Ottawa Valley Outpost

Huddle with a map of Canada, and its provinces bordering the U.S. are unquestionably huge. Ontario is not the largest; it only appears that way. Barely-inhabited Nunavut dwarfs Ontario. Since its land extends from border crossings in upstate New York to the Upper Midwest, one could forgive an American for believing that.

To the north, Ontario touches Hudson Bay, where Polar Bear Provincial Park cannot be accessed by road (that is true of a surprising number of Canadian parks). Lake Superior’s Island Royale, protected as a U.S. national park, lies close to Ontario than the states of Minnesota or Michigan. The Ottawa River marks most of its eastern border with Quebec. The province touches four Great Lakes and hugs the southern shoreline of Hudson Bay. (A future Jeopardy question: This is the only Great Lake that doesn’t border Ontario. “What is Lake Michigan, Alex.”?)

If I linger on the eastern border, that is due to the eastern border lingering in me. The Upper Ottawa Valley is a place apart, where a few days of immersion will always stay fresh in the mind.

Reaching the Upper Ottawa from Middle Tennessee or Central Ohio demands an early start or in my case, an early start after a short, late-night flight to slash six hours off the drive. Better to take three hours of sleep than drive all night to get into another car. Crites went sleepless before the drive, his preparations busying him until our hour arrived.

Dawn broke up the farmland along U.S. 23, Columbus a memory as we hurtled toward Detroit and the Ambassador Bridge. Fueled on Tim Horton’s coffee and breakfast sandwiches, we followed 401 across Lake Erie’s northern shore, the road funneling us toward Toronto. Our wrong-lane encounter with a Canadian customs office might have been funny if only anything involving border crossings was legally allowed to be funny anymore. At the border crossing, I first heard the name Rolphton, not realizing it was the closest named place to the family cabin.

Farms and windmills east of Windsor

Initially I thought our route would run across Ohio, Pennsylvani and New York to cross at Niagara Falls, where we would take the Queen Elizabeth Way around Lake Ontario to Toronto. I guessed wrong. All of this terrain was new to me.

Wind turbines broke up the serene farmland. From the 401, we rattled off Ontario’s famed mid-sized cities – London, Stratford and Woodstock, the last home to the largest Oktoberfest outside Germany. The turnoff to Hamilton, Niagara Falls and St. Catharines barely registered; we just continued toward Toronto, taking the toll road around and only glimpsing North America’s fourth-largest city from a great distance – on a clear day, the cluster of skyscrapers dwarfed by the CN Tower looks quite majestic.

After Toronto, another five hours of driving awaited us, so dawdling near the metropolis wasn’t an option. Our itinerary only had space for more rustic, traditional places. For Crites and his family members, the journey north to Deep River ran deep with traditions. After nearly 80 years within the family, it should.

From the map, those traditions emerged - places you stop, places where you crack a beer and songs you need to hear. All influenced the drive. First, we had to pass Barrie. Between Toronto’s west/ouest suburbs and Barrie at the region’s northern end, traffic could congest badly. We felt none of that on the way up, breezing past the town on the shores of Lake Simcoe.

The grillmaster at Webers

 In a few kilometers we came upon one of central Ontario’s famed eateries, Webers Hamburgers. Charcoal-grilled, the burger line could stretch along the building and its converted train cars at lunch or on the weekends. On a Thursday afternoon, the line began inside the building. A highly focused man ran the grill, flipping burgers and toasting buns at a masterful pace. Interrupt him at your own peril.

Webers has a system that moved us from door to patio table in just 10 minutes. We passed at an off-hour, but dozens of people milled around the colorful grounds while we ate. The double cheeseburger blew away the average fast-food burger. Paired with fries and a chocolate shake, it formed the perfect lunch on a clear fall day in Ontario.

 This section of Ontario lies within the Canadian Shield, formation of billion-year-old rocks that extends across Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec. The further north we drove, the more the Canadian Shield impacted the landscape. Trees grew here among the stone and glacier-carved lakes, but nothing came easy. The land is rockier than most, with the central road blasted through rock, the holes drilled for dynamite still easily visible on either side of Highway 11.

We spent just moments in North Bay, which lies on the shores of shallow Lake Nipissing. Whatever passes for rush hour in the small town began to build, with heavily traffic roads and children spilling out of school buses. What struck me was many of the children appear to be in First Nations’ origin.

Canadian Shield geology

Here we joined Highway 17, the Trans-Canada Highway. Although the Trans-Canada Highway traverses Ontario from Manitoba to Quebec, it completely skips the corridor from Windsor to Toronto, the most highly populated part of Canada. Trans-Canada Highway doesn’t carry any major meaning – the sections were traveled were almost entirely two-lane roads.

 Towns became further spread out, with Mattawa the only one of note after North Bay. Mattawa sits at the confluence of the Mattawa and Ottawa rivers. The former logging town now earns praise for other wood - large carvings of Samuel de Champlain and other famous residents and/or mythic figures appear randomly along Highway 17.

After Mattawa, custom demands that cabin-bound travelers cede the radio to After the Gold Rush and crack open a roader. A beer on the winding road that parallels the Ottawa River creates a good tone for relaxation at the cabin. But the presence of provincial police also demanded that we drink those beers discreetly. By the time Cripple Creek Ferry rang out, the road ran close to the Ottawa and only a few kilometers separated us from the cabin.

Trans-Canada Highway, Ottawa River Valley

While I deferred to tradition, a few other Neil songs could have rounded out the playlist. The logical choices seemed his cover of Four Strong Winds, one of the best Canadian tunes ever, or Helpless, his ode to boyhood in northern Ontario. Hell, the entirety of Comes a Time feels wedded to this landscape. The weather was definitely good here in the fall, even if we were a long way from Alberta.

Soon the Rolphton Motel and Café passed on our right. The truck stop diner at the top of the cabin’s street had been demolished since Ben’s last visit, only the faded plastic sign remaining. Crites took a back route to the cabin road, passing the local sand pits where trucks loaded to treat winter roads and where children played during the summer.

The empty roads forked onto a narrow drive that funneled us into a deep forest. A wooden plaque proclaimed the land as “Harry’s Haven,” named for the patriarch who purchased the land in the 1930s and developed the vacation site. The road rapidly descended, appearing as if it emptied directly into the Ottawa.

The road reached a clearing where the cabin, garage, bank and the Laurentian Mountains erupted into view. We greeted our hosts unpacked and cracked beers. After years of seeing the cabin and its acreage in pictures, I wanted to run my hands across its wooden beams just to know I wasn’t dreaming.

As the last to arrive, we draw immediate attention from the house, where everyone prepped for dinner. We lingered on the porch then wandered the grounds, exploring the first of two artificial lakes in the forest before twilight began to pull away.

Staring at Quebec

Crites took me on the grand tour, past the garage/boat house to the little cabin further south that boasts the best views of the mountain. All three structures kept the same color schemes – white metal roofs with wooden walls painted red. All three contrasted nicely with the green forest ringing them. The cabin stayed open from May to October. Its owners – cousins of Ben’s father – had arrived to shut it down and make arrangements for winter caretakers. Everyone enjoyed the cabin and its surroundings while pitching in, whether pulling the enormously heavy dock from the river or sweeping out the small cabin.

Above us, the main attraction of our first night at Harry’s Haven arrived. An hour after sundown, the Milky Way blared to life. From a recently installed stone patio, several of us watched its oblong disc grow more brilliant as our eyes adjusted. Sky watching became the sport of early evening. At least nine satellites crossed the starry field. Everyone watching spotted at least one or two meteors. People peeled off as night deepened and sleepiness snared them, until only a handful tended the fire. By 10:30 p.m., the full moon rose above the Laurentians, dampening the rest of the galaxy and wrapping the light show.

Even with the moon, I could no longer go coatless on this clear night. Additions of a ski hat and scarf added little warmth. Coasting on three hours of sleep and two catnaps in the car, I felt my energy waning. Soon I would mount the stairs to the Orphanage, the one big room lined with beds on the cabin’s second floor. A pile of blankets awaited me, a little cocoon to fend off frigid moments of this Canadian night.

Sunset, looking northwest up the Ottawa River Valley