfowl stopped over or resided on the island last autumn. These included 16,000 scaup, 2,200 redheads, 400 ring-necked ducks, 8,000 assorted dabblers, and 8,500 Canada geese (many of them resident).
After the morning hunt, we enjoyed a hearty breakfast in the inn's dining room over-looking Brown's Bay and then donned blaze-orange upland vests and drove to the nearby Island Ridge Pheasantry, better known as Doc Mary's.
Fritz, Ron Otto's massive yellow Lab, led the way across 135 acres (55 ha) of fine natural cover. Every now and then a cock pheasant would rise explosively from under a dog's nose, offering fine shooting for the nearest gunner. Between Otto, Cove, Tripp, Beedham, and myself, few birds made another flight. Big John Mary, Doc's son, guided us through the fields and did an able job handling dogs and making the experience thoroughly enjoyable.
Bird hunting on the Island Ridge Pheasantry is part of the Brown's Bay Inn package. It can also be arranged year round for those who wish to visit the island without staying at the inn.
Brown's Bay Inn, however, is the sort of place a hunter and spouse can enjoy equally. Drinks, appetizers, and meals were excellent, and from the moment they welcomed us, the staff and hosts were pleasant, competent, and polite. Soft music - Nat King Cole and the like - set the mood, and the walls were adorned with tasteful reminders that this was first and foremost a place to please the hunter's aesthetics.
Our first full day there was a long and fine one. After a gourmet dinner, hunting tales were recounted in a sitting room furnished with comfortable chairs, decoys, and tasteful outdoors prints. A solid rosewood bar appointed with a polished brass footrail and a beautifully taxi-dermied quail diorama were typical of the decor, elegant without being overstated. Otto and his extended family haven't missed a thing. Even the pool cues in the game room had waterfowl and whitetail deer motifs.
Otto has created a world-class establishment for sportsmen. A hunter and angler who has travelled the world, he brought his own experiences and knowledge to bear on this project. Before purchasing the inn, he spent years hunting the island.
Wolfe Island, south of Kingston on the St. Lawrence River, is entirely privately owned. Aside from Brown's Bay Inn and the Island Ridge Pheasantry, there are few other hunting opportunities open to the public, unless you have landowner permission or are a member of a private club.
Layout-boat hunting was popular and traditional around the island, but a recent regulation change banned their use unless inside of 22 yards (20 m) from shore, virtually ending the practice. However, it's still done around adjoining islands.
Brown's Bay Inn has access to 3 miles (1.86 km) of shoreline, approximately 300 acres (121.5 ha) of marsh, and several farms and potholes. Thirty-two blinds offer a variety of duck hunting: everything from shoreline divers to pothole shoots for teal, pintail, widgeon, and mallard; to marsh hunts for wood duck and field set-ups for geese. On the second day, Paul and I hunted the marsh along the canal that divides the island. After a short ride in an Argo, guide Ken Murphy set up decoys in the channel between high rushes. Soon ducks filled the sky, and for once my gunning was dead on. Three woodies and a green-wing drake splashed down after trying to pass on my side, while Paul, who always seemed to be on the wrong side for shooting opportunities, dropped a high-flying greenhead. The shooting wasn't as fast and furious as on the previous day, but numbers were traded for the whistle of wings over reeds, the peeping of wood ducks, geese in the distance, and wary birds coming down the chute straight on. In a word, superb. When we met the others at breakfast, there were smiles all round. The inn's "bragging stick" was heavy with feathers and webbed feet.
Someone once told me that the problem with a safari to Africa lies in the fact that you spend the rest of your life trying to make it back. I smiled and thought that perhaps that too could be said of a stopover at Wolfe Island. Forget the cowboy hats, world-class waterfowling is alive and well in Ontario.

Submitted by George Hallday
The Kingston Whig - Standard. Kingston, Ont.
Aug 11, 2001. pg. 1.FRONT story Wolfe Island
Equipped with a bicycle and a notepad, I set out a sunny weekday morning to explore Wolfe Island. It was my first trip to the Island and I was hoping to find a special place.
I did. Quiet roads, beautiful rolling hills and a lot of friendly people. No big tourist traps.
No franchise restaurants A fascinating history. I also met people who worry about the future of their community. What will it be like in 50 years? A tourist destination? A bedroom community? A place where the islanders can work and live?
I moved to Kingston this summer and didn't know much about the Island when I rolled my bicycle onto the deck of the ferry, the Wolfe Islander III. I was, however, curious to see the place that advertises itself as "Naturally Nice" and to meet the people who live there.
So I boarded the 8:30 a.m. ferry from Kingston on a Thursday in late July - not the busiest crossing of the day. There were two dozen vehicles on board, mostly light trucks and vans with workers on their way to repair or install something. Then there was a group of schoolchildren on the upper deck, obviously enjoying the view of the city waterfront as the ferry left the harbour. I was the only one looking like a tourist, with my backpack and a camera around my neck. The day before, I had bought a 44-page book about Wolfe Island - the only book about the island I could find in local bookstores. It was a quick but fascinating read about the island's history and the community today.
Having read it, I phoned the author, Renie Marshall, to get some tips for my trip. She said she would love to chat if I stopped by her house first thing in the morning.
"Do you prefer tea or coffee?" she asked with a British accent.
When the ferry docked in Marysville, the only village on the Island, I took a right turn by Fargo's General Store. I continued down the road to Marshall's yellow house, which is part Mosier's Grocery - the Island's other general store.
A sign in Marshall's window warned about the guard cat, but all the flowers on the porch suggested a friendly resident.
She invited me in, made me a fresh cup of coffee, and told me about herself. Her guard cat, Emma, sat on the couch, keeping a close eye on a few American visitors eating ice cream outside.
Marshall, 78, grew up in a poor part of London and moved to Montreal in 1961. She became friends with a woman who lived on Wolfe Island and came to visit her in 1962.
"I loved it. I wanted to live here."
She moved to Wolfe Island in 1973 and stayed for three years. Six years ago, she came back to settle down for good.
"It's just a great place and the days are never long enough for me," she said.
Writing, volunteering and meeting friends keeps her busy. She has translated two books and she finished the book about Wolfe Island last year. It was published in May, when the Island opened its new visitors' centre and its first public washrooms.
"There hadn't been a book about the Island since 1973 so I thought it would be a good idea," she said.
Her book, Ganounkouesnot (The Long Island Standing Up!), chronicles the ferry connections, the village, and the colourful history of the Island since the first white settlers came here in the 1600s. French explorer Samuel de Champlain was probably the first to set foot on the Island when he crossed from the United States to Canada in 1615, she writes. Marshall also tells of the black people who escaped from slavery in the southern States during the 1800s and passed across Wolfe Island on their way to Canada, and the overgrown canal that was a short-cut for boaters crossing the St. Lawrence River in the mid-to- late 1800s.
Wolfe Island has certainly changed in past decades, she said. It's no longer the kind of agricultural society it used to be. All the cheese factories have shut down, and most people work on the mainland.
In 1861, more than 3,600 people lived on the Island. Today, about 1,100 people call Wolfe Island home. And in the last few years, the island's economy has been stagnant.
Tourism should be part of the solution, said Marshall. It has been estimated that 30,000 people visit the island every year and Marshall wouldn't mind seeing more of them.
"We're trying to make the island more attractive," she said.
To that end, the islanders built the new visitors' centre. It's located across the street from Marshall's house, and she volunteers there occasionally, just like Jack and Alice Posthumus who staffed it the day of my visit.
They came from Holland in the early 1950s, at a time when almost 30 Dutch families came and settled on the island.
The centre's guest book showed that 31 people signed in the previous day, many of them Americans. Since May, visitors from 27 countries - including China, Malaysia, Russia and New Zealand - have stopped by. I said goodbye to Marshall outside her house and paid a quick visit to Sherry and Vince Mosier's store. Vince's family was among the first 30 families that settled on the Island in the 1820s. The store opened in 1845 and moved to its present location in 1878. Vince and Sherry took over the business in 1994.
EVERYTHING YOU NEED
They offer 1,300 videos for rent, local honey and jams, and almost everything a household needs. But what the island needs, Vince said, is a few more taxpayers to support businesses and municipal services. "Right now, there isn't enough money going into city hall," he said, and mentioned that two golf courses are being built on the island. They might attract new people and make current residents stay, he said. "It will give people something to do when they retire."
I decided to visit one of the future golf courses and rode west along the north shore of the island to the Fourth Line. That's where retired air force squadron leader Keith Walton and his wife, former teacher Mildred Hawkins-Walton, live in a white brick house surrounded by piles of dirt that are about to become greens and fairways.
You can see Kingston from their living room but you can't hear the traffic.
"It just seemed like a good idea," Walton said about turning farmland into a nine-hole golf course. It will be named Alston Moor, after his ancestral home in northwestern England.
If everything goes as planned, he'll open the course in August 2002. Walton believes the location will attract lots of golfers.
"We're virtually in isolation here, yet we're only 10 to 12 miles from the 401," he said.
"And when it's 90 degrees in the city, it's pleasant out here." TRANSPORTATION
Mildred, who spent 14 years on the island's municipal council, is particularly concerned about the "transportation issue." Her daughter moved to Kingston because the commute added too many hours to her working day, she said.
"She would move back here if she didn't have to wait an hour to get on the ferry," she said. Her dream is a bridge that would connect Kingston to Wolfe Island and the United States.
"Then the economic development would get a boost and make the island much more attractive to working people."
Having photographed Walton near the driving range he has already opened, I headed towards the south shore of the island where a small ferry crosses to New York state. To get there, I went back to Marysville and turned right onto Highway 95, which links the village with the international crossing.
The driver of the first vehicle that I met, a somewhat rusty pickup truck, greeted me with a friendly wave. After that, I didn't meet many cars along the 11-kilometre stretch - one of the nicest highways I have ever biked, with its rolling hills, farmland and the occasional herd of livestock.
JOHN O'SHEA'S HOUSE
Best of all, I had the wind at my back.
Halfway across, I stopped at John O'Shea's house. I didn't know anything about him but I had been told he was a person worth visiting. No one answered when I knocked on the door, so I went around the house. The radio was on in his tool shed, but there was no sign of O'Shea and I decided to stop by on my way back.
I continued south and stopped a few kilometres down the road, where two families from Ottawa were walking around in a small graveyard.
"It's just interesting to think of their stories and their lives," said Doug Sprunt, who studied the epitaphs from the 1800s with great interest. The two families were visiting Kingston and thought the free ferry ride to Wolfe Island sounded exciting.
"This island is too well hidden. I had no idea it was here," Sprunt said. "When we came out here, I was surprised there were so few tourists in the village.
"And there's no McDonald's. It's just great," he said.
Around 2:30 p.m. I arrived at Horne's Point, where there's been ferry service to Cape Vincent, N.Y., since 1820.
In 1861, the operation was passed on to Thomas D. Horne, great- great-great grandfather of Bruce and George Horne - whom I met on the ferry that afternoon. Since 1970, the brothers have been operating the William Darrell, which takes up to 12 cars and 98 passengers. It runs from May to mid-October, from eight in the morning to seven at night.
The ferry was not operating at capacity on the 2:45 p.m. departure from Horne's Point. Five cars and a dozen people took the 10-minute trip across to the States.
"It's slow these days. Our money's worth nothing so Canadians aren't going anywhere," said Bruce as he took a two-minute break while the ferry was docked in Cape Vincent. Then it was back to work, getting new cars and people on board.
Less than 15 minutes later, I was back in Canada. As I went to unlock my bicycle, I noticed one of my pens had been tucked in between the gear wire and the frame. I must have dropped it as I rushed to get on the ferry and someone had picked the pen up and placed it there. That wouldn't have happened in the city, I thought.
Twenty minutes later I arrived at O'Shea's house. Now a pickup truck was parked outside and a little white Jack Russell terrier met me on the porch with a bit of companionable barking.
O'Shea soon appeared from his basement, where he was fixing a water pipe. I was invited in and offered a cold can of Coke, which hit the spot after five hours on the road in 25-degree heat.
"It's just a good place to live," he said about Wolfe Island. He was born here 69 years ago and has been retired for the last 10.
1800S
His connection to the Island goes back to the early 1800s, when his dad's great-grandmother was carried here as an infant. She was a Scot and came with a group of Loyalists who emigrated following the American Revolution, he said.
O'Shea had three sisters but one of them passed away 10 years ago. The other two run the Hi-Lo Hickory Campgrounds on the north shore, where his ancestors first settled.
He has seven children and 12 grandchildren, but only one of his sons still lives on the Island. Fifty years from now, there probably won't be anyone in his family left here, he said.
"I doubt it."
That's a shame because it's a great place to live, he said.
"You don't have to lock your doors out here. I'm not sure I know where my keys are."
O'Shea was on the island's municipal council for six years, part of the time serving as deputy reeve. He now fears the place will become a bedroom community for Kingston.
"Some clean labour-intensive industry would be good for the Island. "Or maybe we should become a free state. But I don't want to be tied in with the U.S. It's a great country but I just don't want to be American." O'Shea took me to his tool shed, which was full of stuff - tools, broken chainsaws, wood for his woodstove, and most other imaginable items that could come in handy.
"I can get lost out here for a day. I like repairing stuff."
He just fixed his well pump and put in a new water pipe to his house. He got some help from a friend to dig up the driveway and he's always ready to help others, he said.
BACK ROADS
On my way back to Marysville, I followed some of the back roads, hoping to find the beautiful sandy beach I had heard about. But when I got there, a sign told me to stay out of the area.
"This road is privately owned and maintained. No beach access. No bicycle access. Trespassers will be prosecuted," the sign warned. So I followed the gravel roads back to Marysville, bought a newspaper at Fargo's, and walked to Ernie's Cafe where I had a chicken sandwich with fries and a bottle of beer - the perfect meal for someone who had pedalled 40 kilometres or so.
It was a great ending to a great day.
The only problem was that I hadn't been able to see half of what I wanted to see, such as the overgrown canal, the eastern part of the Island and the many historic buildings.
I also wished I had talked to more people. Surely, there are as many opinions about the island as there are people here. But that, I thought, simply meant I would have to come back.
And when I put my teeth into a cinnamon bun from the local bakery during the ferry ride back to Kingston, I knew I would be back soon.

Submitted by George Hallday
The Kingston Whig - Standard. Kingston, Ont.
Jun 30, 2001. pg. 1.FRONT history Wolfe Island
In 1904, Wolfe Island Township obtained control of the ferry and put into service the SS [Thomas Fawcett], which was renamed Wolfe Islander in the next year. It served the island for 41 years before being condemned and replaced by the Wolfe Islander II. The present ferry, the Wolfe Islander III, was put into service in 1976.

Submitted by George Hallday
The Ottawa Citizen. Ottawa, Ont.
Jun 26, 2001. pg. D.3 news Wolfe Island
Body of Missing Duck Hunter Found
The body of a man missing since last November was discovered Saturday on Lake Ontario just west of Wolfe Island. It was identified as Cpl. Paul Grace, 36, one of three duck hunters who went missing on Lake Ontario in that area last November. The other two were recovered last fall.
Originally from St. Mary's Bay, Nfld., Cpl. Grace was a corporal with CFB Kingston who worked as a cook at the Royal Military College.

Submitted by George Hallday
The Kingston Whig - Standard. Kingston, Ont.
Jun 25, 2001. pg. 1.FRONT news Wolfe Island
A civilian boater discovered the body of a Royal Military College employee who has been missing since November, this weekend.
The Coast Guard and the Ontario Provincial Police responded to the call after the boater saw a body floating in Lake Ontario just west of Wolfe Island.
The body was recovered and was identified as Cpl. Paul Grace.
Cpl. Grace worked at Royal Military College as a cook. He was 36.
Cpl. Grace had been missing since November when he and two friends were on a duck-hunting expedition.
On Nov. 9, the men used a cellphone to report that their propeller had fallen off while they were boating in the Wolfe Island area. It was the only contact made with the trio.
Rescue crews, including members of the Ontario Provincial Police, the Coast Guard, volunteers from the military and the CFB Trenton Rescue Co-ordination Centre immediately began ground and air searches. Gananoque OPP say that search efforts had been ongoing for Cpl. Grace.
Col. Peter Atkinson, CFB Kingston's base commander, received a call around Saturday at midnight that Cpl. Grace's body had been found. He said he hopes the discovery helps the man's family.
"This puts to rest the tragedy of the past few months. I hope his family feels a sense of relief that he's been found and that this brings closure," he said.
The bodies of the two other men, Cpl. Michael Moore and his brother Mark Moore, were recovered on Nov. 12 from the St. Lawrence River near Wolfe Island. Cpl. Michael Moore was in telecommunications at CFB Kingston and his brother Mark Moore made his home in British Columbia.
The cause of death for both Michael and Mark Moore was hypothermia and drowning.
Funeral and interment arrangements for Cpl. Grace have yet to be completed.
Gananoque OPP had no further information Sunday night.

Submitted by George Hallday
The Kingston Whig - Standard. Kingston, Ont.
Nov 3, 2001. pg. 3 story Wolfe Island
American angler reels in a muskie and a memory Fish stories.
We've all heard our share, each one claiming to be better than the last, like this:
A friend of mine once caught a fish so big that he dislocated his shoulders just describing it.
Or this one: A perch fell from the sky and landed right in the middle of Princess Street in downtown Kingston. It had probably fallen out of the mouth of a bird flying by.
As you can see, the world doesn't need any more fish stories. That's why I'm going to tell you one.
Newell Wilcox of Cortland, N.Y., and Bruce Woodman of Wolfe Island were friends for many years. They both liked muskie fishing.
Before his death in 1994, Woodman had been a fishing guide in the Thousand Islands region for decades.
Wilcox's business was selling automobile tires, but his passion was fishing in the Thousand Islands.
"We had a mutual interest in muskie fishing. We talked frequently on the marine radio, boat to boat. Bruce used to come down and go deer hunting with me. We met a number of times," Wilcox recalled.
In the 1980s, they and other anglers from both sides of the border took part in a muskie-tagging program run by the U.S. Department of Environmental Conservation.
There was a number on each tag and the department recorded the information about who tagged a particular fish and where and when it was caught and released. When a tagged fish was caught later, the department would be able to trace its movement and its growth.
"As I recall, we had a buoy and we attached the fish to the buoy so that it would survive," Wilcox said. "We would take the fish to Cape Vincent where they would study the fish and then released them later.
"I tagged some fish at the same time that Bruce was tagging. We tagged about 150 fish over a period of time."
Such tagging programs were - and still are - common.
What wasn't common was a muskie that Wilcox caught a couple of weeks ago off Grindstone Island, just south of Gananoque.
"It was 51 inches long and it weighed 30 pounds," Wilcox said, "It was not the biggest fish that I have caught, but it was a nice fish."
There was a tag on the muskie.
Wilcox traced the number and found that his friend Bruce Woodman had tagged it off Snake Island back in 1985. The fish was about 36 inches long at the time.
"Imagine that! I have caught a fish that was previously tagged by a very dear Canadian friend!" Wilcox said.
He was so delighted that he phoned Bruce Woodman's widow, Margaret, and told her about his catch.
"It was really exciting," Margaret Woodman said.
What happened to the muskie?
"The tag was too imbedded in it," Wilcox said, "By the time I got the tag out of it, it was too damaged to be released.
"So I ate it. It tasted delicious."

Submitted by George Hallday
The Kingston Whig - Standard. Kingston, Ont.
Nov 14, 2001. pg. 4 Christmas Wolfe Island
Several CBC broadcasters will be on Wolfe Island on Nov. 24, helping to read a classic Christmas tale.
Once again, the churches of Wolfe Island will stage a reading of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, using the version that the author himself read from the stage, for the benefit of the poor.
The CBC has provided the authentic script. Contributors to the reading will be CBC hosts Jeff Goodes of Fresh Air and Rita Celli of several Ottawa radio and television shows.
They will join local notables Ken Keyes, Canon Alex Wakeling and Carol Bond of CKWS and musical entertainers Quartessence and an island choir. The reading takes place at the Sacred Heart Church on Wolfe Island a week from Saturday at 7 p.m.
Cash donations will be requested from adults at the door, with the proceeds going to the Wolfe Island Better Beginnings project. Children are asked to bring a nonperishable food item that will be given to Partners In Mission food bank.
Doors open at 6:30 p.m., which will allow Kingston residents to take the 6 p.m. ferry. A bus will meet the ferry at the island terminal to take people to the church and return them to the ferry dock in time for the 9:20 p.m. ferry.
The Wolfe Island event is one in a number of such readings that take place across the country each year.
In 1989, the CBC's Judy Maddren read the story to her children and rediscovered Dickens'stage version. She began reading the story in public, and it caught on. Now, at least 80 such readings take place every year.
Local charities always benefit, no matter where the reading is held, because, as Jacob Marley says: "Mankind is my business."

Submitted by George Hallday
The Canadian Press NewsWire. Toronto
Oct 23, 2001. news Wolfe Island
KINGSTON, Ont. (CP) - A pair of Kingston, Ont., men facing first-degree murder charges pleaded guilty Monday to manslaughter in connection with the brutal 1999 beating death of Curtis MacDonald.
In doing so, one of the men has opened himself to what may be the longest prison-term for manslaughter handed out in recent city history. Joseph Badour, who led the vicious attack, will face a sentence of between 18 and 20 years for his role, according to a joint sentencing recommendation by the Crown and defence attorneys.
MacDonald, 18, was beaten by a group of five or six young men, including Badour and Brandon York, in the early hours of July 24, 1999.
Badour repeatedly beat MacDonald with an aluminum baseball bat as the assault continued both in and outside an apartment building.
Once the assault was over, MacDonald's body was wrapped in a carpet and left in the water off Belle Park where it was found by police.
During a preliminary inquiry last year, court heard that Badour led the assault on the unsuspecting MacDonald because he had heard the Wolfe Island native had labelled him a "goof" and suggested he was a "rat" who couldn't be trusted.
In Kingston's prisons and criminal subculture, the word "goof" is the supreme insult, an expression of utter contempt that is often considered a fighting word.
The pleas came as their trial for first-degree murder was to begin. Both men will be sentenced next month.
One of the reasons the Crown agreed to accept a manslaughter plea was evidence of drug use that night might have made it difficult to prove intent, which is required to obtain a murder conviction, said Crown attorney Bruce Griffith.

The Islands: Articles: 2001